When Tradition Conflicts with Welfare.By 🧘🏻‍♀️Divya Gurnay🐎

There is comfort in tradition. It gives us identity, lineage, a sense of belonging to something older than ourselves. In horsemanship, tradition is often worn like a badge of honour — passed from mentor to student, from generation to generation, unquestioned and revered, but a few sentences have caused more  suffering in the horse than the cliche term of traditionalists, “That’s how it’s always been done.”. Tradition, when it stops listening, becomes bane rather than a boon. It becomes a habit. And habit, when it stops caring, becomes harm. The horse, caught in the middle, pays the price for our nostalgia.

An Analogy: The Broken Cart Wheel:

There is an old village story of a wooden cart that carried grain across rough terrain. One wheel was cracked, but it had always made the journey. Every year, the crack deepened. Every year, grain spilled. Every year, the cart groaned louder. When someone finally suggested repairing the wheel, the elders replied,“But this cart has always gone this way.”. One winter, the wheel shattered. The grain was lost. The horse pulling the cart collapsed from the strain. The villagers mourned the loss — not realising the disaster was not sudden, but long ignored. So it is with many practices in the horse world.

Tradition Is Not the Enemy — Blind Loyalty Is:

Some traditions are born of wisdom, for example, turnout 7s a necessity, not a luxury,  patience over force, always and everytime. Quiet hands, softer mouths always help, but so many others persist not because they serve the horse, but because they serve human convenience, ego, or economics. We must be brave enough to ask.ouf selves," Does this practice still reflect what we now know about the horse, and  does it survive simply because questioning it feels like betrayal?

The Science Has Moved On —So should We:

Modern equine science has shattered several long-held assumptions and established that, pain-based training is not necessary but quite unnecessary. We know today that chronic stress elevates cortisol, weakening immunity, digestion, and musculoskeletal repair, that pain-based training reduces learning and elevates 'fear-memory'. We understand today that gastric ulcers, joint degeneration, and tendon breakdown are strongly correlated with management and workload practices in humans aswellas horses.

 Every psychologist knows today that learned helplessness masquerades as “good behaviour”. Thus pain activates the sympathetic nervous system, reducing learning capacity, increasing fear-based responses. Chronic stress elevates cortisol, impairing immunity, digestion, and musculoskeletal recovery. Horses subjected to repeated aversive stimuli often display learned helplessness, mistaken for obedience. Studies in saddle fit, bit pressure, and limb loading show measurable physiological damage long before lameness becomes visible.

This proves that the horse’s body does not care about tradition. It responds only to physics, biology, and stress.

Case Study: The “Proven Method” That Broke a Champion: He was bred for greatness. Trained by a respected stable. Schooled under methods that had produced winners for decades. Heavy workload at a young age. Tight equipment “for control.” Minimal turnout “to save energy.” The results were immediate — early success, podium finishes, applause. By seven, he was broken. Chronic tendon injuries. Gastric ulcers. Behavioural resistance mislabelled as attitude. The same methods that built his early wins quietly dismantled his longevity. When his management was finally changed — lighter training, welfare-led conditioning, equipment adjusted to anatomy, freedom of movement restored — something remarkable happened. He stopped breaking down. The tradition had not failed because it was old. It failed because it refused to evolve.

Why We Resist Change: is because  letting go of tradition can feel like admitting that our mentors were wrong, questioning our own success,  threatening an industry built on speed, spectacle, and silence. But progress has always required courage.There was a time when, horses were routinely bled “for balance”, overbitting was considered necessary, lameness was trained through, not treated, those practices ended because someone dared to say, “There must be a better way.”

Welfare Is Not Anti-Tradition — It Is Tradition Done Right: True horsemanship was never about domination. It was about partnership, observation, restraint. The greatest horsemen of history adapted to the horse in front of them. They listened. They adjusted. They evolved. What we call “modern welfare” is often simply old wisdom rediscovered, supported now by science rather than superstition.

A Question Worth Asking: If a tradition causes pain that science can measure, shortens careers we claim to value, silences behaviour we should be hearing, then loyalty to that tradition is not respect. It is a refusal to development and evolution.

A Final Reflection:  The phrase “that’s how it’s always been done” should never end a conversation,  especially when a living, feeling animal is involved. Traditions should be carried forward like heirlooms,  polished, repaired, and adapted to survive another generation. If they break the horse along the way, they were never worth preserving. The future of horsemanship will not be decided by those who cling hardest to the past, but by those brave enough to honour it by endeavouring to do better.

©️ @ 🧘DG.🐎

Advocate at Indian High Courts. 

Academics:- LL.M, LL.B., PG Human Rights, MA. Mass Communication and Journalism, B.A. Honours Psychology.

Special Skills Certifications :-

1. Film-direction and audio-visual story-telling certification from FTII, Pune, 

2. MOI. Qualified Mountaineering instructor from Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, Uttarkashi, India.

Equine Education and Skill sets:-

- 'Stud Management and Sales Consignment Graduate with honours' from National Stud England.

Certifications from the online campus of International Federation for Equestrian Sports, Switzerland (FEI): -

1. Handling Horses.

2. Handling horses in challenging situations. 

3. Equine Behaviour.

4. How Horses Learn.

5. General Conformation.

Certifications from the online campus of Michigan State University (USA): -

1. Normal Horse Behaviour.

2. Horse Handling.

3. Horse Manners.

4. Horse Hygiene/ Grooming.

5. Basic Horse Keeping.

6. Training and Exercising horses.

7. Machinery and Chemical Safety

8. Traveling with Horses.

9. Biosecurity for Horse Farms.

10. Healthy Horses.

11. Employer/ Employee Relations.      

        (in Equine Industry)