Giving Back: Rescue Horses + Dressage!

But first, a little background. I became a dressage “lifer” about 40 years ago when I saw Michael Poulin give a Grand Prix exhibition on a jet black Hanoverian. All of my horse fantasies were packaged into a single moment: a spectacular black stallion and riding like I had never imagined.

Later I became a working student for Mike and entered the world of those that compete at the top of our sport. I learned to ride and was surrounded by highly athletic purpose bred sport horses and I have been fortunate to be his student off and on ever since. It may surprise you to know that Mike is a horse advocate of any type, and encouraged students with more “ordinary” horses to help them achieve their full potential through dressage. I admire Mike for that; he genuinely loves all horses the same way I do.

That’s why, after many years of blissful ignorance, the discovery that so many horses in our country are failed by humans has been so painful to me. With me tonight is Patty Livingston, President of the Georgia Equine Rescue League and the Georgia Horse Council. Patty is a long-time expert in what I have come to learn more recently in the last couple years, which is this:

Roughly 130,000 horses per year in the US are discarded and end up in the slaughter pipeline where they meet their end in Mexico or Canada. While some portion of these are the aged, disabled, unusable horse you might expect, there are tens of thousands of sound, usable horses that also meet this fate. The horse racing industry, purposeless over breeding by people who aren’t concerned with what happens next, and horses that are simply dealt a bad hand by fate fill this pipeline. That doesn’t include the thousands of horses that are rescued by law enforcement seizure or other intervention actions.

While the problem is daunting and solving the root causes would be ideal, I believe there are things that we as responsible horse people can do to lessen the impact. It is the classic Stranded Starfish scenario. In case you aren’t familiar with the Stranded Starfish, it goes something like this: A little boy at the beach is seen picking up starfish that have been stranded on the beach and tossing them back into the ocean. A passerby asks the boy, “Do you really think you’re making any difference?” The boy, bright-eyed and righteous, holds up one of his rescued starfish, and says, “It makes a difference to this one!”, as he tosses it into the water.

Therefore, the more of us grabbing a starfish to throw back, the more that are saved. But it isn’t just about simply saving a horse. That’s only the first step. Here is where we come in.

I have a theory. Horses trained to second or third level dressage, in my experience, rarely or never end up discarded. Of the thousands of horses I’ve seen flow through auctions, kill pens, or seized by law enforcement, one thing has been constant: I have yet to see a highly trained dressage horse meet this fate.

I have also seen many athletic looking, budget friendly potential dressage partners get lost in this horrible shuffle. In a sport where we have had difficulty attracting mainstream participation, showing that our sport is fun and competitive with horses that come from more humble origins may encourage some riders to give dressage a try. That would be a win all around.