08/28/2026
Yes!!
“You can’t train pain” 🐴
Many of my clients have previously been told that their horse can’t be in pain otherwise they wouldn’t respond to any training. It can’t be pain otherwise the horse wouldn’t be okay to hack out. It can’t be pain otherwise the horse wouldn’t “improve” with groundwork exercises. This is a false and harmful narrative.
I would really like us to take obedience much further down the list as an assessment criteria for pain, seeing as most horses are trained their whole lives to perform obedience or face negative consequences. It is currently pretty high up on the list, probably only coming in under overt lameness or obvious injury.
There is this idea that stand-alone behavioural issues are common and pain/discomfort is rare, this is untrue. We are constantly seeing horses being put through training as some sort of diagnostic tool to see if its pain or behavioural, but the only parameter we seem to be assessing is their level of obedience.
Once you develop an eye for discomfort you can see it long before a dramatic lack of obedience. You can see it in their faces, their poor musculature, their poor posture, the way they stand, their poor hoof balance, their chronic tension. But all of this is ignored as it is so normalised and the attempts to train continue.
To give an example, we might see a horse who walks away from the saddle, but after learning they will be followed with the saddle until they stand still, they eventually just show a tense face and allow it. This runs through to the rider mounting perhaps. They are maybe lunged/long reined/start hacking out. They become more obedient, the tense face never leaves but it isn’t noticed. We mistakingly see the coerced stillness as a sign of relaxation. For many horses this will be seen as a success story as they continue in their obedience and can get on with their “job” keeping their feelings quietly to themselves. For some horses we start to see the explosive behaviour, only at this point do most people consider pain.
I’ve given a gentle example, many people are doing much harsher things to horses than following them around with a saddle until they stand still. Chasing them with whips, ropes or flags and creating explosive behaviour under the guise of showing the horse “leadership”. It is really easy to shut a horse down into obedience if you make life unpleasant enough, even a painful one.
Seeing someone bully a horse into obedience and then use that obedience as proof that they are not in pain or discomfort makes me feel quite ill.
There is also this idea that groundwork exercises are suitable for any horse and can’t harm them. But extensive backing up, having to repeatedly disengage your quarters or having to throw your head up as you are repeatedly slammed in the face for overstepping a “boundary” you didn’t know existed absolutely can and does hurt horses.
I keep seeing supposed behavioural tutorial videos where the narration doesn’t match the footage. I can see a horse desperately trying to communicate their discomfort only to be told to shut up and accept that their voice will be ignored. I can also envisage the vet visit months/years into the future when the horse finally breaks down and we discover the underlying issues that were there the whole time, we will say “nobody could’ve known”. But we do have the ability to listen now, even if we may not have all of the answers, we can listen to our horses and advocate hard for them.
Unfortunately pain and discomfort are not rarities, from how we’re breeding horses, the high-stress environments we’re keeping them in and then the high-stress/inappropriate ways we’re taught to train and ride them. Most horses I meet are experiencing discomfort in their bodies, many of them significantly. There is this idea that behavioural issues are common and pain is rare, this is untrue.
We keep seeing this push-back that people are being over the top always putting pain on the table, I don’t think we’re putting pain on the table nearly enough. When you’re asking an animal to carry you around on their back and perform, the absolute least we can do is make sure we’re careful.
When we’re watching the videos that come up in our feeds, turn the sound off and really watch the horse. Are we watching a horse learning that things are safe or are we watching a horse being taught their resistance is futile and the thing they’re worried about will happen to them no matter what? Are we watching a horse “find confidence in leadership” or are we watching a masterclass in hassling a horse until they shut down and realise they must obey? 🐴
I have about 82 posts I want to write and my brain feels like a whirlwind of incoherent thoughts, but here is the first one I’ve managed to get out in several months. I also want to say, as I've never mentioned it, that I do not, and will not ever, use generative AI in any of my work or writing. All of my writing comes through the struggle of my own brain and nothing else 😅
