27/08/2026
Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged Yourself
Well my earlier post certainly brought it out in people, didn’t it?!
If I don’t laugh, I’ll cry.
Not because you’ve hurt my feelings, but because every now and then I am forced to confront the sheer stupidity of humanity, and frankly, I prefer to find it funny.
“Judge not, lest ye be judged” is probably one of the most quoted and equally most misquoted verses in the Bible.
Even non-Christians love dragging it out whenever it conveniently defends their own shortcomings.
But since we’re talking about judgement, let’s actually talk about it.
I shared the reality of removing my horse’s companion from our property.
Roger was distressed.
He paced. He sweated. He broke through fences looking for her.
And, predictably, out came the judgement:
It’s unnatural to keep a horse alone.
Correct.
Absolutely correct.
No argument from me.
Horses are social animals. They evolved to live in herds. Social contact is enormously important to them and, where possible, horses should have equine companionship.
But apparently we’re using “it isn’t natural” as the benchmark for cruelty now.
Excellent.
Let’s play.
Do you ride your horse?
You’re aware horses did not evolve to carry humans on their backs, right?
There is absolutely nothing natural about strapping a dead cow to a prey animal, climbing on top of it and telling it where to go.
There is nothing particularly natural about putting metal in its mouth, wrapping leather around its head, sitting astride its spine and applying pressure with your legs until it moves in the direction you have selected.
And when we first introduce horses to being ridden?
Even when it is done slowly, thoughtfully and compassionately, we’re asking the horse to accept something completely foreign to its natural existence.
A predator climbs onto its back.
Pressure is applied.
Its movement is controlled.
Its natural responses are gradually replaced with trained ones.
Why?
Because we want to ride horses.
You cruel, heartless monster.
And you keep your horse in a paddock?!
The horror!
Horses evolved to move over enormous areas.
They browse and graze for much of the day. They move between food and water. They interact with a herd. Their social structures shift and change. Stallions, mares, youngsters and foals interact in ways most domestic horses will never experience.
Meanwhile, Princess Fluffybutt lives behind four strands of electric tape on two acres, eats approximately three species of grass, gets hay delivered directly to her face and wears a waterproof duvet when it rains.
UNNATURAL.
You monster.
Turn her loose immediately.
Preferably somewhere around the Southern Alps.
Oh, you rescued a wild horse?
Wonderful!
Presumably it politely wandered up to the yards, filled out the change-of-ownership paperwork and climbed willingly onto your float?
No?
Because removing horses from the wild generally involves capturing them, separating social groups, transporting them and placing them into an environment completely unlike the one they have known.
Then we teach them to be caught.
To lead.
To have their feet handled.
To stand tied.
To accept confinement.
To accept rugs, floats, vets, farriers and eventually perhaps riders.
We fundamentally alter almost every aspect of their existence.
And sometimes that is necessary.
Sometimes it even improves their welfare enormously.
Because “natural” and “good welfare” are not interchangeable concepts.
Nature is full of hunger, injury, parasites, disease, predation, drought, reproductive competition and death.
Domesticity is full of compromises too.
The question isn’t:
“Is this perfectly natural?”
Because if that’s your standard, you’d better open the gate and say goodbye.
The better questions are:
Is the horse coping?
Are its needs being met as well as reasonably possible?
When a problem becomes apparent, is the owner doing something about it?
And perhaps most importantly:
Do you actually know enough about somebody else’s circumstances to appoint yourself judge, jury and equine welfare tribunal?
Because that’s where yesterday’s commentary became interesting.
Plenty of horses live alone.
Is it ideal?
No.
Would I have chosen it for Roger?
No.
Did I expect him to react as dramatically as he did?
Also no.
But sometimes horse ownership involves dealing with the situation that exists rather than the perfect situation we’d like to exist.
I have 1.8 acres.
We came through an exceptionally wet winter.
Roger is an enormous draft horse who can turn wet ground into something resembling the Somme simply by existing on it.
Our property cannot sustainably carry two large horses in its current configuration.
That isn’t something I can fix by wishing harder.
So Sundown went to a new home.
Roger was distressed by her departure.
And I dealt with what was in front of me.
For the record, after his initial panic, Roger has settled.
He has been eating.
He has been resting.
He has been sleeping peacefully in his paddock.
Meanwhile, I have already begun fencing off the dry-standing and track area I had planned for him, and I’ve been looking at options for a miniature equine companion, something capable of giving him equine company without placing the same pressure on our land as another full-sized horse.
Had some of the judgy princesses possessed even the faintest interest in Roger’s actual welfare rather than the dopamine hit of telling another horse owner she was doing it wrong, they could simply have asked.
They would have received an answer.
Instead, they made assumptions.
And that is why I shared the original post.
I didn’t share it because I thought keeping a distressed horse alone was funny.
I didn’t share it because I didn’t understand why he was upset.
And I certainly didn’t share it because I needed strangers on Facebook to explain to me that horses are herd animals.
I shared it because it happened.
Because horse ownership isn’t always beautiful arenas, gleaming coats and sunset rides.
Sometimes you’re standing in a paddock resetting the same fu***ng fence for the sixth time while your 700-odd-kilogram emotional wreck of a horse informs you that your current management strategy is, in his professional opinion, absolute bu****it.
Sometimes circumstances change.
Sometimes plans fail.
Sometimes horses don’t respond the way you hoped they would.
Sometimes you have to go back to the drawing board.
And sometimes there isn’t an immediate perfect solution.
I’ve always shared the realities of horse ownership because I think there’s value in doing that.
Someone else will eventually find themselves standing in their own paddock at dusk wondering what the hell they’re supposed to do next.
Maybe they’ll remember that somebody else has stood there too.
That is infinitely more useful to me than pretending responsible horse ownership means never encountering a difficult situation.
And that brings us back to judgement.
Because the actual passage is considerably more interesting than the five words people like throwing around:
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”
Matthew 7:1–5
It isn’t an instruction to never recognise that something is wrong.
It’s a warning about hypocrisy.
About applying a standard to somebody else while conveniently ignoring the compromises, mistakes and imperfections in your own life.
And horse ownership might be one of the finest examples of that imaginable.
Every single one of us compromises.
We compromise on acreage.
We compromise on turnout.
We compromise on herd structure.
We compromise on forage.
We stable horses.
We rug them.
We shoe them.
We transport them.
We castrate them.
We control their breeding.
We control their food.
We control where they live, who they live with and when they exercise.
And yes, we climb on their backs and ride them because we enjoy it.
The goal isn’t to achieve some mythical state of perfectly natural horse ownership.
The goal is to make good decisions with the circumstances and resources available to us, recognise when something isn’t working, and then do our best to make it better.
That’s what I’m doing.
So if you’re looking over my fence and you’ve spotted a speck in my eye, you’re welcome to mention it.
But before you climb onto your horse to ride home and tell Facebook what a terrible horse owner I am…
You might want to check your own eye for logs.
