Lovehoney - Jess wrote:
I'm sorry Talia but I disagree with you there. Horses existed long before sports were created "for" them, and way before we used them for work and transport. Just visit anywhere with wild horses and you'll see them doing just fine without any human "help".
.....(check out holistic horse handling - a lot can be done with nothing more than your breath)
......But no dog has ever (or will ever) care about the competition element of these things but sadly humans do. They care about "winning" and as dogs can't communicate with us on any other level than energy, the only thing the dog will pick up on is a stressed / pressured energy coming from their pack leader.
Yes, I realize that debating online - especially with a software that doesn't allow to split quotes - is difficult. So, in order:
I didn't originally mean that horses needed human help to survive - wild horses survive perfectly well on their own, as do wolves and bears. And how many are there left in Britain? Wild animals need space, and space is at a premium in most parts of Europe. Incidentally, there is to my knowledge only one species of wild horses living in freedom, and that's the Przewalski horse in the Mongolian desert. It has survived there (I believe some of the animals have not been re-introduced from zoos, though there is a repopulation program) because nobody wanted its land.
All other horses are at best feral, meaning domesticated animals that live in freedom - like an alley cat without a human to go home to. Examples are the Mustangs of the American West (and it took a lot of work to protect them - you might want to watch Misfits (Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable) and remember that the horses in their are neither CGI nor actors and that their pain and panic is real!), the ones in the desert of Namibia and in the Danube delta in Roumania. They have in common that they are horses that escaped or were "thrown out" and that they live in areas nobody else wants. As soon as people need (or want) the space, the horses will (be made to) disappear.
Dülmener "wild horses", New Forest Ponies and Camargue horses have owners - they are not wild at all but live in an extensive farming system.
And the thing with these feral horses is: They either are fit enough to survive - or they don't. I'm pretty sure my "old one" wouldn't - he needs the regular attention of a farrier and a dentist. Incidentally, starvation due to loss of teeth is the natural death for a horse in the wild (assuming his heart hasn't given out before and it didn't get caught by predators.) And have you seen the Mustang documentary where the stallion kills the foal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPyA60lQDR4)? That's nature for you...
What (or whom) do you mean by holistic horse handlilng? The people I admire most are Linda Tellington-Jones and Pat Parelli, with LTJ having the advantage of a few decades more of experience (and her methods also working for alpacas ;) ) - but I was impressed by what I saw of Pat Parellin at Equitana in Essen. Neither of which work only with their breath (wouldn't work for opening gates anyway)...
As for the dogs: No, they don't care about winning (that's what you wanted to write, isn't it?) - winning is an abstract concept. But I believe that they enjoy the praise when they do well and the fuss being made about them when they win. Is "dogs can't communicate with us on any other level than energy" meant in a physicist's sense (everything is energy)? Because otherwise I must assume that you don't have a lot of experience with dogs: The dogs I've known understood the words they had learnt, tone of voice and human body language (and I wouldn't be surprised if one day it were proven that animals do read minds) and in an ideal world every dog owner were capable of understanding their dog's body language and sounds. And in an ideal world people wouldn't stress over some agility competition either...
@Lovebirds_x: I am sorry that you have spent a good part of your life around the wrong sort of people - where I have ridden (several decades, but outside the competitve scene) riding crops, dressage whips and lunge whips have not been used in a cruel way. And I have NEVER EVER seen ANYBODY "beating the living hell out of their animal in frustration" - I would have pulled them off their horse! Neither would I ever allow a partner to hit me when I wasn't 100% confident that they have perfect control over the amount of force they use... (of course I know how my whips feel - I've tried them out before buying!)