Hillydale Horse Welfare and Research

21/06/2026

Bringing up child riders in the way they should go.

If children can learn to control their ponies with just a neck rope while performing at the grandest of events, surely us adults could do the same at our home arenas or local shows.

It's time to stop seeing these kinds of performances as outliers that can only achieved by the brave or the talented and start seeing them as what ordinary riding should be.

All power to these little riders and their ponies- demonstrating what the future of equestrianism should be.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19EYVYgf4n/

18/06/2026

The word "correct" and the assumptions that underpin it is quietly doing some unexamined damage in horse training. Even when presented in biomechanical terms with a detailed assessment of what happens to individual structures or biomechanical systems.

When we say a horse is going "correctly," we imply two things: that there is some objective standard being met, and that meeting it is actually good for the horse.

What is the evidence for this?

The head and neck positions and locomotory patterns defined as "correct" in equestrian sport were not derived from what serves horses.

They were derived from human aesthetic preferences, competitive requirements, and training traditions.

There is no peer-reviewed evidence demonstrating that horses working in these configurations gain any biomechanical or welfare benefit.

Some studies show "benefits" in terms of biomechanics that matter to us- more loading of the hind legs, longer strides and so on. But those "benefits" they mean nothing to the welfare of the horse.

There is a growing body of research demonstrating the harm that we cause in pursuit of what we believe is "correct". Mouth lesions, conflict behaviour, lameness, back pain, early onset arthritic changes to joints and so on.

And then there is what the horse is actually experiencing.

The horse labelled as not going or using itself "correctly" is not in fact "incorrect". It is simply trying to deal with the aversive pressures and even pain that is being applied to its body from bits, spurs and whips to get it to respond in the ways that we determine are "correct".

When we reach for "correct" to justify a training goal, we should be honest about what we mean.

That what is "correct" is what matters to us, our goals, our discipline, our equestrian aesthetic. It tells us very little about what matters to the horse.

"Correct" implies that there is objective standard and that meeting that standard is good for horses, as well as riders.

It makes an arbitrary human standard look like an established fact and makes horses' correctness as they comply good for their welfare.

We like "correct" because it feels good, because it makes horses easier to control, because it appeals to our aesthetic sensibilities.

But given the choice, horses do not voluntarily move in the ways we deem "correct". That should give us pause, and prompt us to examine both what we are actually asking of them when we seek "correctness" and the means by which we achieve it.

13/06/2026

Every year since 2022, British charity, World Horse Welfare have surveyed around 4,000 people in the United Kingdom on their views about the uses of horses in sport, the welfare of sport horses and the use of equipment that causes pain and shared the findings at a public forum.

Over the five years around 60% of respondents say they're not content with the status quo and in 2026, nearly 40% of respondents said they were not comfortable with the use of horses for sport at all. Nearly 80% of people said it was not acceptable to use even short term pain to achieve a performance goal.

World Horse Welfare are to be commended for running these surveys and sharing the results, but what interests me is how those results are then presented.

The pattern over the past five years has been to assemble a group of experts from racing, equestrian, a vet and in some years an animal welfare scientist and veterinary ethicist who discuss the findings, what they mean for the future of horse sport and what needs to be done to maintain the social licence, or more recently, public acceptance of the use of horses in sport.

The consistent response to the findings has been that the problem is one of communication: more openness, better social media, more behind-the-scenes content. Show people how much we love our horses to improve trust and confidence that sport horses are well cared for. A kind of bait and switch. Communication, not welfare.

And when welfare is discussed there's a pattern about how it is discussed and framed. When the panellists argue for better welfare - more turnout, less whip use, more humane training, the justification that is used is "performance".

Happier horse, better horse. As one prominent rider put it: "if you've got a happier, more content horse, you're gonna have a better horse."

On the surface it sounds and feels right. But it's not.

To begin with, current science doesn't support it beyond the obvious- sick or lame horses don't perform well.

The data on whether horses who experience better or even good welfare outside of competition, (regular social contact, freedom of movement, behavioural choice)or during training are more competitive hasn't been demonstrated.

In some disciplines the evidence points the other way. In dressage, conflict behaviours, open mouths, tail swishing, pinned ears are not penalised and horses showing those signs win gold medals.

So why ask the general public what they think about welfare and then pivot to welfare as a performance metric or communication as the solution to the welfare issue identified by the public?

The performance framing makes the welfare argument palatable to an industry that finds the alternative unpalatable: that horses have interests that matter independently of what they do for us.

That welfare isn't a tool for better results or better public relations. That it defines how horses experience their lives and that experience should be a constraint on how horses are used for sport and performance purposes.

Five consecutive years of survey data say clearly that people want welfare prioritised, not packaged as a slick video. And yet the organisations positioned as guardians of horse welfare keep bringing the conversation back to messaging. What to say. How to say it. Who to say it to.

Not what to change. Not what horses actually need beyond vague ideas about turnout and ad-lib hay in stables. Not what the evidence says causes them harm.

Welfare as its own justification- that horses deserve good lives because they are the kinds of beings who can have good or bad lives shouldn't need a performance metric as a justification to care about or do something about it.

The public already knows this. It would be good if the people who speak for horses advanced this too.

13/06/2026

Here's something most horse people feel but don't often say out loud: we really need our horses to love what we do with them.

Not just tolerate it. Not just comply. Love it.

Ears forward over the fence. The horse who self-loads onto the float. The nickers at dinner time.

That need is understandable. Most of us got into horses out of genuine love for them.

The idea that our horse might find competition stressful, or find jumping aversive, or find the whole enterprise something to be endured -that's not something to make us feel comfortable, especially when our horsey lives are central to our identity, our community, weekends, sense of who we are.

So we look for the signs that confirm what we hope. And horses, being the socially sensitive, human-attuned animals they are, give us plenty to work with. Enthusiasm at feed time means enthusiasm for riding. Compliance with our cues as enjoyment of the activity. The impatience in the collecting ring is a desire to get out and show off in front of the crowd.

A lack of overt distress, calmness and responsiveness- a horse that is coping well and maybe even having fun.

Nearly three decades of equitation and equine behaviour science asks us to be a little more careful here.

What we know that horses are strongly motivated by predictability, social connection with each other and us if there's no equine friends around, food, and the relief from fear and pain.

They form habits quickly and repeat those habits without necessarily considering if it is what they want to be doing.

They learn quickly what precedes what. A horse who loads calmly may simply be doing what he has always done, not because he loves competition. A horse who moves forward from light cues in an arena may be responding to learned cues in a familiar environment. These are not small things. They tell us the horse is probably in an OK place. But they don't tell us the horse is having a good time, especially in the way we imagine.

The harder question:whether horses, given genuine choice, would select the activities we value is almost never asked. Partly because it's methodologically difficult do research and partly because we're not sure we want the answer.

What we do know is that horses show us stress, conflict, and discomfort in ways that are easy to spot if we're looking for them: tense and busy mouths, foamy saliva, wrinkled eyes, swishing tails, sweating up, ear posture changes in breathing.

We also know that in competitive environments, those signals are routinely interpreted as excitement, or keenness, or just "how this horse goes," because the alternative interpretation is too uncomfortable to sustain.

So calm, well trained horses, ridden by sensitive riders who release at the right time and use the least amount of pain from bits and spurs as cues are probably not miserable. They are probably fine. But "probably fine" and "loves it" are different claims.

The belief that our horses love what we do with them is, at its heart, a desire that our relationship with them costs them nothing.

But to sustain that we have to look away or not see the many different ways that horses tell us they don't enjoy what we do to and with them. That doesn't mean that using them to fulfil our goals and dreams is inherently a bad or immoral thing to do.

But genuinely caring for them means seeing things from their perspective and not allowing our hopes to blind us to their reality.

06/06/2026

World Horse Welfare has just released the results of its fifth annual survey of the UK public's views on the use of horses for sport and recreation. They are to be commended for undertaking this research and sharing the findings. Because they are not good for the sport.

The survey shows declining support for the use of horses in sport.

The majority of people want welfare put ahead of performance, most reject training that causes pain for a result, and a growing number no longer think the use of horses for sport is acceptable in any form.

Equitation science keeps showing those instincts are sound.

Whipping tired horses in races.
Tight nosebands
Hyperflexion
Blue tongues
Oral lesions
Gastric ulcers
Stereotypies
The conflict behaviours that don't get in the way of gold medals or that are the just normal business of riding.

So what did World Horse Welfare's own forum largely conclude?

That the problem is communication.

That the public is urban, uninformed. So dismissible. Nothing to learn here.

People are worried about what happens to horses.

The evidence says they are right to be.

And the industry keeps answering a welfare question with a PR strategy.

You cannot communicate your way out of a problem the science, and the evidence of your own eyes says is real.

Our charity will reveal results of annual YouGov opinion poll at a briefing for horse sport leaders and the media on 3rd June.

13/05/2026

We use hardness to make horses soft.
The standard route to a "soft" horse, one that yields to the rein, flexes at the poll, accepts a "contact" is through the application of pressure to the mouth.

Sometimes steady pressure. Sometimes pressure that comes on and off. Sometimes escalating pressure. Sometimes pressure the horse cannot escape, because the rider's hands, the side reins, the bit crushing the tongue or stretching the lips make sure of it.

The horse eventually flexes, yields or gives, depending on the terminology. The tension in the rein drops. We call this softening.

Many training methods claim it is essential- give to the bit, give the face, lateral flexion at the halt and more besides.

But softening is our word for what happens to the tension we feel in the rein, not what the horse experiences.

What the horse did when it felt the bit, was learn the response that turned off the pressure and the pain it caused.

This is negative reinforcement which we know works. It is also, depending on the pressure used and the horse's capacity to escape it, a route through pain, confusion, stress to a head and neck position that we have decided looks correct.

Softness in the rein is not the same as softness in the horse. It is just a horse learning to escape and avoid the pain and pressure we deliberately cause in service of our riding or training goals.

There's zero about it that is "correct" for the horse.

27/04/2026

This writer gets it about not seeing what we actually see when we observe horses in competition. This piece is focused on dressage but it is equally applicable to most equestrian sport.

https://dressageforthefuture.substack.com/p/gaslighting-in-dressage?

Don’t Believe Your Eyes