They own horses, don’t they? On animal rights and a complicated creature

Li Robbins is a writer based in Peterborough, Ont., currently working on a book about girls, women and horses.

When Black Beauty was a foal he led an idyllic life, gambolling around a pond in a large pleasant meadow. His earliest human contacts were kind; notably horseman John Manly, whose words Beauty would later recall: “Don’t you know that ignorance is the worst thing in the world, next to wickedness?” For all too soon Beauty’s fortunes changed, and he came to suffer the indignities borne by horses in the 19th century. They included having his head cranked painfully skyward with the infamous “bearing rein” so as to look flashy pulling a carriage.

The 1877 novel by Anna Sewell, billed as “the autobiography of a horse,” was a cri de coeur against such commonplace cruelties. It encouraged readers to consider life from a horse’s point of view in an era when they were seen as instruments of labour and symbols of wealth, in both cases required to do man’s bidding. It became one of the best-selling books of all time.

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Wickedness and ignorance, when it comes to the treatment of horses, are sadly not relegated to previous centuries.

Just last year a horse in Ontario was dragged behind a moving vehicle until her hooves bled, a case that sparked outrage on social media and disgrace for the perpetrator – a horse trainer. The provincial court sentence was a mere $2,500 fine and a five-year ban from involvement with horses – but only in the province of Ontario.

In better news, this century has also seen notable advancements in understanding the fundamental needs of horses – albeit an understanding slow to translate into their daily lives.

The belief in human supremacy over other living beings is tenacious, particularly when the other living beings are thousand-plus-pound animals who have a habit of challenging domination.

Other domestic animals – dogs, cats – have settled into a niche in human society. But when it comes to horses the relationship is inherently complicated. They can be “pasture puffs” grazing their days away; they can be Olympic athletes. They’re viewed as near-magical in therapeutic and educational settings; they’re innately dangerous flight animals. Horses are symbols of freedom; horses are sashimi on the hoof.

It’s this last point that’s particularly troubling. The animals we view as pets don’t typically end up on our plates, yet every year thousands of horses in Canada are purpose-bred to be eaten.

Which animals we consider okay to eat and which we don’t may be an unresolvable debate. Regardless, loading terrified horses onto planes so restaurant patrons abroad can enjoy their flesh at its freshest rubs many the wrong way, among them musician Jann Arden. In September, after a meeting between Ms. Arden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister’s Office supported a bill banning the transport of live horses to Japan for slaughter. Ms. Arden, an outspoken opponent of the practice, has done much to galvanize the public through her “Horseshit” campaign.

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The complexity of equine welfare in Canada is perpetuated by horses’ official status, designated as livestock and governed by property law. This means I can do pretty much whatever I want with my little grey-and-white mare Pippin, short of provable physical cruelty. Although the Criminal Code of Canada prohibits anyone from “willfully causing animals to suffer from neglect, pain or injury,” and although the provinces and territories have animal-welfare laws, Pippin has no rights of her own.

“Horses have some entitlement under the Criminal Code, but that’s not quite as strong as a right,” says Vancouver-based animal-law lawyer Victoria Shroff. “Animal rights are still very much aspirational and notional.” Ms. Shroff, along with a growing number of animal-rights lawyers, sees a need for laws that recognize animal sentience, acknowledging that animals are “someones rather than somethings.”

Some jurisdictions have taken this step, including Britain with its 2022 Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act. But acknowledgment of animal sentience in law has lagged behind both public opinion and science. Back in 2012, a group of neuroscientists published the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, a scientific stamp of recognition that yes, animals are conscious beings with feelings too. In Canada, Quebec is the lone province with an animal-sentience law, and horses continue to be slaughtered for meat in that province.

“When we bring in these provisions they have to get embedded into the law as more than a declaratory statement,” Ms. Shroff says. “They have to become something actually realized in how animals are treated. Otherwise, it’s just a nice sentiment that doesn’t take you very far.”

Legal recognition of animals as sentient is unlikely to spell the demise of meat eating. But it does have the potential to lead to more humane slaughtering processes and greater oversight. Britain’s 2022 act, for example, calls for the establishment of an “animal sentience committee” to review and report on government policy connected to animal welfare.

In the United States, David Favre, professor of law and editor-in-chief of the Animal Legal and Historical Center at Michigan State University, proposed a new legal category for animals in an influential 2010 article called “Living Property: A New Status for Animals Within the Legal System.” As “living property,” the law could view animals as individual beings and “reach legal results that are beneficial to the animal’s personal needs and wants,” Dr. Favre says. Some states have advanced the idea (although without Dr. Favre’s terminology) by changing divorce laws. In those states, if you and your ex are fighting over who gets the cat, the decision might not rest on who bought the cat, Dr. Favre says, but on “who the cat is bonded to and who can best take care of the cat.”

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While few seem to doubt a cat may prefer a specific lap or a dog may wag his happiness more enthusiastically at one human than any other, there is less understanding of horses’ affections.

To date, research on the subject has not helped clarify. A 2020 Swedish study suggested that while horses show attachment to humans it makes no difference if the human is a known quantity or a total stranger. The study inspired quippy headlines, and ledes such as “A horse is a horse, of course, of course, but it probably doesn’t like you.” At around the same time, an Italian study concluded that horses do respond more positively to known handlers. (No headlines ensued.)

In real life, people who spend time with horses delight in the specificity of the human-equine bond. When Pippin hears my voice her head shoots up, ears pricked, and on occasion she’ll even leave her hay-feeder buddies to walk in my direction. Clearly, she does not mistake me for just any old horse-besotted woman. Other horse people recognize our connection, sometimes referring to me as “Pippin’s mom.” This I find amusing but also slightly creepy. I am not a horse’s mother. I am not even her owner, except in the legal sense. Mostly, I see myself as her person. I suspect she views me in a similar fashion – Here comes my scratcher of places I cannot reach.

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Like most people I know, Pippin can be both lovable and frustrating. Unlike most people I know, our relationship is not conducted in English. In truth, this is one of the main reasons I wanted a horse – to explore communication that feels deeper than a connection reliant on words. The rewards are subtle; the challenges enormous. Particularly because Pippin, whom I’ve known for less than a year, is a horse with strong opinions.

But even when she tries my patience sorely, I don’t stop loving her, and in that way she is like a human family member. I am not alone in viewing an animal as kin – according to recent surveys (and non-ironic utterances of the phrase “fur baby”), the concept has become well ensconced. Which is why, these days, it’s not uncommon to hear a person refer to an animal as a companion rather than a pet, or for some advocates to suggest the term “owner” be replaced with “guardian.” The latter idea has met with resistance, though, in quarters ranging from the Cat Fanciers’ Association to the American Veterinary Medical Association, in part because some believe that such a change would have the unintended legal consequence of lessening animal protections.

As it stands, protections for horses are left mostly in the hands of their individual humans. Lucky for us, horses are often “generous,” as horse people like to say, meaning most tolerate a certain amount of human bumbling. And, despite their own fearful natures, many are also remarkably willing to do what we ask. Horses have ridden into war, jumped hazardous jumps, and galloped when exhausted, all because we’ve asked them to keep going. We’ve expected them to do so.

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The baked-in belief that horses should do what we ask (as opposed to, say, cats, where we accept they may walk alone), is something Florida-based educator Karen Rohlf, founder of an approach to horse training called Dressage Naturally, calls “the assumption of obligingness.” Her own view is from the other end of the spectrum, that it is a gift horses do anything for us at all.

“Too often the goal of horse training seems to be ‘get the horse to do things he doesn’t want to do,’” Ms. Rohlf says. “Consent-based training is more about trying to get the horse to willingly participate through education, counterconditioning and trust.”

Approaches like this and the rise of positive reinforcement techniques (notably food-based “clicker training”) represent a near-pendulum swing from many traditional horse-training methods. Some, such as Ren Hurst, author of Riding on the Power of Others, believe the pendulum should swing further still. She views riding a horse as akin to an adult abuser who coerces a young human victim into agreeing to abuse. “Basically [horses] are brainwashed and fully indoctrinated into the cult of domestication,” writes Ms. Hurst, a former trainer and rider.

Admittedly it’s challenging to make a case that horses are “designed” to be ridden. For one thing, their backs ache, as do ours (possibly more so, since we don’t carry saddles strapped to our spines). But like Ms. Hurst, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is as interested in the ethical issues connected to riding as the physical ones, stating that “in a perfect world horses would be free to pursue their own lives and humans wouldn’t make demands of them.” A breathtaking statement, and one unsubstantiated by proof. How could it be? You can’t ask a horse what her perfect world would be.

Like it or not, ours is an imperfect world. So perhaps, rather than taking a “four legs good, six legs bad” stance, it makes better sense to treat horses in the way the Jane Goodall Act – which passed its first reading in Canada’s Senate in June – proposes to treat wild animals, through an “Indigenous understanding that all life forms of Creation are interconnected and independent.” In this view, we are by necessity stewards – it is our responsibility to make good decisions for horses.

“Before we say horses shouldn’t be ridden, we can do our best to improve how we are educating people to understand what their horse is telling them, and to make it okay to listen,” Ms. Rohlf says.

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One thing horses are telling us, according to The Horse’s Manifesto, a 2012 series of articles by B.C.-based equine behaviourist Lauren Fraser, is that they have three primary needs for a happy life. Nicknamed the Three Fs – friends, forage and freedom – and premised on horses in the wild – where, as highly social grazing animals, they may travel dozens of kilometres a day – the concept has made inroads.

Pippin’s farm is mostly based on the Three Fs, with a majority of horses living outside both day and night in a patchwork of hilly fields. It’s challenging for their people, who sometimes have to slide down the literally slippery slope to get to a horse. But just as humans need some form of community for well-being, so do horses need herds. In a herd, you figure out how to share resources, make friends and avoid getting your bum bitten. In a herd there are the joys of horseplay – fooling around with other horses just for the heck of it.

Horses who live mostly in 12-foot-by-12-foot box stalls, on the other hand, do so primarily for human convenience. Competition horses are often housed this way, and it is their treatment that’s made horse sport the current flashpoint for equine welfare. In the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, a horse in the pentathlon was whipped and spurred when he refused to move forward, and the rider’s coach reached over the fence to punch him. Video of the incident went viral; viewers were horrified.

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Similarly, the numbers of racehorses dying for the sport (this year 12 horses alone were euthanized because of injuries in training or races connected to Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby) have raised ire. A 2022 survey conducted on behalf of World Horse Welfare in England showed 60 per cent of the general public wanted more safety and welfare measures in horse sport, and 40 per cent believed horses should be used in sport only if welfare concerns are improved. Twenty per cent did not support the involvement of horses in sport under any circumstances.

The social contract between the public and horse sport has likely never been weaker. France, in the ramp-up to the Paris games, has taken note, with a French parliamentary study group declaring that the 2024 Olympics will be a “model of equine well-being.” The group’s recommendations range from ensuring more sufficient grazing areas to banning hyperflexion, where a horse’s neck is so tightly curled toward his chest he may struggle to breathe. And the Fédération Equestre Internationale, the governing body of international equestrian sport, formed its own Equine Ethics and Wellbeing Commission last year. One of its draft recommendations reads, in part, to “ensure that the horse’s interests are always placed before the interests of the human or sport.” Of course, all such recommendations require consistent enforcement to be meaningful.

At the everyday, non-Olympian level, individuals who choose to place an animal’s interests before their own do so despite the “but it’s just a dog/cat/horse” camp; challenging at a time when human regard for the lives of our own species seems at an all-time low. Even so, to aspire to give animals the kind of consideration we would hope for ourselves, rather than treat them as lesser because they don’t speak our language and their brains differ from ours, seems a worthwhile goal. Maybe that’s why, when brushing Pippin’s sensitive face, I’m sometimes reminded of Black Beauty’s John Manly. As Beauty himself put it, “When he groomed my head he went as carefully over my eyes as if they were his own.”

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