23/01/2026
I’ve noticed a pattern that’s been bothering me, and I think it says something uncomfortable about our industry.
When I post about hoof balance and how it affects the horse, it gets attention.
When I post about pathology, posture, or the professional working on the horse, it gets attention.
But when I post about the rider.
Or the environment.
Or human management.
Or the fact that the horse is living in a species-inappropriate world.
Silence.
And that silence tells a story.
We are very good at engaging with problems that allow responsibility to sit somewhere else. Somewhere external. Somewhere that doesn’t require us to change how we ride, manage, house, train, or think.
But when the finger turns back toward the human system surrounding the horse, engagement drops off a cliff.
My webinar series on ethological reasons why the industry needs to change had the lowest viewing figures of any series I’ve ever run. And yet, arguably, it was the most important work I’ve done. Because the pathological relationships we like to discuss, lameness patterns, postural collapse, behavioural fallout, chronic tension, almost always trace back to the same origin.
The implications of domestication and how far modern horse management has drifted from the biological and behavioural needs of the animal.
This isn’t just an equestrian problem. It’s a human one.
Psychology has a name for this pattern. Cognitive dissonance. When evidence threatens our identity, habits, or sense of competence, the nervous system doesn’t lean in. It protects. As described by Leon Festinger, humans will often avoid, dismiss, or disengage from information that implies personal responsibility or behavioural change, even when the evidence is strong.
There’s also the well-documented bias toward external attribution. We are more comfortable blaming tools, professionals, or isolated body parts than confronting systemic causes that implicate our own choices. Especially when those choices are culturally normalised.
But horses don’t live in fragments. They live in systems.
And we are the dominant variable in that system.
If we only ever talk about what’s wrong with the horse, or the hoof, or the tack, without addressing the rider and the environment that shape them every single day, we are treating symptoms while preserving causes.
The truth is harder.
Because the truth asks something of us.
It asks for responsibility, not blame.
It asks for change, not critique.
And it asks us to sit with the discomfort of realising that many of the problems we study so closely are downstream of human inertia.
Silence doesn’t mean the message is wrong.
Often, it means it’s landed exactly where it hurts.
With that in mind, I invite anyone who’s willing to lean into this to engage with the ethology series and the upcoming webinar on rider biomechanics on Jan 28 not as a sales pitch, but because it truly matters to the horse.
👉 https://equineeducationhub.thinkific.com/courses/riderbiomechanics
👉 https://equineeducationhub.thinkific.com/bundles/how-can-the-equine-industry-maintain-its-social-licence-to-operate
