Now that the Paris Olympics is coming to an end, I expect some of the controversy over the conflict between horse events and animal welfare will subside for another four years. But it shouldn’t.
In my view, we should compete only when we feel we have had a good day because we spent it with our horse, even if we came last. I suspect competition has ruined more horses and more human/horse relationships than most of us want to admit.
A lot of the time we take a good idea and turn it into a stupid idea. It seems there are few limits when it comes to people stuffing things up that could otherwise be brilliant.
We dream of the perfect horse that is going to be everything we would ever want from our horse. They will make us look like a God in the world of horsemanship and competition. But the truth is that most of the time we look like the village idiot in a village filled with idiots.
