St Thomas Aquinas was an Italian Dominican priest, scholar, and theologian who died in 1274 A.D.. Aquinas wrote (paraphrasing) that all animals were a gift from God for humans to exploit and use for their purpose.

Let me say with the greatest of respect and on behalf of all non-human animals, “Screw you, Tommy.”

The reason we DO exploit so many species is to improve our lives. The reason we CAN exploit so many species is that we are smart enough to discover methodologies and breeding programs to overcome their objections.

In my career, I have come across a handful of horses who clearly have not read the works of Thomas Aquinas. They were horses that forced me to wonder if all horses were meant to be ridden or worked.

My early education about horses and horsemanship taught me a lot about “how to” coerce horses to my will. Even though I had not heard of Thomas Aquinas at this stage of life, it would have been easy for me to agree with him that horses existed for the purpose of working with me and for me. They were supposed to give in to my instruction. It was important that I was kind and considerate and gained a high level of skill. However, in the end, if I told a horse to walk through a puddle it was supposed to walk through the puddle no matter how it felt about walking through the puddle. We used to call that “leadership”.

It is my forever hope that I have progressed from that sort of thinking to a more compassionate and clearer understanding of how horses think and the role that their inner needs play when working with them.

I’m writing this because I received a message from friends in the US who attend my clinics each year. Last year they purchased a new horse. Within a short time, the horse became unsafe to ride due to a very serious bucking issue. At a clinic late last year I saw the trouble inside the horse and we worked exclusively on ground work. It made considerable progress in a short time. Yet I still did not consider it was ready for a rider. After the clinic, the owners took all due diligence with extensive medical checks and help from a local trainer for several months. My friend said in the message they took things slowly and after 6 months the trainer considered the horse ready to ride again. Yesterday the trainer climbed aboard for the first time. The horse was not ready. It blew up immediately. Luckily neither horse nor trainer were hurt.

For all I know the problem could be an underlying medical problem that has remained undetected. Or the bucking could have been triggered by the memory of past abuse or accident. Or maybe something was missing in the preparation leading to being ridden. Or perhaps the notion of carrying a person on its back is so bizarre and frightening to this horse that an explosion was the only alternative.

I’m not going to pretend I know why the horse had a meltdown the moment the trainer sat in the saddle. But what if Thomas Aquinas was wrong? What if this horse came out of its mother with none of the essential traits that would make it a reliably safe riding horse? What is it about nature and evolution that makes us believe, “All horses are born with the capacity to be happy being ridden?” Just because we can sit on a horse may not mean we should. What if some horses are not meant to be exploited? Not meant to be ridden.

I have started a few horses that made me ponder this question. Almost all of them were ridden. But to my knowledge, none ever became reliably safe and always had to be ridden with caution. Unfortunately, you can never know if a horse can be a safe horse without taking risks that he is not a safe horse.