13/10/2025
Acceptance and compromise
Recently, I listened to a well known and much loved horsewoman talking about her teacher and how he didn’t turn his horses out once he began training them. He believed that once you started to prioritise balance in a horses training, you should never compromise that by putting them out with their friends to play. They stayed in and they were trained.
I know several modern day classical trainers who still adhere to this practice - prioritising a precise way of moving which can be found through ridden training in balance, and not wanting that in any way sullied by life in the pasture.
It is also ‘may’ be more likely that a horse will receive an external injury * from playing with their friends if we turn them out together, especially young boys. That’s why many valuable competition horses also don’t get turned out much, or if they do, it’s often solo.
I decide to compromise. I want to prioritise good balance in my horses training and understand there are risks attached to turning them out with friends. But, right now, I believe the positives for these social, movement primed, experient expectant, open landscape adapted creatures - far outweighs the negatives.
There are things I can do to mitigate risk. Most often no back shoes; provide everyone with enough space; monitor herd dynamics (as I’m the one making those choices after all); take care to ensure everyone has enough resources. It’s not just a free for all in a small paddock.
However, to my (tiny) mind the risk of not giving my horses freedom and friends, far outweighs the positives.
Horses are not, after all, lumps of clay to be shaped by my hand. They are not pieces of art work which we sculpt and mould to demonstrate our ability to train. They are sentient beings with complex social lives and a keen desire to make decisions and have agency.
While they may have cost us a lot of money and many of our hopes and dreams can be wrapped up in what they might do for us; they are not cars or yachts or a computer. They are not merely tools for us to show everyone else how marvellous we are. They are Horse.
This decision to have my horses living out with other horses may cost my ego its desires. They may get injured as a result. But the pay off for not doing my best to enable this is more than I can bear to witness. When it comes to what my heart knows to be true, that’s currently where it lands. And I have to accept the compromises this may entail.
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*I say an external injury, as we know how many horses develop emotional, mental and systemic ‘injuries’ from a life with little free movement and no direct access to friends. Ulcers, a decrease in bone density, breathing disorders, and the development of stereotype behaviours such as crib biting and wind sucking.
