What is Horse Welfare-Based Training?
When I was a young rider, starry-eyed and full of dreams, with little to no actual, practical experience to back up my passion, I had no information with which to determine if a suggested training methodology or approach was valuable or beneficial to my process. In fact, I didn't know there was a process. I knew that I saw people having various levels of “success” in the barn around me, and the horses and riders responded differently to different teachers and methodologies. I watched elite riders on TV (those 2am VCR recordings of show jumping and dressage competitions, and my absolute favorite, The Rolex Kentucky 3 Day Event were watched over and over, and yes I still have stacks of VCR Tapes).
At any rate, I had no data, research, or information to base my perspective on. As a bold and ambitious but fundamentally clueless kid, I used the loudest voice in the room to guide me…my horse. The truth is, at the end of the day, the opinion of the horse is the only real opinion that matters, but not all horses are quite as clear as my first horse was in voicing that opinion. As hard as it was to deal with sometimes, I’m grateful to this day to have had a horse with a huge opinion so early on in my career, as he sent me on a very different path of information-seeking than my contemporary young riders followed.
What my horse approved of were trainers who I would now say were horse welfare-based. I can use that terminology now, but what does it really mean? I certainly wouldn’t have known then.
To me, horse welfare-based training means that the training program is designed with the best-interest of the horse in mind. This program must consist of a variety of elements that are reciprocal and all work to serve the same end goal: The Welfare of the Horses in the Program.
Our program covers several topics that current equine welfare research indicates are essential to the well-being of horses, and that we find contribute directly to the success of our actual training program. That is to say that putting effort and attention onto learning about and adequately managing these areas improves our training ease and outcomes. These topics include:
Equine Lifestyle Management
Equine Nutrition
Equine Hoof Care
Equine Dentistry
Equine Bodywork
Functional Groundwork
Equine Fitness Development
Rider Emotional Management
Rider Mental Wellbeing
Rider Fitness Development
Progressive, Functional Training
You may notice that Training is the last item on the list. It’s quite a large category, and is essential of course and thoroughly integrated into the entire process. It is, however, pretty impossible to mount a successful training program without the other steps in process at the same time.
I use the word successful again here, and immediately I think to myself, but what does “successful” actually mean? Honestly it’s different for different people from the micro perspective, but in a macro way, success to me means that the horse remains well during the process we choose. One student in our program may want to showjump 3’ and success to them means achieving that goal, while success to another may mean horse camping without any incidents. Both are amazing goals and the path to achieving those goals has more in common than not, but doing either one successfully in my opinion means arriving at the goal with a happy, healthy horse, who is comfortable and confident, and capable of doing the job requested with minimal stress and no mental/emotional/physical damage. If we can’t meet that metric, the simple act of jumping around 3’ is a pretty hollow win as far as I’m concerned.
A guiding philosophy that has served me well throughout my career comes from Baron Hans Von Blixen Finecke, a Swedish riding Master who taught my Mentor, Peter DeCosemo, who remains my greatest teacher. The Baron says in his 1996 book “The Art of Training: Lessons From a Lifetime With Horses”:
Horses are complicated live mechanisms systems of muscles and bones controlled by the nervous system and with a will of their own. They were never created to carry riders on their backs–nor did they invite us to try it. The idea was always ours; we never asked for their permission, we just went ahead and did it. So we must take responsibility for how we go about it.
It can be argued whether or not we have the moral right to impose ourselves in this way and to this extent on a fellow species. In this day and age, when people are quite rightly more concerned about their plight, I am sure many would vote against it. The argument in our favor would be that most of us do, after all, look after our horses well. We feed them, house them and, generally speaking, see to their immediate needs. So, in a sense, I suppose one can say that we are justified in what we are doing. Maybe it is fair, then, that they give something in return. Without us, they would be lost. Without them, we would be poorer.
Therefore, what we must have in mind in our training (which is teaching them movements which are quite unnatural to them), is to make the procedure as fair, painless, and helpful as possible. To make them work for us we have to make them understand us in such a way that they enjoy what they are doing because we motivate them and reward them when they try to oblige. We must teach, not bully!
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To teach, we must have a curriculum. If we want to have an influence on our horse, in order to develop him physically and mentally toward higher performance, we have to work with – and stick to – a system, which leads to the goal with a reasonable degree of success. It must, as far as possible, be based on facts. We must learn about our “raw material” – horse and rider – with regard to the mechanism of movement as well as the psychological reactions during the normal process of training.
With that philosophy as a baseline starting point, we can dig into learning about our “raw material” in a holistic way. Access to information and research has exploded since the Baron wrote his books, but even then being evidence-based was an essential piece of the training puzzle.
As we move forward into deepening our understanding of our horses and ourselves, we can be sure that the facts will evolve. That is the way of science. If we are doing this well, we learn and test and grow. The essential piece is to remain open to learning, and to hold tight to a philosophy while allowing the details to evolve.
They say one lifetime is not long enough to learn to ride a horse, and nearly 35 years into the process I have to concur. For me this means that the joyful endeavor of being in relationship with the horses and the people who love them will always be fresh and real, and will keep my mind and body stimulated for years to come.
As we venture down this path of learning about horse welfare-based training together, please understand that the path is in fact the “thing”, not the destination. Do not rush, there is no “there”.