Humanity owes the horse an immeasurable debt. For centuries the horse has been our partner, has shaped our history and sacrificed itself for our defense, our causes, and our conquests. The Native American Comanches, master horsemen, created an empire on the power they conjured from their deep and unique connection with the horse. The horse was critical to their existence as it became to the white settlers of the western frontier who would never have prevented their own annihilation had they not adopted the native’s mounted war techniques. Yet modern society, which has long abandoned warring on horseback, still tolerates dangerous and violent exploitation of the horse. Indeed, taxpayers fund it. Despite the sacrifices these allies have made for our evolution, we continue to demand they forfeit their lives, but not for so noble a cause as our survival. Today horses die not in battle but for sport. Another Triple Crown season means another cache of young horses who will publicly risk their lives for profit and entertainment. Hence the life of the American racehorse, run to death by the hundreds every year, is cheapened and disrespected.
Horses are central to my personal history, and I am bedeviled by memories of my track life, my former self. Years ago, I was galloping racehorses and immersed wholly in the world of racing. I admit to this day as a rider I have pride in my past. Though now as I get older and think more broadly my sense of the wrongness of modern American racing expands to include the context of the historical and philosophical sacrifices horses have made for humans and how dismissed their enormous contributions generally are. Whether one’s love for the horse manifests in the act of dressing up for a day at the races or in recognizing and being honest about the reality of how brutal racing can be to horses it is critical to think of the animal itself and to consider the countless horses who have died and will die for the trivial activity of racing. For them my heart aches. For those who acknowledge that reality and still defend and endorse racing, I am bewildered by that degree of callousness. The human ego is the horse’s most vile predator.
