Training or Abuse

Yesterday, while working with Dr. Sadie we were called out to a ranch to stitch up a head wound on a 12 year old stallion. When we arrived the owner was hitting the horse in the face with the lead rope from the halter and chasing the horse backwards while striking it in the face...not a pretty picture. I  wonder how it got the head wound? This behavior is not acceptable to me but unfortunately there are still people that call themselves horsemen using these archaic practices. These  are measures that most horsemen can agree are, by definition, abusive.

These include:

• Hang-tying to break down a horse’s resistance and promote a lowered head carriage (by exhausting the neck muscles).
• Riding or longeing to exhaustion (far beyond the length of time needed to “get the fresh out”).
• Excessive spurring, especially with so-called “rock grinders” (extremely sharp spurs), causing bleeding and/or “spur dents” (indentations in the cartilage between ribs).
• Excessive jerking on the mouth, especially with a severe bit (such as a super-narrow-gauge twisted-wire snaffle), causing injury to the tongue, bars, or lips.
• Excessive jerking on the lead shank, especially when a chain is used over the face or in the mouth, causing injury.
• Excessive whipping or beating, from the saddle or the ground, causing terror or injury (thrashings that represent an expression of anger and frustration rather than a measured attempt at discipline).
• Hitting about the head, especially with a solid weapon.
• “Bitting around” for excessive periods (where a horse is left to stand for hours with his head tied around to one side, then the other, to enforce flexibility).
• Withholding food or water to create submissiveness. (Cutting back on the grain ration of a hot horse is OK; starving a horse into weakness is not.)

It is amazing to me that people still feel it is okay to treat one of the most magnificent, courageous and beautiful animals in the world with such disrespect. Shameful.


I leave you with a quote from one of the best natural horsemen in the world...


"Empathy for the horse is the capacity of a person to be able to feel what the horse feels, to read a situation the same way, and to have an understanding of what the horse is going to do in response to that situation. That’s empathy, or feeling with the horse, and it’s a real effective way of learning from the horse. Even before the horse does whatever he’s about to do, a person who’s this way is going to understand the reason a horse does something. It takes time to get that deep knowledge of horses." ~ Bill Dorrance