Healing Horse R+

🐴

The Hostile Hypercritical Horse Community — ID MyHorse For three years, I published a blog post every single week. Eventually, I needed a break, so I shifted to writing only when inspiration struck. Yesterday,

🐴 … “Rescue doesn’t erase misunderstanding.
Even rescue spaces can fall into control and misattunement.

A SAFE PLACE isn’t truly safe if the horse still isn’t heard…”

Veganism doesn’t make you right.
Listening does.

I’m vegan. PROUDLY. FIERCELY.
Becoming vegan was — by far — one of the most important decisions of my life.

I’ve rescued animals.
I run a sanctuary.
I’ve devoted my life to helping them heal.
And still — I keep learning how to listen better.

But I’ve seen something happen again and again — and I saw it again yesterday in a vegan group.

A woman shared a video meant to be funny:
a cow trying to interact with a horse behind a stable door.

The horse’s body language showed STRESS.
Frustration.
A clear attempt to communicate discomfort.

But people were amused —
seeing it as “interspecies love.”
She was amused.
She told me I was overreacting.
That the horse could “just step back.”
“They’re clearly well cared for, they are vegan and this is a sanctuary,” she said.

Then this:

“Direct your comments to people actually harming horses, not trying to save them.”

And finally:

“This conversation is over.” 🛑

Here’s what I want to say:

Rescue doesn’t erase misunderstanding.
Even rescue spaces can fall into control and misattunement.

A SAFE PLACE isn’t truly safe if the horse still isn’t heard.

Every horse’s suffering matters.
Not just the slaughterhouse horse.
Not just the starved or beaten horse.
EVERY HORSE who isn’t being listened to.

Being vegan doesn’t mean you can’t still dominate.
Dismiss.
Silence.

You can still be AMUSED while someone suffers — if you don’t know how to see it.

We don’t get to choose which truths are valid.
We don’t get to decide whose pain deserves a voice.

Being a better human isn’t about being on the “right side.”
It’s about being HUMBLE. CURIOUS.
Willing to see what you missed.

And the moment you believe you’re immune to that learning…
That’s the moment I get worried.

My advice for everyone who is trying to do better for animals...
Watch the body language. Feel the body language.
Not the caption.
Not the comment thread.

THE BODY. ALWAYS THE BODY.

Why can’t so many horses eat grass anymore?

This comes up a lot.

I had a great comment on my last post saying, “Thirty years ago, horses were out on grass all the time and they were fine.”

And I do think it’s a fair question. But I don’t think the answer is one simple thing. Part of it is that the grass has changed.

A lot of horse paddocks now are small, overgrazed, fertilised, sprayed, compacted, and resown or populated by survival of the fittest, with grasses that can survive heavy grazing. That does not mean they are ideal for horses.

Improved pasture, ryegrass, clover, fertilised paddocks and stressed grass can be very different to rougher, mixed, lower-input pasture.

A horse grazing a varied paddock with native grasses, herbs, weeds, shrubs, roughage and room to move is not living the same life as a horse standing in a small green square of high-production stressed grass.

We also have less biodiversity.

When paddocks become monocultures, we lose the variety that supports the whole system. The soil changes. The insects change. The gut input changes. The plants available to the horse become narrower and often richer.

Gut health, soil health and biodiversity are connected. If we simplify the environment too much, we should not be shocked when the animals living in that environment start showing health problems.

Then there is management.

Many horses now live on smaller properties with less movement, alone, more confinement, richer grass, more hard feed, more rugging, more stress, and more weight gain. A lot of equines who are easy keepers are being managed in environments that are simply too rich and “comfortable” for them.

And then there is the other part: we are also better at recognising the signs now.

Years ago, a lot of horses were probably called “a bit footy,” “arthritic,” “lazy,” “old,” “pottery,” “sore after a trim,” or “not great on hard ground.”

Now we are more likely to recognise those signs as possible low-grade or subclinical laminitis, insulin dysregulation, PPID, or metabolic stress.

So I think the answer is, the grass, the paddocks, and the way we keep horses changed. The amount of movement and the soil and plant diversity changed. And our understanding of early metabolic and laminitic signs improved.

Grass is not evil for every horse.

But for some horses, especially metabolic horses, grass can be the trigger that keeps the disease process going.

And if that horse is already showing signs of laminitis, stretched white line, footiness, thin soles, abnormal growth, strong pulses or chronic hoof capsule changes, then “just a little grass” is not a useful management plan.

We have to manage the horse in front of us, in the environment we have now.