Imagine you bought a ride-on lawn mower to cut the grass on your property. Provided you serviced it every now and again, there’d be no reason to think that it wouldn’t keep running for ages with no issues, would there? If it did keep breaking down, you could keep fixing the broken parts or you could ask yourself whether what you’d been trying to do with it or how you were maintaining it, was compatible with the use that its design and specification were intended to deliver on.
Compare the effect on a mower if it was being used on a small house garden every 3 weeks, to how it would go tackling 20 acres of lush grass every day. There’s no doubt that the poor little guy would have some trouble managing that. What if you used the mower to run down to the local shops at 60km an hour for bread and milk every few days? Or maybe to try and tow your horse float around the driveway area and up a steep hill to park it in the shed? What if, instead of using the fuel that the manufacturer specified, you used water or whatever was inside the rusty old fuel can that you found in the shed?
Would a logical person assume that their mower was a lemon? Would they assume that if they bought a different brand or a newer model of the same type of mower, that they could keep on doing the same things and expecting a different outcome?
Probably not.
What if we apply the same logic to our horses? More and more horses are struggling to operate on the fuel that’s being put into them. I’m referring here, to the growing number of horses afflicted by EMS and other metabolic issues. Like a mower that’s being filled up with jet fuel or water instead of ordinary unleaded petrol, there are consequences to the internal workings when this happens. Like a mower, many of our horses aren’t being used every three weeks or so to keep all the working parts in order, they’re being parked out in the elements for extended periods and ignored, apart from having their fuel tank topped up to overflowing each day.
So what conditions are the design and technical specifications of the horse aiming to operate under?
Surprisingly similar to that of humans.
From the time that they stopped evolving until fairly recently in evolutionary terms, horses lived a similar life to that of the first humans. A herd of horses would move around a defined geographic area or home range following the food. Poor quality, small quantities of food, while constantly oving. Every day would start with a new view, new smells and new challenges. The brain of every horse in the herd was fully engaged in the crucial, relevant task of keeping up and keeping hunger at bay. They were never alone and if they were, it meant that things weren’t looking so good for them.
The life of a human at around the time that our brains and bodies stopped evolving around 300,000 years ago into roughly the configuration they are today, also featured extensive travel and changes of scenery as a part of everyday life. Our lives were like a permanent hiking trip, where we moved around following the food, taking only what we could carry, while doing our best to stay away from danger. Our brains were fully occupied with what everyone was going to eat that day and where we were headed to the next. We lived in small groups and it wasn’t uncommon for us to go the whole of our lives without meeting anyone outside of our group. We were never alone and if we were, it also didn’t bode well for us.
Whether we’re talking about human brains or horse brains, what happens when there’s nothing of great importance to expend all that brain capacity on? Nothing other than the same four walls, or same four sides of a paddock or stable to look at, day after day after day. It doesn’t really matter how big the living room or paddock is, once you’ve walked around the whole thing a few times, that’s pretty much it for your new views, new smells and new challenges because you can probably see the whole of it, no matter where you stand. You can probably also eat as much as you can fit into your stomach without moving more than a few steps, so what’s the point of an existence then?
But we’ve always lived in houses, and horses have always been kept in stables and paddocks, so what’s the problem?
When both horses and humans started living in shelters, we didn’t live the lives that we live now.
We presumably went into whatever shelter we could find at night, so that we didn’t get eaten by something and got to rest our weary bones, but come daylight, we were on the road again. When we settled down at the start of the agricultural revolution around 10,000 BCE, and caves become huts that whole families lived in, we were equally busy during daylight hours, plowing fields and whatnot. As time went on, huts got bigger, with fewer people in them and it was decided that it was okay to spend more time inside than out, by ourselves, doing nothing.
It’s the same with stables and paddocks. The original purpose of a stable, was to conveniently store working horses when not in use, so that they could rest and recuperate before the next time they were needed, without expending more energy than necessary looking for food in a paddock. Paddocks were designed to provide an environment for livestock to be fattened up on as quickly and efficiently as possible, prior to slaughter or sale.
Compare that to our goals for our horses. If they are working horses and need to conserve energy at all costs, then stables and paddocks are the ideal way to achieve that. But if that’s not the goal for them, then maybe we’re going about achieving whatever our goal is the wrong way?
The wrong tool for the job
It doesn’t matter how attractive a house or stable is, if we’re in it alone, with nothing better to do than eat or find ways to distract ourselves, we’re not being operated as the manufacturer intended and it shouldn’t be a surprise when cracks start appearing.
Please don’t take this as a criticism of people who keep horses this way, it’s an observation of our acceptance of this way of living as the only possible option. Which is the same as our acceptance of a lot of other things, because that’s the way they’ve always been done.
Always is a relative term
But always is a relative term and for some reason, we only tend to think back a few decades or centuries in our search for the beginning of a precedent. This itself is a feature of our brains that’s enabled humans to thrive as they have – stick together and stick to what you know, without question or deviation from what’s worked so far.
So what do we do about it? For a start, we consider learning to think like scientists, critical thinkers who keep coming back to the question of what the objective of the task or project is.
As far as our horses go, few of us live on properties that would enable us to wind back the clock and let our horses to live as they once did. But we can replicate the fundamentals of the existence they were designed for, in miniature form in something like a paddock paradise or horse track system. Moving to follow a limited amount of food, with friends for protection and social interaction, and as much scope for exploration and thinking as possible.
As for us humans, most of us either aren’t in a position to go on a never-ending camping trip either or wouldn’t choose to, even if we could. But that’s not the only feature of the life we were designed for that can be replicated in other ways. A direct connection with nature, a purpose to our everyday activities and a sense of belonging and responsibility to a group of people we identify with, are all common-sense recommendations of organisations like Beyond Blue who’ve spent some time and effort thinking about the cracks that have appeared for humans.
Cause and effect
For some reason, we keep treating the symptoms our horses (and ourselves) are suffering from, as if they are unrelated to the cause. As a society, we haven’t seemed to grasp the concept that the way our horses (and ourselves) live now, is a construct that was devised by people who knew far less than we do now about the design and technical specifications of brains and bodies and how the ancestors that we evolved from lived.
We know without doubt that every form of life on the planet evolved from a single cell organism over millions of years into what we see today, constantly adapting to changing conditions, to improve the chances of survival.
I’m not asking you to take my word for this, I’m asking you to consider adopting the scientific method in your enquiries of the cause and effect of your horse’s management. When we think or say always, as in “this is the way it’s always been done”, we might need to re-think how far back that always goes.
To quote Star Trek’s Mr Spock “change is the essential process of all existence.” and once we know better, we have the opportunity to do better.