Is it time we stopped riding horses?

The Charlotte Dujardin scandal was the latest in a long line of equine controversies and, perhaps, we should get out of the saddle for good

Like so many horse-mad girls, Rachael Wheeler was young – just nine – when she first learned to ride. Drawn magnetically to these large, empathetic creatures, she found the process of grooming and caring for the horses at her local stables in Aberdeenshire as rewarding as learning to trot and canter.  
There was, she remembers, one horse who would always try to throw people off her back. “They used to call her a ‘moody mare’ or a ‘bad horse’,” recalls Wheeler, now 31. It made Wheeler feel uncomfortable. “I had an appreciation even at that age that the horses didn’t enjoy it.”
These experiences eventually led her to conclude that horse riding wasn’t for her, even though the love of equines remained. Today she co-runs Jacobs Ridge, a sanctuary for horses and other animals in Spain, where she is the custodian of 21 rescue equines, 13 of which live in a herd – as close to their natural way as possible. 
“Coming here in 2015 I saw a different way of working with horses, from the ground. I then studied equine behaviour to help me understand them more.”
That “moody mare”, she now reflects, “was obviously having a hard time. She could have had physical pain and was trying to adjust. “A horse can become conditioned to suppression, learning that the easiest way is to just give in and do what’s asked of them, but she kept fighting.”
Observing the natural behaviour of the herd she cares for – free of saddles, bridles, bits and, not least, humans impelling them to feats of physical prowess – has confirmed her belief that we should no longer be riding horses. 
Yet it is an opinion that she and her partner Julian Nicholson, with whom she has recently co-founded the Association for the Care and Protection of Animals in Spain, have been wary of expressing publicly, worried that any accusations of “virtue signalling” would inhibit their day-to-day work of rescuing abused horses. 
But they are not alone in voicing what might at first seem a radical position. A 2022 survey by World Horse Welfare, an international charity that strives to support and improve the horse-human partnership, found that one in five people do not support horses in sport. Last month’s leaked video of Olympic eventer Charlotte Dujardin whipping a horse will have caused many more to question their use in sport; it led to coverage of equestrian events at the Paris Games giving more of a focus to horse welfare than usual.
Multiply that by the images of spooked and bloodied Household Cavalry horses running through the streets of London earlier this year, and more recent footage of a King’s Guard horse biting a tourist’s arm in Whitehall, and just how anachronistic their place in sport and society is, suddenly seems glaringly obvious.
These questions have been bubbling away inside the equestrian sector for some time, says Rosie Jones McVey, a social anthropologist at the University of Exeter who also has a background in horse training. “There’s every shade of perspective towards animal rights and welfare within the horse world. As opposed to it being at one end of a debate, you will get those with a strong animal rights perspective, who are custodians for their creatures and don’t ride them.”
The development of equitation science in the past 20 years has sought to remove anthropomorphism and emotiveness from the horse-training world and instead understand what pressures horses are under due to their use by humans. Where once a horse misbehaving might have been seen as cheeky and therefore needing the occasional reprimand, it is now more commonly understood that “cheekiness” is actually anxiety and stress and needs a completely different response.
The Ridden Horse Pain Ethogram (RHPE) was developed by the equine vet Dr Sue Dyson, with the goal of identifying behaviours associated with musculoskeletal pain in horses under the saddle. It has helped people to understand how clever horses can be at masking their pain. 
As a leading figure in the movement towards more positive-reinforcement training instead of punitive, Kelly Marks of Intelligent Horsemanship says, “The first place to go to when you’ve got a horse that misbehaves is the vet, not the whip.” 
Twenty years ago she wrote the book Perfect Manners: How You Should Behave So Your Horse Does Too. Changes in thinking map on to those in approaches to the ethics of parenting over a similar time period. Once commonplace, smacking is now taboo. A similar movement of positive reinforcement has also made progress in dog training, where food rewards have become the standard technique.
However, with the exception of Marks and her followers, the tradition-shod equestrian world has been slow to change. Learning to ride takes a long time, often under apprenticeship or in deference to an instructor who is more experienced. 
“There’s a military heritage to equestrianism in Britain and often for people who have learnt to ride in that environment there is an emphasis on obedience, both to an instructor by the pupil and [by] the horses,” explains Jones McVey. “If it’s taken you 30 years to feel like you finally have become an expert in your field, certain types of new ideas are challenging. It can be quite a threatening position for people.”
The result can be hostility to new ways of thinking. The fact that horses – who are prey animals – are so easy to train is seen as a green light to continue riding. “Horse riders tell me that their horse loves being ridden,” says Wheeler. “But it probably would prefer to have a run around without you on its back. It just wants to get out of its small stable space.”
It is not so much that horses are experiencing intentional cruelty, but that false narratives about horses’ natures have persisted for so long. “The horse people I’ve worked with in studies, the vast majority of them – nearly every single one of them – love their horses, it’s just that love takes different shapes and forms,” says Jones McVey. The Charlotte Dujardin video has sparked additional debate not just publicly, but within the horse world too, she says. “It’s an opportunity for people to mark out what they’re not. A lot of people would be keen not to be associated with that video.”
On Christmas Day in 2003, Lisa Ashton was given a gift that changed her life: a copy of The Truth About Horses by Dr Andrew McClean, who developed the Australian Equine Behaviour Centre. Stopping only for Christmas lunch, when she finished the book, she says: “I realised I had been coached to actually harm my horse. It was my defining moment.”
It set her on a 20-year journey to understand how we can do better. Ashton is now senior lecturer in equitation science at Hartpury University in Gloucestershire, known for its equine courses. Her area of special interest is the concept of social licence to operate (SLO) and horse riding. Coined in 1997, SLO refers to the perceptions of local stakeholders that a project, company or industry that operates in a given area is socially acceptable or legitimate.
Applied to the equestrian world, what Ashton calls the four pillars of SLO – legitimacy, transparency, communication and trust – mean that there has to be credibility in the way horses are trained, using modes of training that enrich the horses’ lives. “Charlotte Dujardin went to one mode of learning called punishment. Obviously we stopped doing it with children. There are better modes,” explains Ashton. 
The video clearly highlighted issues around transparency, but also showed that in terms of communication, there are those in the horse world who are prepared to use technology to reveal what is going on behind closed doors. It is Ashton’s hope that if all these three points can be marshalled in the correct direction, it can result in a public perception of trustworthiness in the equestrian world. 
Public suspicion around how the unnatural, exaggerated gaits and tightly tucked chins of dressage horses are achieved will never have been more acute. Can there ever be any justification for pushing a horse to the degree that an Olympic rider requires? For Julian Nicholson at Jacobs Ridge, the answer is no: “They, the horses, have no sovereignty over themselves as an athlete to choose whether to go to the extreme limits of what a rider wants to achieve.”
It is not just eventing that needs to prove itself under the SLO framework. In April Netflix announced it was working with the Duke of Sussex on a documentary about the elite world of polo, “capturing the full story of what it takes to compete at its highest level”; hopefully this will cover the horse perspective, as well as the human one. For polo ponies (actually horses standing at around 15 hands) are another equine welfare black spot. “When you look at the expressions of polo ponies as they are locked on and trained to follow the ball,” says Ashton, “for the public, polo would stand out as horses not looking in their optimal emotional state.”
Activists point to the use in polo of the “gag” bit, to allow the rider to pull the horse around and bring them to an abrupt standstill, as cruel, as well as the use of martingales, which stop the horse raising its head so that it is constrained in a lower position, and nub spurs, used to turn a horse and to kick them on.  
Anna Hall, chief executive of the Hurlingham Polo Association (HPA), the governing body for the sport of polo in the UK and abroad, says: “We recognise that there are some welfare challenges in polo and the wider equestrian community, but we are committed to making changes where necessary. Our many rules regarding the use of tack and equipment are continually reviewed by our welfare committee, which includes several equine vets.”
Similarly, in October the prestigious Spanish Riding School of Vienna will arrive in London for the first time in eight years to perform at the OVO Arena Wembley. With the horses – beautiful grey Lipizzanners – displaying many of the same unnatural gaits trained in dressage, after the Dujardin scandal there is sure to be concerned curiosity around their training technique.  
The Spanish Riding School emphasises that it upholds the principles of classical horsemanship – an ancient art of riding that centres the individual horse and its needs. “Our Lipizzaners’ wellbeing is always our priority and dictates their training,” said a representative of the school. It adds that the public are able to buy tickets for the horses’ Morning Exercise “to experience the partnership between our riders and horses during their training”.
Horse racing, by contrast, has long been in an existential crisis. Its continuation is only made viable because enough people still see horses as betting objects, rather than as sentient beings. Running as a herd is inherent to horses, more so than dressage, polo or performing. However, an average of 200 horses die on British racecourses every year as a result of injury in racing. The British Horseracing Authority (BHA) publishes yearly figures: 158 in 2023, down from 169 in 2022, and 219 in 2021. 
Unregulated breeding practices see an overproduction of foals worldwide in the pursuit of a magic winner. In the UK, the annual British thoroughbred population is about 74,500, of which 4,500 are foals, many of whom may never race. The most recent figures on what happens to them are from a 2015 study, which showed that 69 per cent entered licensed training. The BHA says it is working to better track both the number of horses that progress from breeding into licensed training, and the ones that don’t.
And what happens once a racehorse’s short career – on average two to three years – is over? Each year about 2,500 horses in Britain retire from the sport permanently. In 2022 the BHA changed its rules so that all racehorses in the country are signed out of the human food chain. It came months after a BBC Panorama investigation into the slaughter of racehorses in abattoirs in exchange for money.
Of the estimated 33,600 former racehorses in Britain, almost 40 per cent are affiliated with the sport’s dedicated aftercare charity, Retraining of Racehorses (RoR). The BHA says its ambition is to achieve 100 per cent traceability of horses when they leave racing.
Critics such as campaign group Animal Aid, responsible for obtaining the covert Panorama footage, say that horse racing outweighs any other horse sport in terms of how the animals are exploited with very few benefits to them. However, a BHA spokesperson said: “Our sport gives these athletes purpose, an unparalleled quality of life and world-class care that allows them to maximise their potential.”
What of service horses? There are 13 mounted police sections throughout the UK, while the British Army is often teased for having more horses than tanks. Highly effective in terms of crowd control, many have been deployed during the UK’s riots this summer, but horses are ill-suited to such stressful situations, being at heart flight animals. 
Ashton has worked with the Manchester mounted police to improve welfare, the key change being removing the bars in the stables and allowing the horses to interact and choose their companions. “They are a social species and when their needs were being met, one of the things the police officers reported was that they felt their horses were more brave. What they were really starting to do was to have the welfare to be able to buffer the work they do for us.”
Of the military horses that bolted in London in April, Ashton says it was an example of trigger-stacking, where the build-up of multiple stressors causes a horse to go over their stress threshold and react.
“That was about fear and flight. I would ask, are their specific needs being met? Do they have friends, forage and freedom? How are we meeting those needs so they can then serve us?”
Ashton is in no doubt that equestrianism is facing an existential threat, similar to that of the zoological and circus worlds in the 1960s. However, rather than wanting to stop horse riding altogether, she believes that by practising SLO the sector can reassure the public that horses are cared for, not just used.
“Back then [the 1960s], the public had no appetite for either of them using animals for entertainment any more. Zoos worked at it. They created enrichment for the animals in their captivity and through education helped people to understand what the species needs. The last bit they did was conservation. Circuses, by contrast, did little to react to the change in public perception.”
In her opinion equestrianism needs to go further than the zoological sector, developing a third way that proves horses’ lives are enriched by human interaction. She says she would welcome camera angles at the Olympic events that could show the space between a horse’s nasal plane and the leather nose band, to demonstrate welfare standards. 
Instead of patting the horse, Ashton says riders should scratch them at the base of the neck. “Research shows scratching here lowers heart rate by up to 10bpm. This actually has value to the horse rather than a human pat and will enrich their horses’ lived experience of performing in dressage.”
She goes on: “Rather than just shutting horse riding down, we should be supporting horses in sport by making it all about welfare. When I watched the Olympics it was still clear that we’re doing horse sports with welfare, instead of welfare horse sports. That’s where I stand: if we can demonstrate enrichment of the horses’ emotional state, then we can earn public trust.”
For anti-racing campaigner Dene Stansall, there can never be a convincing ethical argument in favour of riding: “Not from the perspective of the horse anyway,” he says. For the first half of his life Stansall was a passionate racegoer. The grandson of an Aintree bookmaker, he saw Red Rum race in 1976. While a student in the early 1980s and in need of a car, he borrowed £250 from his future wife to place a bet. He won and bought a red Triumph Spitfire. 
Everything changed when he saw a racehorse with a broken leg shot in front of him. “There was no lamenting. He was loaded on a tractor and carted off. Something clicked and I pretty quickly jumped from one side of the fence to the other.”
Stansall originally founded Action to Abolish the Grand National, and for the past 20 years he has campaigned for Animal Aid to stop horse racing. Thanks to him, where once the winner of the Grand National would make the front page, you’re now more likely to read about how many horses died at the event. 
He is the owner of two retired race horses whom he keeps in a five-acre field with a shelter near his home in North Lincolnshire, and says one of them, Barton Legend, was ridden by Frankie Dettori. Despite his moral absolutism, due to the way horses have been domesticated, Stansall does exercise Barton Legend by riding him, with a bitless bridle. 
“He has exercise-induced pulmonary haemorrhage and he has to be ridden to keep his bones and muscles actively moving. It would be my preference not to, but we’ve got to get the weight off him or laminitis will set in.”
The issue of how to keep a horse’s body comfortable in a setting where there is limited space means that even those who see themselves as custodians, rather than riders, frequently transgress. In their wild state, horses would be roaming over huge areas of land and interacting with different bands of horses. In the UK there isn’t the space for this to happen. The lush pasture many are kept on now is also too rich for them compared to the scrappy heathland they would naturally occupy, compounding the need for exercise.    
There are few, if any, remaining wild horses in the world. Feral horses endure, such as those on Sable Island in Nova Scotia, where a population of 500 has survived many hundreds of years without human intervention. It is a hard life though. The average lifespan of a domesticated horse is 25 to 30 years, the average in the wild is closer to 15. 
How humans could disengage from using horses is something that concerns Stansall: “Horses at the moment are in a dystopia, but what is their fate if we ultimately don’t use them for any human activity? Do they merely become companions – and who would provide for them?”
Horses are extremely expensive for the average person to keep. Stansall budgets at least £3,000 a year for each of his: “That’s without major vet bills,” he says.  The Mare and Foal Sanctuary in Devon, which has 600 equines, is inundated with horses from welfare situations. 
“We have to take into account that they are big, expensive animals to look after,” says Anna Haines, the charity’s equine behavioural lead. “Our job is to try and educate the public about making the right decisions for when their horses get older. And also ensuring they’re able to get the veterinary care they need, because that becomes more costly as they get older as well.”
Many horse owners will make those sacrifices to care for their horse throughout their whole lifetime. Yet many more horses still are abandoned or sent to slaughter once they reach the limit of their usefulness in sport.
The question we need to address as a society is not just how we can do better by equines, but whether we are after all a nation of horse lovers – or a nation of horse riders? 
If you are unsure, Wheeler and Nicholson at Jacobs Ridge have a simple challenge: “Get to know your horse without getting on its back.”