Yes, everybody loves all these welfare conversations. “You cannot torture the horse.” “Horses are not toys.” “You must respect the horse.” Fine. But why is nobody discussing the way horses are sold? Why is this part never touched?
Why is it considered normal that buyers come, try the horse, and then simply disappear without any obligations, without any responsibility, without even minimal compensation for what they just put the animal through?
Let’s leave aside the financial losses and disasters of the breeder, the current rider, the people who raised, trained, kept and prepared the animal. Let’s look at it from the horse’s side. Because supposedly this is all about horses, isn’t it?
Let’s look at it from the perspective of welfare of the horse. The horse is living its own life with its current rider. They exist in an emotional connection first of all. And they are also in a physical sporting connection, which is exactly what creates the picture that attracts buyers in the first place. And the horse has absolutely no idea that it is “for sale”, that it “costs money”, or that buyers are targeting it. Then suddenly completely unknown people appear and start imposing strange, unpredictable demands on it.
Every buyer wants to come and try the horse exactly the way they personally imagine riding it later if the relationship works out. But the horse knows nothing about this. The horse knows nothing about their budget. Nothing about its x-rays. Nothing about their “huge risks”. Nothing about their fantasies. Nothing about their precious right to be completely sure. From the horse’s perspective, it is a welfare nightmare. And when there are 10, 20, 30 buyers like this — all uncertain whether they even want to buy anything, because maybe the horse “won’t suit them”...
Well, husbands and wives do not suit everybody either from the first sight. So they leave and move on. But the horse stays behind in complete confusion about what is happening. Why are random people suddenly demanding different things from it? Why do strange humans keep appearing around it? Why is the world around it suddenly unstable? Why is the person it knows suddenly handing it over again and again to strangers who ride differently, ask differently, react differently, punish differently, panic differently, smell differently, disappear differently?
For the horse, this is an extremely stressful and exhausting experience. Why horses should be subjected to this at all is completely unclear. And welfare discussions almost never take this side of horse trading into account. Even in riding school when people come to have lessons, they do only what trainer permits them to do. When “potential buyers” come to try a horse, they do what they want and how they used to do things. No one cares how the horse feels about it.
When people go to a riding school or take sport-training lessons - at least they pay for the lessons. First, they pay to ride the horse. Second, they ride the way the trainer tells them to ride. There are rules and guidance. There is at least some responsibility. There is at least some balance in the situation.
Now let’s look at buyers. First of all, they ride for free. What, paying for a tryout is offensive? “No no, we are potentially going to pay, may be, if the horse suits us, if we have the money, if and may be. But first - we need to try, to be sure what we may be will pay later. If we like it”. Well - even girls in red lights of Amsterdam are paid in advance, not after and if the customer “liked it”.
Second, they ride how they personally want, because they need to make sure the horse suits them perfectly. But the horse knows absolutely nothing about this arrangement. Several tries like this and the horse feels abused, loses confidence and connection with its current rider.
We saw horses getting really upset after such try outs because they were confused, they did not know what was going on, why there were different aids now, why different manner of riding. We had several cases taking horses exactly like this — horses that had started their careers well, but after endless buyer tryouts ended up in a state of complete confusion. And eventually the horse stops performing altogether.
It cannot even compete properly anymore with its original rider because emotionally it is completely destroyed. At that point the sellers could no longer get any proper money for them anymore. The horse itself became emotionally lost and unusable for the very thing it originally was already doing. After that, the horse is likely to be dumped cheaply somewhere, which creates even bigger losses for: • the current rider; • the rider's team; • the seller; • the breeder; • whoever was involved around the horse. And for the animal itself too.
But the buyers? They simply walk away. No consequences. No responsibility at all. Yes, often this can be restored. Yes, over time trust between horse and rider can return. Yes, emotional stability comes back when the horse understands again: this is where it lives; who are the people around it; what are the expectations; what are its routines. Good or bad routines - is secondary. At least they are stable for the horse.
This is quite an obvious welfare concern that almost nobody wants to discuss. People want to discuss water access, temperature in horsetrucks, endless formal health papers and other things like that. It is not a welfare. It is a farce. A disgusting, hypocritical, modern welfare theatre where everybody talks about respecting horses while the actual horse is treated as a testing object for random people’s fear, ego, budget, projections, insecurity and internet-fed fantasies.