Why we so desperately need “Brain, Pain, or Training?” taught everywhere…

This a quote from a public post on Facebook:

“No it just rears bigger I don’t need any natural stuff bloody thing needs to be told.”

By “natural stuff” I’m assuming the writer means: thought, respect, intelligence, problem solving…the qualities that most people value, which most people aspire to. “Brain, Pain, or Training?” was conceived out of comments such as this. Years of listening to people discussing how they had beaten their horse and then discovered it was in pain, its saddle didn’t fit, it was in foal, the reasons went on, but force or violence had often been used somewhere down the line.

I am reminded of the policing of Gene Hunt in the hit shows “Ashes to Ashes” and “Life of Mars”. This was standard fare in the 70s and 80s, beat up your suspects first and question them later. This was also the era of sexual harassment in the workplace being commonplace and acceptable. This is an era which now seems so outdated it belongs to a different world, and not one that we want to return to.

Whenever I stumble across comments such as this, I am so saddened that in our enlightened times, in an age when the access of knowledge is merely a click of a button away, people still fall into re-acting with violence, rather than considering with thought.

Take a moment and ask yourself – is this behaviour abnormal? Has something changed? Is it in pain?

Personally I will advocate the “natural stuff” every day over spurs, whips, ignorance and violence.

Please share this and help improve the welfare of horses everywhere, one horse at a time.