What Do We Owe the Horses?

Growing up, we had a horse named Star. She was a little Arabian, mocha brown with a star on her forehead. My mom bought her, and my oldest sister showed her in 4-H a couple of times.

By the time I was making memories, she was already old. I remember my mom always being mad, because the sellers had told her Star was three, but she was probably closer to eight (hence why you should always look non-gift horses in the mouth). My mom was not a horse person, she was new and excited. I imagine she met the horse, she wanted the horse, so she bought the horse. And the rest was history.

I rode Star a bit growing up. Sometimes with a saddle, but more often without one. She wasn’t very friendly. In fact, she did a lot of biting. But she wasn’t that big either, so us kids could lead her around by the mane and climb from the pasture gate onto her back and ride her bareback. I don’t think she hated it, we only weighed like 40 pounds and we didn’t ask very much.

If it hadn’t been for Star, I might have become a horse girl. I might have bought into the “Hidalgo” hype, the idea that horses are universally friendly, loving, loyal, and wildly smart. The idea that they want nothing more than to be with people, to be part-friend, part-companion, all lovable, hooved teddy bear.

Star was none of those things. In fact, Star was often a huge asshole. She had no compunction about rubbing our little bare legs hard into the barbed wire fence when she was finished playing with us, or just bucking us off and walking away. I don’t think Star was incapable of being friendly, loving, etc. I think she could have made a good companion to someone who had the time, the expertise, and the passion to be her rider. None of us ever had that relationship with her. She was our pet. And honestly, I think she hated that.

____

There are about 6.7 million horses in the United States right now, owned by about 1.5 million people. That’s way down off the top of nearly 30 million in 1910, back when horses had important jobs, both on farms and throughout society (even in war). Today, the main reason for the ownership of horses in the U.S. is for equestrian sports.

Horses fall in an interesting place in the agricultural world, because they have, in a way, aged out of being a farm animal. There was an era when there was at least one horse in every barnyard. Today, not so much. In fact, the USDA stopped asking about laboring animals altogether in the 1970s. So sometimes horses are considered to be part of the agricultural landscape, and sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they’re counted as “livestock” (a word for an animal whose primary value is in its salability, hence the word “stock”), sometimes they are counted as pets, sometimes as something in the middle or something else altogether (sporting equipment?).

I wonder sometimes if horses feel like they– as a species– have been retired, and whether or not that’s a good thing. Horses, largely, have no more jobs. For 99% of horses, their only purpose is either leisure or pleasure. But of course, not their own leisure or pleasure. Horses live (and eat, and receive vet attention) largely for the leisure and pleasure of their owners.

Compared to their previous occupations– pulling plows and wagons, and carrying riders and freight, maybe this new, easy life is a boon. Horses used to be much more essential to our lives, but that also meant they were more vulnerable. A horse that couldn’t do its job was not a pet in need of rehab, it was a broken tool that could either be affordably fixed or disposed of and replaced. Surely horses are glad to not be thought of in that way, for the most part, any more.

If the metric for species success for horses is pure population however, they’re likely discouraged. The number of horses in America is trending downward. Horses are expensive, and land to keep them even more so. According to a recent survey, nearly 31% of American households may contain a horse girl (or horse “enthusiast,” to use the American Horse Council’s lingo), but most of these equine lovers have to get their fix without owning a horse themselves.

____

I never did become a horse girl.* But I do like horses. I like that they’re so big. In North America, we don’t get a lot of in-person exposure to megafauna, and so to get the chance to walk up to an animal that weighs thousands of pounds and rub your palm under its peach fuzz chin is pretty magical.

There’s a reason, too, that cowboys ride off into the sunset and white knights are depicted astride a charger. There is truly something enchanting about the elevation of being on horseback. It offers a thought-provoking combination of new perspectives, allowing us both to see farther across the landscape while forcing us to acknowledge that to gain that valuable vantage point, you have to put yourself at the mercy of an animal that could crush you to death.

I could wax poetic about horses for many, many thousands of words, but it’ll save time if you take my word that I really do like horses. And it’s more than that too. I think horses are worthy. Some not-inconsequential percentage of human progress (literal and metaphorical) we’ve achieved with the help of horses. They have helped us go to great lengths, reach new heights, and carry what we need when we get there. All that they have done for us, and continue to do for us simply by existing and being generally cool, makes them worthy of our care, love, and most importantly, our respect.

This is where it gets tricky, because we have a lot of horses in America that are, arguably, not being shown very much respect at all. There are tens of thousands of feral horses, for one, on both public and private lands, horses that have been dumped by owners who could no longer care for them. There are, heartbreakingly, countless horses that suffer outright abuse and neglect. But there’s also another flavor of horse, a much more prolific group, and those are the ones I think about most.

I was driving around Virginia with an old farmer the first time I heard someone refer to a horse as a “lawn ornament.” This farmer didn’t have beef with these horses, in fact, he made good pocket money cutting hay and selling small square bales to feed these beasts of aesthetic burden. The owners of these animals, the farmer told me, never ride these horses, rarely even interact with them, and mostly still own them because of some combination of inertia and embarrassment. These people retire, or they save up, and they buy their horse and they think, “Now I’m going to be a horse person.” And when this impulse to be a different, more suave and equestrian version of themself fades, they’re left with 1,200 pounds of disappearing hay bales and mounting vet and farrier bills.

If at this point, these un-converted horse people admitted defeat and parted ways with these majestic mounts, I’d understand. Sometimes things just don’t work out. But in my experience, a lot of people don’t do this. A lot of people think, “I’ll get around to being a horse person soon.” And then years pass. Young, able ponies become cantankerous old nags from standing around in a field, bored out of their minds. They eat their alfalfa leaves, lick their salt blocks, drink from their troughs, and life passes them by with each car and country biking group who skirts their fence.

Now again, maybe I’m mouthing off about something that horses themselves are actually cool with. Maybe these relatively intelligent mammals love standing around in these single acre sacrifice zones, swatting flies and reaching for trash on the far side of the fence. Maybe they’re happy to be retired, and prefer to just hang out on their own then to have a job. Maybe this is true. I cannot speak, really, for the horses.

But this life is at odds with what I know and believe about the magic, power, and majesty of the equine species, and I feel like horses probably do want richer, fuller lives than this.

____

At the end of the day, what horses do or don’t want is besides the point in the conversation about their role in the agricultural landscape. Horses are still a part of it. Horse farms are not counted as sports fields or golf courses. Most horses live on pasture, which is a type of agricultural land, or they eat large quantities of hay and alfalfa, which is grown there. Horses, and the places they live and eat, are not a huge contributor to agriculture’s problems by any means, but horses are there, loafing around, drinking water, eating plants. They’re part of it, and they should remain part of the conversation.

I the part of Virginia where I learned about lawn ornaments, horses are probably not taking space that could be better used in some other way. We don’t need more corn or wheat acres, nor more pasture for cattle. America is about 60% agricultural land. We don’t need to begrudge a little space for horses in the lush East.

But consider a landscape where water and forage is not so abundant. In the Colorado River Basin, 2 million acres of pastureland is irrigated, primarily to feed cattle and horses. This represents 60% of the irrigated acres in the basin, and in turn, 2/3rds of all Colorado River water is going to agriculture for irrigation. Now, cattle are almost certainly eating the majority of forage grown in this water-intensive way, but it’s worth asking– if we could even reduce this irrigated acreage by five or ten percent, what would that mean for fish, wildlife, and people downstream? If that five or ten percent is currently going to feed or water leisure and pleasure horses, how do we feel about that?

Surely many will say that the market will take care of this. But we already know that the mechanisms for distributing water to its highest and best use, as “free markets” supposedly should, are broken. Agricultural uses get the most water not because they can pay the most (price being the mechanism that “free markets” depend on), but because they’ve used it the longest. To the market purists out there, this amounts to a water subsidy for agriculture, since farmers get their water much cheaper than, say, the cities of Phoenix or Los Angeles do. And this agricultural subsidy makes it possible to irrigate pasture or alfalfa field to feed hobby horses with some of the most in-demand water on Earth.

In that way, it’s not just farming that receives a water subsidy. We subsidize horse ownership in the Colorado basin as well. And again I have to wonder, should we not only be allowing or encouraging people to keep horses as glorified lawn ornaments, but also be paying to help them do it?

I don’t know, personally. And I don’t know exactly what to do about it either. Horse ownership, in many instances, is a particular poignant example of aesthetic-ification of farm and ranch life. And I think we need to be asking ourselves and each other hard questions about the distribution of resources, the lives of animals in our care, and what we should and shouldn’t own.

What I’m 100% sure of, though, is that I’m belaboring a point that’s bound to be unpopular. I’m sure there are many horse girls out there who are anxious to rip me limb for limb for asking these questions. I get it. Horses are great. Why would we ever want to have fewer horses? But I think a clear-eyed and grown-up answer is that we might want fewer horses because we live in a world of scarcity. We might want fewer horses because we already have a lot of horses, many of which are unloved, untreasured, and lacking in respect. And we might want fewer horses so that we can take care of the ones we have in the ways they deserve.

Whatever we decide, I think the very least we owe the horses is to ask these questions, and to sit with consequences, all the consequences, of the answers we choose.

____

*Yes, I was, for a few years, a goat girl. But that’s different.