I recently asked, if you were looking for a horse, what would be the most important things to you in that horse.
Soundness was what was mentioned, most and foremost.
Last year, I spoke to a talented vet in Lexington, KY who shared that only about 50% of horses seen pass as sound when they do PPEs. He wasn’t saying only 50% have no potential issues, but that only about half actually are currently sound.
That is roughly what we find at the rescue, but we are getting disadvantaged horses. I didn’t expect to hear the numbers were that troubling in the regular sales world.
We have to change something. Horses need their legs to work properly. They are packing around 8 times a human’s weight on joints often no bigger than our own. It is a serious thing.
One vet I know mentioned how hard a time he has going to horse shows because so many horses are clearly in pain while moving, and the owners really seem to not know.
I see it, too. And once you have an eye for noting if a horse is comfortable, it DOES make it hard to see how many horses are living with pain. And those horses will still trot and canter and gallop in a field. They do. I’ve seen horses gallop with a leg handling off, too. So that isn’t a way to determine comfort at all.
There is a belief that use and performance is what breaks horses down, but I actually find in my experience, GENETICS are really the primary issue. Heavy use done poorly and injury plays a role, but I just don’t see it as much in all breeds are poor attention to breeding horses that are sound.
People routinely use mares that aren’t sound for riding as broodmares – HOW WILD is that?
There are horses at 4 or 5 years old with arthritis already in joints that have never been injured or started or had ANY use at all. It isn’t even uncommon.
We aren’t breeding horses able to hold up, even without any use.
The soundest horses, by far, that we see are mustangs, so nature is doing a far better job creating horses than we are. It is rare a mustang fails a lameness exam at all at HOP.
And across the breeds, there are predictable issues in many of them. You know what they are, I don’t need to even say them. It does not seem like the industry wants to make a shift to breed better. But it also seems people don’t WANT to actually know what is going on with their horse, as if ignoring it means it isn’t there.
Instead, we inject and put horses on pain medications early on. We preach maintenance is expected and normal, but we are starting this stuff on horses that are 4 or 5 years old, not near the end of a heavy performance career. That is a problem.
The industry absolutely does profit from this approach, but horses do not.
Maintenance is, eventually, part of most horses’ lives, sure. But we are accepting a lot of discomfort early on with horses or overlooking it a lot more than we should and earlier than we ought.
And you know, the next two things people mentioned after soundness? Sane and Safe.
But often those things unravel because the horse was hurting, and no one cared enough to listen.
