I recently attended a popular online horse fair. Its set up as 2 days of videos by instructors and horse trainers from around the world that you can watch in your own time. The topics vary from rider fitness, solving horse behaviour issues, fitness training your horse and training techniques.
The thing I have found interesting in recent years of watching the Fair, is how the types of videos have changed. It used to be primarily western and natural horsemanship style trainers, with lots of training videos on making horses obedient under saddle, riding arena patterns and getting competition ready.
More recently, I see more content from European trainers, many using positive reinforcement, focussed on relationship building and working with the horse being happy and content in their work.
This is one microcosm, but it made me aware of a changing trend I see occurring more broadly in the horse world. It’s a really positive change, and it’s being driven from the bottom up, rather than from influence from equestrian organisations on their members, who tend to lag behind community opinion, and social licence to operate.
Horse welfare in competition and training is becoming a higher priority to horse owners. Whether their horse is happy in his environment, and work life is more important to horse owners than it used to be. The attitude of “well, I pay for his feed and board, so he owes it to me to ride him how I like” is falling out of the vernacular. We see the rise in popularity of ideas taken from zoo management principles, like enrichment and trickle feeding to keep horses happier on small acreages or restricted grazing.
There is more awareness of Pain Signals and not using equipment that causes pain or hides problems. Trainers are becoming more aware of when horses are expressing discomfort or pain, and not just being treated as bad mannered or needing correcting. The more advanced trainers are teaching their students to recognise more subtle signals from horses and focus on consent and building a willing partnership with horses who are engaged and want to participate, rather than being forced to.
While most animal clubs are trying to educate their members on higher welfare and help raise everyone up to better standards, in horse communities, it’s usually the members trying to raise the club standards, and being dissatisfied with the accepted standards at events.
A good example of this is the FEI: Fédération équestre internationale (or International Federation for Equestrian Sports) that oversee Olympic equestrian sports.
Rollkur (or hyperflexion of the horse’s neck) is a training method to bend a horse’s chin to his chest while riding until the horse’s breathing and blood flow to his head is restricted to make the less severe, acceptable bend of the neck appear easier when they enter the arena. Top Olympians have been filmed using this technique in the warm up arena, and stewards have turned a blind eye. Member and public pressure to ban the practice, resulted in the FEI introducing new rules to combat rollkur. At Paris 2024, the FEI builds higher barriers to restrict the public from seeing into the warm up arena, and riders who were filmed and reported to the FEI faced no consequences. The rules are in place to placate the public, but the practice continues, at the expense of the horses. And by allowing the practice, it is encouraged to continue. Lower level competitors see that they have no chance to compete fairly, so they either start doing it themselves or stop competing. It is not unusual to see riders doing this at Pony Club and adult riding clubs, and no one says anything. It’s become the norm, and at the lower levels, it doesn’t even occur to them to hide it.
Other similar rules have been poorly enforced, such as the Blood Rule. Any blood on a horse should result in disqualification. But it just doesn’t happen, or the competitor gets a slap on the wrist without it affect their results, or placing.
This issue is not unique to the FEI, it’s a common problem, not just in Australia. The specific issues vary by region and sport, such as excessive whipping in horse racing.
All organisations have a duty of care to their members as well as to the animals in their organisations, I would say even more so. They should be leading the way on higher welfare, and the top competitors should be demonstrating how easy it is to put the horse’s welfare first, not being helped to hide their shameful actions. It’s not good enough to introduce rules that are simply ignored. We need better role models.
Members often speak to each other about problem riders, but are afraid to make complaints to their club committees. But we need to hold our clubs to higher standards. Clubs need to stop ostracising the whistle blowers. We need to do it for the horses, together. We need to step up and be the role models that we are lacking.
When I see a traditionally old school western online fair taking up the banner for better horse welfare and it being so warmly embraced, I know we can do it here in Australia too.
By: Karri Nadazdy – Animal Care Australia Horse & Livestock Representative. Published: March 2026 ACE Newsletter
