Horses Are Never Safe -- But They're Probably Safer With Humans

Annie has gotten more than one scrape, bruise or cut, and although she doesn't seem to care, each time I feel guilty. Animal liberation believers point to this sort of thing and say, "Hah, horses would be better off if left to their own devices! Don't ride/own horses, you're exploiting them!" As much as I don't really believe that, the sentiment strikes a chord in my guilt-ridden conscience. After all, a lot of harm is done to many riding horses, out of either ignorance or cruelty. A recent study, however, makes me feel a little better:

"Vet Rosie Owen of Liverpool University studied 652 randomly selected competition and leisure horses.

She found that 40% of horses suffered a “traumatic injury” — anything from a graze to a fracture — in the course of a year. Of those, 47% required veterinary treatment.

But what will come as a surprise to many horse owners is that 62% of injuries occurred while the horse was turned out in the field. Only 13% of injuries happened during ridden exercise, while 11% occurred in the stable."

 So basically, horses get hurt more often when they are left completely to their own devices-- if anything, they're more safe when they're least free! Kind of like children.

Of course, this is no excuse to go leaving junk in your pasture, or using barbed wire as fencing. It doesn't mean you shouldn't patrol for woodchuck holes out there. 40% of horses getting hurt each year is a lot, and we should do everything we can to reduce that percentage. But maybe we can feel a little less guilty when our babies get a scrape or a strain-- seems like it's pretty natural.

As for racing injuries, a huge fuss is made about thoroughbreds having to be euthanized when they break down on the track. I totally believe that thoroughbreds are too badly bred, raced too early and given too many drugs, all of which contribute to their untimely deaths or injuries. But I don't agree with the extreme viewpoint that horseracing itself is cruel.

When you look at racehorse deaths statistically, they're not too different from injuries and deaths in human sports. Racehorse Death Watch reports that in Britain, about 1.2 horses die every day due to racing-related trauma (we don't have good US data, surprise surprise). But human athletes die or are seriously injured with relative frequency as well.

Let's look at football (the American kind). This study shows that in high school and college football alone, at least one kid dies every year. TIME magazine reported that in Texas high school football alone, at least two kids a year suffer spinal paralysis-- injuries that horses would be euthanized for. An estimated 1.2 million football-related injuries are sustained annually, with serious fractures and concussions making up 15% of those injuries. It's even thought that there are a huge amount of brain disorders going undiagnosed among football players-- injuries which often lead athletes to premature deaths via accidents, drugs and suicide. And have you ever watched a football game and NOT heard about a player facing serious consequences due to an injury he received while playing? In short, while it's hard to get comprehensive statistics for deaths and serious injuries in any sport, it's pretty safe to assume that very bad things happen to people every day in football.

And those are humans, who have protective gear, who have the capacity to make complex judgment calls, and where everything possible is done to save lives even at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars, which isn't true in the case of most horse injuries.

I'm not trying to defend the worst parts of horse racing OR professional sports. My point is this: sports are just dangerous, for both humans and animals. Of course we need to do our best to minimize risk, but there will never be no risk. Any sport, from football and running to trailriding and racing, will have risk. We have to either accept that and move on, or ban horse and human sports entirely-- and I don't like the second option.

By the way, I got the green-highlighted statistic from blogger Susanna Forrest. She is a horse lover living in the UK, and constantly posts fascinating equine-related stories gathered from around the world (she found the study above from the UK publication "Horse and Hound"). If this study made you feel better about your horse keeping skills, or you just want to see cool horse stuff, visit her blog here:

If Wishes Were Horses

Diving Horses: Corny Entertainment, Not Cruelty

There was a recent news story about the possible revival of a horse diving attraction -- or rather, an article about how the idea was shot down immediately by animal welfare advocates. I'm going to argue that horse diving is actually pretty humane-- but before I do, let's back up and get some perspective.

Once upon a time, before the internet, Netflix and 300 TV channels, people created their own forms of entertainment. There were block parties, marathon dance contests and all sorts of small-time tourist attractions, like gator-wrestling or the The Corn Palace in South Dakota (decorated entirely with naturally colored corn kernels):

Also known as "The World's Largest Bird Feeder"

Horse diving was another one of those "corny" small-time tourist attractions (hah ha, sorry). One of the most famous horse-diving spots was at Steel Pier, in Atlantic City NJ. William "Doc" Carver first got the idea and set up shop here in the early 1900s. Horse diving then spread around America. It was fairly easy and cheap to set up; you just needed a deep tank of water, a big ramp, a girl and a horse. The horse climbs the ramp, the girl sits on the horse, and both dive into the pool from 20-60 feet up. Some people tried it with mules or ponies. Here's an example. (Warning: loud rock music accompanies video, for some reason.) Acts continued into the 1970s.

Today, there are still a few places where you can see one of these shows. Mostly, they've died out simply because no one thinks this stuff is very exciting anymore; in an age where we can watch 3D explosions at the theater, we just don't see the thrill. However, this February Steel Pier Associates in New Jersey was looking to revive the former glory of the Atlantic City Steel Pier, and briefly entertained the idea of bringing Doc Carver's act back.

The outrage was intense. People started online petitions, called up New Jersey city officials, sent angry letters to Steel Pier Associates, and the Humane Society of the United States even issued a statement condemning the idea. What none of these angry missives stated was why. Why is horse diving so terrible?

In the history of Doc Carver's show, no horse was ever injured. There were allegations that horses were forced to dive (in other shows, not Carver's) via cattle prods, whips and dropping trap doors-- but in every video and picture I've seen of horse diving, there's no evidence of those cruelties. The horse walked up the ramp by itself, jumped off by itself, and swam ashore just fine. I'm sure bad stuff may have happened in some shows, but the potential for abuse is present in any animal sport or act. So what else?

Well, one HSUS blogger claimed that, "horses can show signs of stress and trauma such as hesitating repeatedly before sliding off the platform, climbing out of the water visibly disoriented, and stumbling afterwards." Hesitation, stumbling and confusion? Sounds like the average schooling show to me.

What's left is simply that horse diving looks dramatic and scary. I'm sure it is scary for the horse. I know I just about pee my swimsuit if I get up on a high dive board. But is it any more scary than torpedoing over a dozen big jumps, skidding around a rodeo ring with steers in front of a screaming crowd, or speeding across hedges and water amidst a dozen other animals?

We push horses to do scary things all of the time. In fact, the sports above are probably more traumatic overall than horse diving, because instead of one easy jump into water, we ask them to perform daily miracles of strength and stamina, acquire specialized skills and take plenty of physical stress. Compared with the training regimen of a high-level jumper, a diving horse has got it relatively easy.

Of course I'm concerned about horse diving. I think it would be all too easy for diving horses to be cruelly shoved up a ramp, forced off of it, and crammed into a box stall for the rest of the day.  I also think that the horses used in horse diving have to have the temperament and personality for it; forcing any old horse to jump down 60 feet is a bad idea. But I'm concerned any time an animal is used in a sport or for entertainment, and I don't think horse diving is much different than many other things we do with horses. We tell ourselves that as long as we provide the horse with great care and a good retirement, it's okay. If we need to re-think that concept in general, I'm open to that.

In an interview, a former employee at Steel Pier who is now a PETA member said that when he watched the horse diving acts, he didn't think they were traumatic. Martin “Marty” Morley said:

“Owen was the leader, so he took the horses out to the tower, but they were not pushed, prodded, or beaten in any way shape or form to jump. There was a ramp that led up to a little ledge at about 10 ft. intervals for the horses to look out.

They would look at the crowd and waited their turn to jump. Some jumped right away, but others waited 15-20 minutes. Sometimes, a horse would shake his head no and just not jump. But they were never ever pushed, prodded, beaten, or whipped to jump. They could back down if they wanted do, and some did. They weren’t forced. The only thing I hated was that they were kept in their stalls all day, when they weren’t performing.

I am very involved in animal rescue now, so I see racehorses that we get, who have bad whip marks, or you can see where the saddles have been digging into their backs, but these [diving] horses were kept in great shape.”

Mr. Morely also talks about the smaller ramps and training jumps used, probably to condition the horses to jump higher more gradually.

If you're still not convinced, check out these two videos. They're more recent diving horse attractions, both without riders, where the animals do hesitate about jumping-- but they're not forced, they look healthy, and everything looks reasonably safe. I'm not impressed by these shows-- I think everyone would be better off with a different form of entertainment-- but I'm not about to heavily criticize them while at the same time cheering on local barrel racers. Of course, that's just my two cents-- what do you think?