The horse is the future

With the progress of mechanization a century ago, many declared the horse’s career had come to an end. But the prophecy has not come to pass and horses have adapted to modern life, taking on new roles in sports, leisure and health. But today there is a new threat to humans’ relationship to horses. On the pretext of the protection of animal welfare, some people go so far as to advocate severing the bond that has united the two species for at least five milennia. The alarm bells that Jean Louis Gouraud sets ringing here do not simply sound his opposition to the ideologies and sometimes violent activities of those who advocate an end to horse riding, they are also a reminder of several fundamental truths: firstly, as neither pets like cats and dogs, nor farmyard animals like cows and pigs, horses have their own role to play in the world so should have their own specific status. Secondly, for the horse, work does not necessarily mean alienation as it does for humankind; it can also be a form

of liberation. Work and play and activty are part of horses’ needs and crucial to their well-being. Thirdly, the relation- ship between humans and horses is not necessarily a relationship of master and slave, it is a reciprocal relationship with mutual benefits that both parties can enjoy. Finally if mechanization, urbanization and, today, cybernetics have gradually disconnected humankind from the natural world depriving us of the satisfaction of the needs of our own animality, horses can help us reconnect with our deeper nature, as well as nature itself.

A reason for which, the author proclaims in this short, galloping manifesto, far from being a museum piece from the past, the horse is instead the future.