I’m sick of silence on this. I am so so so sick of seeing horses broken both physically, and mentally by breakers/starters/trainers, then being deemed too dangerous to continue with. This is not normal, it is not acceptable, and it is not okay. Undoubtedly they all get passed onto the next person to ‘bandaid’ or break more. Expressions of flight & fear have no effective place in the horse training process. Absolutely none. They should never be encouraged, OR allowed to continue throughout the breaking/starting process. It is all up to the trainer, ALL OF IT. Horses will break themselves if they are not prepared for what they are being asked to do, and are overfaced. They will break themselves, usually catastrophically through fear, through fright, and through unrealistic expectations on them mentally and physically. Ideals of ‘Respect’ have no place in horse training - respect is irrelevent to horse learning, and it certainly won’t come from chasing, unbalancing, or scaring horses into an unclear, or even clear response. You horse should NEVER come back from a trainer in a compromised welfare state. I don’t care if their job is ‘training’ - their job is to be an expert who specialises in Equine Learning, and that only comes from majority basis of WELFARE. Do not tolerate getting an underweight, unhealthy, dehydrated horse back from training. This is NOT normal, and NOT okay. Do not tolerate horses getting injured during training from particular trainers regularly, using particular techniques. This is NOT normal, and NOT okay. Do not tolerate getting a horse back from training, in anything less than a calmer, more relaxed, more confident, more responsive combined with relaxation at the same time, consistently. Anything less is NOT normal, and NOT okay. Do not tolerate a horse coming back from a trainer with an exacerbation of conflict behaviors or ones that were not present before (bit chewing, lack of straightness, one sideness, tension, mouth gaping, bucking, rushing, head tilting, refusing to go forwards, reactive to the bit pressure or your leg pressure, cold backed) and tension alongside ‘responsiveness’ aka reactiveness. This is NOT normal, and it is NOT okay. It also is not a good training result. It is a problematic result, and an outcome that will need many levels of retraining to resolve. The standards that are being tolerated, ENABLED, & walked past are exactly the same standards that will bring our industry, and passion, and love to a reckoning and will call the end of it. Set the dam standards yourself. I am sick of seeing what I am seeing, and I am sick of hearing what I am hearing. Good, correct, welfare oriented training comes in the subtle progressive changes, and the clear results - NOT the big sudden changes, and inconsistent results.
#equineethology #equinetraining #equinelearning #horsewelfare #horsetraining #equinescience #equitationscience #thestandardswewalkpast
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