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It is in the eye

Imagine that you are doing something that you do every day of your life: interacting with another creature. Imagine too that you say or do, or fail to say or do something and this has an effect on that other creature. Imagine also that the creature is a human and ask yourself whether that effect is cruel or kind? Now imagine that the creature is a horse and ask yourself the same question. How do you know whether you are being cruel or kind?

Love between horse and human

Apart from those humans who use horses as a beast of burden or to boost to their ego or bank balance, I have never met a horse owner or carer who does not profess a profound love for the horse in his or her care. In almost all cases such owners and carers also express their love for the horse in their care from time to time. How they do this can be endearing and heartwarming.

Of course there are numerous instances of cruelty deliberately inflicted by humans on horses. You only have to trawl YouTube for graphic examples of this. The vast majority of horse owners and carers will recognise such abuse for what it is and many will condemn it. Yet the very same humans may find it exceedingly difficult to determine where cruelty ends and kindness begins. I am one of them.

For much of the past year I have been living, breathing, feeling and thinking horse more than in any other period of my life. While doing so I have been largely successful in overcoming an acquired tendency to be bossy towards horses. Yet I fear that I have failed them not only in those moments when the autocratic monster claims my allegiance but also in my reticence to acknowledge their suffering at my hands or anyone else’s. Put another way, when humans may have been cruel to horses, I have looked the other way.

So where does cruelty start?

Do you have to whip your horse in a fit of anger before you have crossed the border from kindness to cruelty? Or does the boundary lie much more uncomfortably closer to home? The Netherlands, where we live, is also home to Anky van Grunsven, a woman who has not only won a dazzling array of national and international dressage championships and Olympic gold medals and who is also infamous for the hyperflexion or rollkur training method that helped her to achieve such success. Vicki and I attended Athens Olympic Games in 2004 and the World Equestrian Games (WEG) in 2002 and 2006 to cheer her on. Here is a video taken by an amateur at the 2006 WEG in Aachen. It shows Van Grunsven employing rollkur during her a warm-up session before going on to become the most successful dressage queen of the show.

Although the lense is dirty, you can clearly see Van Grunsven pulling Salienero’s head against his chest. If you use your imagination, you can almost sense the pain in the horse’s mouth, poll and neck. The rollkur method has been roundly condemned as torture and an extreme example of cruelty inflicted on horses. Rightly so, you may concur, but is cruelty in dressage confined to this? There is a Russian horseman called Alexander Nevzorov, who believes it is not. He sets out his view in the following video.

In fact Nevzorov does not stop here. In a book and video entitled The Horse Crucified and Risen he passionately exposes and condemns the use of instruments of force that humans commonly use in equestrian pursuits to control the horse, including bits, spurs, whips and the like. So just who is this Russian and how dare he presume to chastise the entire community of equestrian practitioners spread as it is over numerous countries around the world? Well, for a start, not only can he ride advanced dressage, he also performs haute ecole movements as in the highly sophisticated airs that are performed at the Spanish School of Riding in Vienna, Austria, Cadre Noir in Saumur, France, and the Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art in Jerez, Spain. And not only does he do all of this without the use of any instrument of force, he merely uses a cordeo around the horse’s neck. And yes too, the horse is not collected; it collects itself and moves in self-carriage (albeit with the rider’s guidance). You can view a sample in the next video.

In fact Nevzorov and his wife, Lydia, are also on a mission. Proclaiming the Horse Revolution, for some time now they have been exhorting all who will listen to abandon instruments of force in their interaction with horses and have been merciless in damning those who will not do so. Those who share these views can join a forum of like-minded people online and apply for admission into the Nevzorov online haute ecole school. Unlike many others who proclaim their commitment to helping others learn how to interact with horses without instruments of force, Nevzorov provides these online services free of charge. Incidentally, three years ago Nevzorov himself decided not to ride a horse any longer, because he feels that even his way of riding is not beneficial to the horse. You can find out more about Nevzorov in the English section of the Nezorov Haute Ecole website at www.hauteecole.ru.

So is Nevzorov right? We might agree when it comes to striking a horse with a whip. But what about putting a bit in a horse’s mouth? Or digging spurs into its tender sides? Or riding it into the bit to press the horse into that frame into which our Olympic heroes literally clam their mounts, their hands holding the head tightly with taut reins extending to a harsh, highly leveraged double bridle in the absence of any evidence that the horse is collecting and carrying itself as the old masters urged? Are these not acts of cruelty?

How do you know it is cruel?

How do you know that such acts are cruel? Are there any criteria? If so, what are they?

The online Oxford dictionary defines ‘cruelty’ as ‘cruel behaviour’ and ‘cruel’ as ‘wilfully causing pain or suffering to others, or feeling no concern about it’. The first key concept here is ‘pain or suffering’. The same dictionary defines ‘pain’ as a ‘highly unpleasant physical sensation caused by illness or injury’, or ‘mental suffering or distress, it defines ‘suffering’ as ‘the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship’, and it defines ‘distress’ as ‘extreme anxiety, sorrow, or pain’. So what we are looking for here is whether the horse gives us any indication that it is experiencing a ‘highly unpleasant sensation as a result of injury’ caused by an instrument of force that is used on it (a bit, spurs or some other object) or any mental pain, extreme anxiety or the like.

Here we have to rely on what the horse shows us. But when should we look to see what the horse is showing us? Only once the bit is in his mouth? What about resignation or learned helplessness? Is it not true that once a horse is prevented from fleeing from pain or its resistance is overcome, that it resigns itself to it, especially if it does not know better? Would it not then be more appropriate to assess what the horse shows us when we try and prop the bit in its mouth?

What does your horse show you when you do this? Does your horse raise its head and try to escape from the leather descending over its ears? Does your horse try to pull away when the metal is pried between its lips? Is this just your horse’s nature? Or is it trying to tell you something each time? How do you know? How can you be sure? Could it possibly be that the answer is right there staring you in the face? Could it not be that the answer is in the eye?

What to do

And if the answer is in the eye and your horse’s eye tells you that such an act is one of cruelty, surely any ordinary, sane person should intervene to protect your horse from you or at the very least alert the relevant animal protection society to such abuse? After all, I would do the same for a dog, if a human was to prod it regularly with a metal point in its side or constantly pull iron against its teeth and the inside of its mouth while spurring the animal on against that metal, would I not?

Alternatively, I could expose such cruelty and rail against it in self-righteous anger. I could write articles and books, take pictures, video the abuse, expose you and shame you into changing your evil ways. Or would this not just harden your determination to do it your way? No matter the cost? To you? To your horse? To me?

I am overloading you with questions. Perhaps you think that they are academic, simply raised here for the purposes of a debate about cruelty to horses? I sincerely wish they were.

Our mares, Pip and Anaïs, are stabled in a livery yard, which is not all that much different from the hundreds and thousands that are scattered throughout the country, the continent and perhaps the world. Horses and humans come and go as they do, predominantly to ride or be ridden. There is hardly a week that goes by when I do not suppress a tear of sorrow and a gulp of shame, sorrow for the horses and shame for my complicity. Once I used to be cruel to horses, then I repented, became filled with self-righteous indignation bent on exposing this evil to the light of day in the vain hope of shaming the perpetrators into contrition, and now I am simply complicit with such cruelty by remaining silent. Surely this is true?

Or is there another response available to me irrespective of how right or wrong I am as to whether the horses are in pain or distress because their humans are cruel to them? One that does not require me to assume the role of judge and executioner? Would it not be better for all of us, for the horses and the humans, if I was to focus on salvation rather than condemnation? On redemption instead of damnation? On healing rather than hurting?

Healing

Vicki and I have recently returned from another training session in England, where we received tuition to prepare us for The Equine Touch, Level 2. During the month separating this session from our Level 1 tuition in April, we spent a great deal of time treating horses for free and writing up our experience in detailed case assessment report forms, which will be assessed as one of the components for our Level 1 qualification, the others being anatomy, physiology and Equine Touch theory.

Equine Touch Level 2 training with Lyn Palmer

One of the many horses on whom we did The Equine Toch during that time was a huge, black warmblood gelding called Noir. A true, sensitive gentleman and only nine years of age, Noir suffered from stringholt and pain in various areas of his body. I had the privilege of performing The Equine Touch on Noir for the first time on the last Tuesday in April. During the session there were moments when this great Othello of a horse exhibited so much pain that he took to grinding his teeth against the door of his stable. And the areas of pain were where you would expect some of them to be in a horse that is regularly ridden, in this case the saddle and girth areas.

Yet by the end of the session his head was lowered, his eye was soft and he was licking, chewing and yawning. And as I passed his head to leave the stable, he turned his great, black head to me and proceeded to lick my right hand and arm all the way up to my neck and face. If I had had any doubts about the efficacy of The Equine Touch, they would have been banished there and then. Coming from the horse itself Noir’s affirmation moved me beyond words. I had made a difference simply by assisting the horse to help itself.

Independent confirmation of the power of The Equine Touch soon followed. On the day when we left for England to attend the Level 1 training last week, Noir’s owner, Jolanda, told us that the horse was feeling so much better to the extent that he has even started to enjoy being groomed, something which he had not really appreciated before. We were on a high as we headed off for our next training session, because Noir had shown himself to be the most in need of assistance of all of the horses on whom we had performed The Equine Touch.

Following our return to the Netherlands earlier this week I had the opportunity to carry out another Equine Touch session with Noir. Although he still had areas of pain or sensitivity, they were fewer and less intense, with the result that he did not feel the need to hack into his stable door again. This time too he demonstrated his appreciation of the moves that are clearly helping his body to heal itself. And again we heard from Jolanda a day or two later that Noir was feeling so much better and was relishing his grooming sessions with her.

How do you know it is beneficial?

Of course, healing is just one of the many ways in which we can interact with a horse in a way that is beneficial to it. But how do we know that any of these ways is actually beneficial to the horse?

In his latest monthly article entitled Mind over Matter, Michael Bevilacqua writes about the type of relationship a human may wish to seek with a horse. It is one based on ‘understanding and trust with your horse’ as opposed to making your horse do something. The conclusion of his article is worth quoting in full:

There is another nuance that comes into play regarding an equal relationship or a true, level playing field with horses. As a role of teacher, in a sense, you are the leader at that moment. Not in the sense of being the boss or the alpha or because horses need someone to follow. You become a teacher, a guide, a friend who takes the initiative to build a way of understanding each other. This also builds the relationship over time. You are trying to get a message across and the horse knows this very well.

It takes an amount of leadership with no less respect as any teacher-student relationship should be. Would you consider a mother looking out for the welfare, conduct or safety of a child, leadership? When you are trying to convince a friend who wants to stay home to go out to a movie with you, is that leadership? Not exactly, but it is the same thing in regard to a way of being with horses. It is taking the initiative to build a bridge; to make a connection. During this process, you learn about the horse and the horse learns about you. This is precious. You may only come to realize this over time. It is not articles, such as this that will convince you, it will be the horse.

(You can read the full article here.)

And how will the horse convince you? It is in the eye.

Postscript

There are some who argue that we cannot all be like Nevzorov, the implication being that the rest of us simply have to make do with using instruments of force in our interaction with horses. Admittedly, Nevzorov sets high standards but what if a child can do without instruments of force?

Tags: cruelty, Equine Touch, horses, humans, Michael Bevilacqua