I want to talk honestly about the stoic horses. The ones who seem to be stubborn or lazy, when in reality they are hiding the kind of pain that a more open horse would show by bucking or rearing. Instead the stoic horse shuts their eyes and plants their feet and attempts to ignore everything until they can’t anymore. Until the fear of the whip becomes more acute than the fear of pain. Somehow, somehow these horses will literally work until they collapse. We know this because it happens. Less and less, thankfully, due to increased awareness of pain responses, and better vetting. But it does happen. A stoic horse will keep going until they drop, often without any overt indication that there was much wrong with them. Some flaring of the nostrils, half-closed eyes. It’s almost frightening that they are so good at hiding things, but in the wild it’s what saves them from death. How unfortunate that in the modern world many can’t turn this instinct off, start lying down and moaning sooner than at death’s door.
Yet don’t some humans do this also? Our whip is the fear of failure, of not being able to sustain a roof over our heads, of being seen as “not good enough.” Some humans seem to kick out and scream that they cannot live this way anymore when faced with poor working conditions that threaten their health, while others put their heads down and pull more than their weight until the day their hearts and minds literally give out from stress. I’ve lost classmates and coworkers to burnout. Some were hospitalized with heart failure, some had mental breakdowns they never fully recovered from, some died. In the end it was never worth it. It is never worth the inability to ever try again or live a different way.
What we do to ourselves, we do to horses. They bear the brunt of our human societal problems. If it were truly a matter of life and death then yes, I would say they have no choice. But for the recreational rider it is never life and death. It is fear of embarrassment, or a trainer’s limited timeline, or wanting to compete, or needing a ride to justify the expense. The horse hesitates, the whip comes down.
Someone once told me “well, some days my back really hurts too, and I still have to go to work. So the horse can just suck it up and deal with it.” Yet the answer, in my mind, is that the human shouldn’t be forced to go to work while in pain any more than the horse should have to. It’s the fault of our unfeeling societal norms that makes them work while in excruciating pain. You would never know this person suffers from chronic excruciating pain from looking at her. She puts her head down and works. And yet… I worry it’s taking it’s toll. It isn’t a badge of honor or a testament to your strength to collapse one day. No moreso than it would be for a stoic horse. Please, take care of yourselves. Take care of your horses. Listen to the whispers of bodies approaching their limits. Sometimes there will be no screaming before the collapse. Sometimes it happens in total silence, still obediently walking in circles.
Maeve Birch Home 