Hickstead Runs His Heart Out

Above: Jalupae, starving before hanging

In an article in Equestrian, Brenda Nelson asks "Hickstead Dies, Is Horse Show Jumping Cruel?" Her answer:

"For the most part horse show jumping is less cruel than some other horse sports (not counting pleasure riding), but cruelty is always a factor in issues of competition."

So the answer is yes, show jumping is cruel, Hickstead literally jumped his heart out for his owners. He collapsed with a burst aorta, apparently a very agonizing way to go. Which part of that isn't cruel? Maybe the $3.7 million he reportedly had made for his owners wasn't enough.

Horses seldom get to retire; even chanpions are sold (and sold again and again) to carry on working as saddle horses, trail horses or in some other form of competition. A horse is expensive to house and feed, and has to keep earning its keep even when tired and lame. Euthanizing a horse costs more than many riders want to pay, so they work it to death. In the tragic case of the starving old gelding Jalupae, the present owners decided to hang him from a crane to kill him off. The sentencing after their criminal trial is scheduled for December 13th in Victoria, B.C.

Veterinarians seem to do a lot less for elderly horses than they could be doing, and retirement sanctuaries for these animals are few and far between. They don't get the attention and fundraising for sanctuaries that even cats and dogs do (and even they don't get enough to fill the need). Quite simply, as well as being expensive to maintain in retirement, too many horses are bred in the first place, in the endless quest of stables to breed and train champions for racetrack or show ring.

Joe Camp wrote a beautiful account of how humans could interact with horses. In The Soul of a Horse: Life Lessons from the Herd. (Three Rivers Press, 2009). Camp, an associate of Monty Roberts the "horse whisperer," gets imaginatively inside the horse mind. He experimented with a replication of natural range, studied horse behaviour and learned how they live in natural herds. The way they live in stables, even when warm and well fed, does not meet their physical or emotional needs:

First, says Camp, horses are flight animals: flight is their response to danger and fear, and flight is denied the working horse. Secondly, solitude is not natural, they cannot even sleep properly according to Camp when separated inside a stall. They need to sleep in snatches (in nature they spend 18 - 20 hours a day grazing) but they need to lie down for REM sleep (horses dream!), and they need to know other horses in a herd are standing sentry while they do it.

Additionally, horses need to be unshod so that the parts of their hooves can move flexibly and absorb shock for tendons and leg joints.

Horses are great communicators when people take the trouble to notice their signals, and they form strong attachments to humans they like, as well as to each other and to other animals (they will pal up with a barn cat or cow rather than be solitary). Evolution has formed them for herd living and constant movement; imagine how it feels to those that are isolated and stationary in a stall year in and year out.