Tag: musings

*Extract from a longer chapter on comparative locomotion. This post contains no horses. 

The first polar bear I encountered
was in the Anatomy Department of the Bristol Veterinary School, and he was
already dead. Bears mark a point close to our hearts in the evolutionary tree –
being capable of both two-legged (bipedal) and four-legged (quadrupedal)
locomotion, but most impressively being able to casually choose between the
two. Polar bears don’t just use an upright stance to reach up a tree or get a
better angle on an anthill; they can stand and walk upright any time they want
to look a little taller or see a little further. They manage this with a
specialised spine and pelvis, and that is what makes them exciting to anatomy
departments.

Bear skeletons on the whole are so
similar to human skeletons that the first forensics lecturer I met at Bristol
claimed to have moved there from North America partly because he could not face
being called out to another “crime site body” that was actually a bear skeleton
with not a single bone of human remains. There are enough subtle differences
between human and bear skeletons though, that bears can achieve high speeds
using four legs, on land or in water, and we can only watch. The polar bear is so
good in water it is almost amphibious. There are some disadvantages to
this adaptability, as they had learnt in Bristol.

The Bristol polar bear skeleton
(pictured) had a name, Nina, and a friend, Misha, and both bears had come from
Bristol Zoo. Nina was imported into Bristol Zoo to partner Sebastian, a polar
bear who was born there. When Sebastian passed away in the 80s yet another
bear, Misha, was imported to keep Nina company. People don’t like to see
lonely animals.

Misha had spent her life as a
circus bear and arrived with a habit of pacing forward and back and nodding.
Whilst the zoo enclosure represented some seriously improved conditions for this
previously-caged bear, polar bears were already controversial zoo exhibits. The
general public had and still have a natural concern for animal welfare and so
it was considered necessary to keep Misha and her weird movements away from the
public gaze. By 1992 both bears had reached a remarkable age but Misha’s pacing
had grown more pronounced, accompanied by an even more exaggerated head waving.
The attempt to rehabilitate her was sadly exhausted at this point and she was
put down. Within six months, Nina the remaining bear had also began to pace,
and the decision was made that it would be kindest if she too was quietly put
to sleep. Both skeletons were sent to Bristol University Veterinary School for
post-mortem, and there it was discovered that these marvellous spines that
allowed these bears to do so many things also suffered from arthritis.
The very balance of
stability and motion that gave the bears options also caused their spines to
degenerate, and the bears had been stiffening up and becoming less able to
enjoy a full range of motion. In order to stop their spines from seizing up
altogether the bears seemed to have developed a series of exercises and
stretches – pacing up and down, waving their heads, putting their spines
through their paces and keeping the motion alive. It was this, the imperative
to stay mobile, and not the mental distress suspected, that eventually saw the
bears destroyed.

For all their popularity and
charisma when not caged, polar bears are rather dangerous to work with. They
belong to that special selection of creatures which, even when captive, are too
fluffy to put in front of a blue screen in film making. If you use a blue or
green screen with a polar bear you end up with brilliant action footage of what
looks like a completely shaved bear, when the fine hairs fail to be captured.
As a result polar bears have a skeleton and motion that is frequently recreated
using CGI for visual effects film work. It was wearing this hat that I
encountered my next bear, this time very much alive and called Mercedes.

I met Mercedes in Edinburgh zoo
but unlike Nina and Misha she had been born in the wild. Mercedes came from
the Hudson Bay region of Manitoba, Canada, where she could have lived out the
rest of her life if she had just stayed away from the humans. The Hudson Bay
contains Churchill, which is one of the most bear-prone towns in the world sitting
neatly between polar bear breeding and feeding grounds. Here polar bears get a
three strike rule. If a polar bear wanders into town and disturbs the peace or
generally endangers people it is tranquilized, captured, and labelled with
spray paint before being released away from inhabited areas. These labels mean
that a bear that is a repeated offender is easily recognised and our bear was
labelled dangerous bear number 39. On the third offence the usual course of
action is for the animal to be shot, but in our bear’s case once she had raided
town a third time a local car firm took up the case and offered to pay to have
the polar bear flown to a zoo or place of safety. The bear took on the name of
his benefactor and saviour, but finding a zoo prepared to take a polar bear was
not that simple, even once the search was extended internationally.

Bears may be
unwanted in suburbia, but another place that polar bears really aren’t popular is the zoo. For all the
reasons that Bristol struggled, most zoos will just not rehome a bear. They are
massively expensive to keep, the sizable enclosures are a substantial
investment, and the public just do not like to see them in captivity. Zoo after
zoo declined to help, until Edinburgh offered to take on the bear. Almost immediately
Edinburgh started to struggle with public perceptions – the bear was dirty, was
the bear meant to be dirty (yes), could the bear cope without company (yes),
did the bear have enough space? No captive polar bear could ever have as much
space as a natural territory, so psychologically, no, but Mercedes was getting
enough stimulation to keep her musculo-skeletal system in working order, yes,
and as alternatives go she also wasn’t dead. The public worried that the bear
looked sad and lonely and, as with Bristol, a mate was found. Polar bears are
naturally quite solitary animals and Mercedes hated Barney. The pair successfully
produced two cubs but keepers reported a great improvement to Mercedes’ health
and mental well-being once Barney finally passed away, having accidentally
choked to death on a child’s toy dropped into the enclosure.

The bear’s captivity continued to attract
criticism from the public and in particular their plight attracted violent
threats from the Animal Liberation Front, who started to attack and threaten
the keepers and all those associated with Edinburgh Zoo. Eventually a beautiful
territory was established for Mercedes in the purpose-built Highland Wildlife
Park, and despite concerns about how well she could re-adapt to the larger space
in her old age, she moved in in 2009. By this stage she had reached her
thirties, an age not usually seen in the wild, and like the Bristol bears
struggled as osteoarthritis slowly claimed her mobility. Another bear was taken
on, a two year-old needing to relocate from Holland to keep him a safe distance
from impending cub arrival. Luckily this time lessons had been learnt and
procedures were in place to allow the two bears to stay apart. In 2011, shortly
after her move, Mercedes’ arthritis reached the point where her movements
become strange, repetitive and “indicative of mental deterioration” and the
bear had to be put down.

Arthritis is also
seen in humans, including spinal arthritis. By making the commitment to
bipedalism, or two legs, we’ve sacrificed mobility for stability. Our pelvis is
fully rotated for our upright stance and so supports our more curved spine
better in that position, but the system still fails. Other bears, despite their
long hibernation patterns, do not deteriorate with age and disuse as polar
bears and humans do.

Happily the
similarities don’t end with arthritis. Like humans, ancient mammals, crocodiles
and hedgehogs, polar bears are plantigrade, meaning that they walk on the soles
of their flat feet. This is the primitive unevolved foot position for walking –
with animals that are more specialised for fast locomotion going on to develop
toe-running (digitigrade) and even toenail/hoof running (unguligrade). Landing
on your heels like a polar bear produces a lumbering gait – great for
stability, giving you more support on ice and if you need to balance on just
the two legs, but not so good for speed or shock absorption. Those huge, heavy feet
are never going to swing as rapidly as the hooves of the animals that evolved
to bounce along on the tips of their toes. The polar bear’s feet have some of
the largest, heaviest claws seen on bears and even have fur on, both handy for
ice-grip. Their paws are also webbed, and in water the shuffling gait becomes
an effective but rather cute doggie paddle. At 6mph it’s also speedy and manoeuvrable
enough to be not so cute when chasing you.

In return for all
this extra size and weight, the polar bear gains not speed but power. Humans
have a pair of bones in each forearm, and the same in their legs. Most species
have lost these extra bones and just use the one bone to connect elbow to
wrist, or ankle to knee, making them lighter, faster and more efficient. Polar
bears, like humans, have kept this paired arrangement intact, and keep all
their limb bones thick, dense and strong, and a result are impossibly
inefficient in their movement. Over short distances a polar bear can reach
35mph but it costs them, and this is the main reason that now that the ice is
retreating you hear about polar bears starving to death – they use up a ridiculous
amount of energy just to move, and reduced sea ice requires more movement. In
the summer when the ice retreats altogether polar bears out hunting actually
have an embarrassing and potentially fatal problem with heat stroke. Their only
means of defence is to stay as still as possible, even at the expense of a
meal. The advantage of the double bones, particularly in the forearm, is the
extra anchoring point for muscles which gives polar bear’s limbs the dexterity
to rotate. This makes the polar bear an impressive all-terrain traveller, and
when combined with their short, stocky, limb-bone structure you have a powerful
animal perfectly adapted to swim, dig, and hunt. Just not to run. These ice
bears do not just need a bigger enclosure, they need ice.

Let’s talk psychology. Not the horse’s, you, your messed up head. There are several ways in which humans are lovely but irrational, one of which is cognitive biases. They affect you every day, on or off a horse, in equestrian or any other sport. I find them generally fascinating and right now I’m avoiding doing something else, so here’s a simplistic introduction to some common ones:

Sunk Cost Fallacy, Loss Aversion & the Endowment Effect

Sunk cost fallacy is the reason people who have already wasted money on tickets to a terrible film also waste their evening watching it. Sadly it can also be the reason people eat terrible food, get married, or take any next step – it’s the urge to justify previous decisions using the next one, despite the fact that throwing good time/money/energy after bad will not result in a gain.

This can mess up your horse-life. It means that you always want to progress in one direction. I’ve taken 20 years of dressage lessons so I’d better stick to dressage. My horse was bought for jumping, so I’d better do that. I’ve tried to solve this issue this way, so I’d better carry on. Why? There is no refund. We have an ethereal idea of “money or time wasted” despite the fact that often no future course will get that time or money back. You are where you are today. Go forward, in any direction you choose. Your horse is not wasted, your horse does not care.

Similar to sunk cost fallacy, loss aversion worries about the past, but in this case it’s avoiding facing an actualised loss. We hate loses, we are more averse to loss than we are attracted to gains. It’s the reason that people can lose millions on the stock market – when stocks start to sink people don’t want to sell quickly and take the small loss. Your stock is worth whatever it is worth today. It doesn’t matter whether you bought it today or last month, no one cares how much you actually paid for it – holding on to it hoping the price will go back up is fine, but it’s no stronger a position than buying it today. You’ve already lost the money. Sell the damn horse. This also matters in a less financial sense: I’ve already taken the day off/ put the big jumps out/ planned this hack. Whatever. Sometimes you’re genuinely happier if you can just put down the stubborn and take the hit. This also applies to getting problems diagnosed. I’m looking at me here.

Loss aversion is thought to be the reason we have the endowment effect – a phenomenon where people want more money to sell something than they’d pay themselves. It’s worth more because it’s mine. You don’t need me to talk about that, you’ve all got horses.

Confirmation Bias, Selection Bias & Ignoring Probability.

Can you have a favourite cognitive bias? I love confirmation bias, I see it every day. Ever noticed if someone annoys you everything they do is annoying, but if you have a crush on them then everything about them is lovely? We love patterns, and are evolved to try and make sense of the world quickly by seeking them out. We also love to be right. This gives us confirmation bias, where once we’ve formed a theory we look for evidence to support it, and ignore evidence to the contrary. This doesn’t half help people sell miracle cures. Given 30 horses that the gadget/supplement doesn’t work on, we’ll notice the three where it does; even though their improvement was probably nothing to do with the gadget/supplement/lucky socks/lack of turnout the day before. This doesn’t mean we’re stupid, it means we’re mathematical modellers, and want to find the trend.

Selection bias is a very similar phenomenon. If I tell you to look out for a red car or the number three you’ll notice it everywhere. You’ll be sitting in a red car and suddenly notice that it’s 3.33. Is it because I’m made of magic? No, it’s because there are several million individually observable things that happen to you every day, you just don’t normally take any notice of most of them. Why should you?  Given several million things that you could observe, you’re not going to imbue significance into every single one – one in a million shots happen all the time, three or four times a day. Guess what I just walked passed? A car with the number plate NG12 2GF! What are the chances of that? One in 456976000 (four hundred and fifty seven million)! Are we excited? No, we really, really don’t care. Unless you’re actually looking for that number plate, but you know the odds were the same either way, and I still passed it. If you’re testing the theory that your horse goes well after you saw an N, or a G, or a 2, then you’re all excited, but that that doesn’t make it a randomised controlled trial. Of course you can see things if you look for them – do you think I actually know where I keep my keys? Doesn’t mean there wasn’t also a mug in the room, but I wasn’t looking for that mug.

Your subconscious is innumerate, or at least rubbish with probability because you’re dealing with a lot of data and sometimes it summarises badly. Clustering illusion means that any random set of data looks like it has clusters of data points in it. If it didn’t have clusters of points, it wouldn’t be random scatter, it’d be an evenly spaced pattern. Our addiction to order makes those clusters very seductive, but just because two things have happened at the same time doesn’t make them related, just that we looked for a pattern and we saw one. Sure you have a training method that generally gives you great results, that’s not necessarily an illusion, you’re probably mentally collecting a lot of data on that, noticing all the little things that give you a fairly accurate idea of what’s going on. But your friend’s horse had a similar problem and it got better when they put a dandelion on it’s head? That is what I mean by snake oil. That way madness lies.

I covered gambler’s fallacy a little in the last post. If you throw two heads in a row what are the chance of landing heads again? Still 50%, the same as your chance of throwing a tail, because your coin doesn’t care whether you just rolled heads. The idea that it does, and that there’s such a thing as a “run of luck” or that the roulette wheel can be at any point “due” to land on black is the reason that slot machines are the most profitable part of any casino. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have good form – confidence begets confidence and if your horse is going well there’s no reason that that should change. Similarly, you’re not due a win, but if you keep performing well probability says that you might have one. Point being the harder you train the luckier you get. Isn’t it the Whitakers who like to say that you win at home, and just go to the show to collect the rosettes?

Functional Fixedness

Functional fixedness is the phenomenon which makes you spend an hour looking for a hammer, whilst holding a perfectly heavy spanner. People don’t think of hitting a nail with a spanner, because they’ve categorized it and so forget it can do other things. Horse riders are remarkable at overcoming this. It’s not just a martingale, it’s a neck strap. It’s not just a lunge rein, it’s a loading device. Yet we still come out with “he’s a showjumper”, “she’s a cob”. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that he’s a showjumper and she’s a cob, unless you’re implying that that prevents a second career or even a different first one.

Dunning–Kruger Effect

Deep breath. Dunning-Kruger effect was described by Darwin as ignorance begets confidence. Brutally, the less you know, the more likely you are to perceive yourself as an expert, and the more you know the more likely you are to not realise your own competence. This means that a lot of unskilled/uneducated people have illusory superiority, and love to force opinions, and a lot of excellent riders can’t explain how they do things because they assume what’s easy or obvious to them is the same for you. 

There’s so much for more to say but this is already long and I’m drifting into dangerous pet-hate territory. Suffice that cognitive biases are not just crazy. Having a few short-cuts helps us make fast decisions on millions of things, just sometimes we get carried away with that when in fact we’d be better off realising what our influences are and why we want to do something or not. Go forth, be rational, and be a little more understanding of those that aren’t.

When I started as a scientist publication was all, it still is. I now understand though that if I write a paper, it will be published. Maybe not in my first choice of journal, but however good or bad it is, there is somewhere that will publish it. Now journals accept papers on the same day or the day after submission. Do we really think they’re getting peer reviewed? When I want to know more about a condition, I don’t just Google something I look at the academic literature, try and find out what the evidence suggests, but is that also just someone’s opinion now?

When I was a young, naive PhD student I was slightly shocked that journals asked me to suggest my own reviewers. Not that naive, I just named the people I was currently sleeping with, but still it did seem to lack a little subjectivity. Fast-forward a decade or two and the profit-based world of publication has exploded.  Editors need to get papers in and out again through the pipeline. Authors need to get those manuscripts off their desks and on their CVs and grant reports. Quantity over quality every time. I have now written papers which are essentially just my opinion, waffling away, and they’re published not in journals on discourse but scientific journals that lend my thoughts and air of peer-reviewed authority. These are no longer my thoughts, these are now evidence-based facts.

So, if you’re reading up on a clinical condition, what should you look for?

1.Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT)

Just having collected some data and analysed some statistics doesn’t make it good evidence. If I flip a coin and it lands on heads four times in a row, is that a rare and noteworthy event? No, it’s a sign of randomness. If I flipped a coin and it neatly alternated between heads and tails, now that would be noteworthy. I once co-wrote a paper with an amazing statistician, demonstrating how the statistics in one of my previous papers were a misleading mistake. No one would publish it. Randomized controlled trials are the best we can do for looking for actual significance.

2. Cochrane reviews.

These are a special type of review of the existing papers. They collect together eligible studies into a meta-study, telling you what the balance of the evidence says. These try to include only peer-reviewed papers that have a rigorous method and so collect together a much larger, combined subject group. They use some fairly robust statistics, and are a hell of a lot more accurate than just trying to read and counter-balance all the papers yourself, by eye.

3. A bit of time for peer review

Most published manuscripts have date of submission and date of acceptance stamped on them. I used to think of this as a badge of shame: if it takes me a year to get my paper out everyone knows that. Oh, how the world changes. Look for something that’s obviously been through a  discussion process, preferably a long one, not just same day/next day acceptance. Publication bias means it’s actually much harder and slower to publish a paper with a negative result – “we looked but actually it wasn’t there”, “this doesn’t work” – or a paper that goes against the mainstream. Doesn’t make it a bad paper, on the contrary, unexpectedly negative findings can often be the important ones.

4. Big name journals.

There’s a lot to be said about impact factors and how to judge a good journal which doesn’t really belong here. Fact remains, how often a  journal is cited and how often a paper is cited says a lot about how seriously academics are taking any paper. Of course it doesn’t tell you whether people are agreeing or disagreeing with it, but any academic mention is still more reassuring than a paper that is politely ignored by the scientific community. Those lesser-known ones, in the journals with the ridiculous names, those are the ones that you need to politely ignore too. Scientists don’t actually ignore papers just because they disagree – it doesn’t take a second to write “Contrary to the findings of Blogg and Blogg (2015), we showed…” Having someone to disprove makes your paper more publishable – you’re now showing something that actually needed to be shown.

5. Not conference papers

Any collection of papers that has a nice holiday attached a.k.a. conference papers, is going to get our slightly less completed thoughts. Conference papers are often published in mainstream journals and look like full papers on your CV, but depending on your field it’s fairly hard to get a conference paper rejected. They only need preliminary findings as these should be the cutting edge of your ongoing research, your chance to tell the field what you’re currently working on and get the feedback and awkward questions that’ll make the next round of tests and the final full paper a far more reliable affair. I for one am on the committee of a lot of the conferences I want to go to, and at the Keynote career stage. This means that I often get asked to submit a paper for a talk that I’ve already been asked to give. You can peer-review that all you like, it’s already been accepted.

These days scientific publication falls under the more general category of things we read on the internet  – where even if it’s an intelligent person’s best guess at the time it’s not necessarily true. That’s OK, it never was – scientists don’t believe in facts, they believe in best current theory and convergence towards a solution. Just remember that scientific papers are not the protected species that they used to be, and should be read with the scepticism and critical thinking that allows the good ones to shine.

Before and whilst I had Rossvean (above) I must have had 20 or 30 other horses. I was only a kid but I rode for competition yards, I rode for private owners, I rode for myself. Rossvean was my first real rescue horse, others were more scopey and more straightforward but he had a brave heart and I trusted him completely. Ross’ was the mane I cried into when my parents left. Eventually I sold him and my heart broke. I found the next horse, and the next. I asked my trainer for help as something about these horses just did not work any more. She looked at me very sternly and explained that “there’s never going to be another Rossvean”.

I have an excellent memory, I don’t forget words, sometimes I wish I could. The feeling of being metaphorically punched never left me either. I sold up and I quit. For over a decade I quit. Eventually I started to ride again, very occasionally and only for other people. Don’t you miss it? They’d ask. Every day, I’d say. Then one day I fell in love with a horse. Hobo was exactly what I look for, a horse worth coming out of retirement for. Big floaty uphill paces and a jump that defined perfect. I used his photo in lectures on conformation. I studied his jump for research papers. Like Ross he was a little psychotic but when he trusted you he would overcome his own nature. Horses that can take on a 1.50m track are hard enough to find, here was a proper 1.60m horse and I loved his every quirk.

Hobo got his name by being chucked off yard after yard for being dangerous, and he was, he had a tendency to panic with no self-preservation, and an exceptional talent for putting people in hospital, but this was never a horse who was nasty, just very afraid. 1.60m horses are not just bred, they are made. Everything must go well in training and then you still have to be lucky. Hobo was big, nervous and slow to mature. To go with his talent he needed big track rideability: my mantra became “for him I have time”. Eventually the offers started coming in and under pressure to sell I bought Sox the stallion to ease the transition. Still I could not bear to part with him and now I had two (albeit one who was intended for stud). Sox is a great horse, turns his hoof to anything, never lame, affiliated dressage and jumping, safe to hack and easy to handle. Next week I’ll go and collect a championship trophy from his only ever shot at showing. But Sox is not Hobo, Sox is a riding club horse and I never wanted to be a riding club rider. I’ve ridden Sox with a broken wrist, with one side limp, post-caesarian, and, I now know, with a wolf tooth fragment stuck in his jaw. He’s a grumpy old git, but I trust him with my kids and he’ll never hurt them. He doesn’t owe me anything yet the world will manage without his genes and he is now gelded.

More pressure to sell came and went. I turned down big money offers for both horses, met a “them or me” ultimatum from the husband and he became an ex-husband. For years the divorce went on and the horses stood stabled, in divorce limbo, going round a horse-walker and losing health. By the time it was over Hobo never made it fully back into work. This year I retired him, which is an odd expression for a horse that hasn’t really started his career, but I can’t keep bringing him into work and watching him go lame, I have to let him go.

Hobo is not dead. Every morning I lead him out of his stable he comes out in a big uphill march of a walk. I spent years on ground work with this horse, he leads beautifully, but most of all he moves beautifully. He has presence: he comes out of the stable roughed off and covered in mud and fur and I still think here is a horse. Here is what all horses should look like. I lead him up to the field and every time I watch his hooves – do they land heel first? Are they even? I fantasize that months of leading him up and down our stony path will harden his legs and he will come back, and I will feel that amazing jump, and the fences will be enormous and I will take photos to replace those lost to divorce, photos and memories which I can keep forever. Then we reach the field and I send him off and he hobbles, and I remember that I am an idiot, and I have to let him go.

As a child at this time of year I read an issue of Horse and Hound where the equine stars of the day listed what they’d want for their dream Christmas, and adverts ran alongside. I don’t remember what most people wanted. I think Mary King wanted an equine swimming pool and a new set of jumps. When they came to Eddie Macken he only had one sentence: “I just want Boomerang back”. Suddenly I saw capitalism and advertorials through the eyes of this man who didn’t know what we’re talking about. His heart is broken and seemingly his career with it, and we understood, because we all wanted Boomerang back.

I am very lucky and I know that. Pining over a (still-living) horse smacks of white, middle-class privilege, and hell yeah, comparatively I’m rich and thin. My Christmas list is ridiculously hopeful and contains saddles and bridles because I have four wonderful horses: Sox, Hobo, Denim (Hobo’s companion pony) and now the lovely Remus, a four year old. People are always asking how Remus is going, excited that for the first time in nearly a decade I’ve bought another horse. He’s going great I say, and he is. Better than I ever imagined, I say, because it’s true. Remus is exceptional, I hope one day he’ll be international. Maybe he’s even a 1.50m track horse and they’re hard to find. Certainly enough scope for me, don’t get the wrong idea – I’m no Olympic rider. What I can’t politely say is he’s not Hobo, he’s not even in Hobo’s league. He’s lovely, I’m fond of him, I’m impressed with him, but like people horses don’t replace each other. So Dear Santa, come on, this Christmas, even if only for one day, I just want my Hobo back.

Your horse shouldn’t be too hot or too cold, but that leaves a big range where temperature variation is fine. Yes, it’s colder at night. Your horse is not a soufflé.

Your horse is not necessarily happier indoors. Rugs or shelters keep the wind/rain off, moving around & constant eating are great for generating heat and health, pig oil can help stave off the dreaded mud fever. Still not a soufflé.

Sometimes it’s more convenient to keep your horse indoors. That’s OK too.

Your horse is not wasted. Bored, maybe, unfit yes, tubby even, but he doesn’t dream of what might have been. He likes food and a bit of exercise, that’s about as far as his ambitions go.

Your unlevel horse is not necessarily in pain. Your level horse is not necessarily sound. You’re his first line of defence – you notice change, you know what’s normal – good for you. Play safe when it comes to check ups, time off and vet calls, but no one ever fixed a horse by worrying.

Your horse is not evil. He has a fairly weak grasp of good and bad, but he has completely nailed cause and effect. Your motivations are often a complete mystery to him, and he’s trying his best to get you trained. Don’t take it personally.

Your horse may not need hard food. He might not need shoes. He might not need rugs. He might not need a full clip. You know best. Maybe you’re only motivated by budget or convenience – if well-being is not compromised then why not? It’s your leisure activity. No horse was ever embarrassed by his trace clip.

Not all horses are the same. Just because it worked once/ for Ben Maher/ didn’t work for your last horse, doesn’t mean this horse isn’t going to make you look like an idiot by flying against all your previous experience. We’ve all been there, we’re only laughing cause this time it wasn’t us.

Nothing is difficult because the steps are so small.