Training Tools Are Banned Because of Politics and Money, Not Welfare

A popular force free dog trainer/internet personality just bought a horse. She believes dogs should be behaviorally euthanized instead of ever being corrected, but her horse is ridden with a strong bit, dropped nose band, and spurs. 

When critics have pointed out the irony of her horse using these aversive tools while she thinks dogs should be killed instead of corrected, her response is that her horse “seems fine” with being corrected and references that he is scoring well in competitions. Despite that she refuses to acknowledge the millions of dogs who have been trained with aversive tools who live happy and fulfilling lives. She believes those dogs must actually be suffering and should have avoided suffering by being put to sleep, but her horse “seems fine.”

This isn’t an isolated instance of force free trainers having severe differences in their opinions on how horses and dogs are trained. None of the countries that have banned remote collars and prong collars have banned horse training equipment that has the same function. In fact several of them have had recent incidents of highly respected horse trainers abusing horses on camera during clinics and training classes. And these trainers are still being allowed to compete and teach in those countries! 

When you understand how the horse industry and the dog industry operate on a financial level it is clear this has nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with money.

 If horses couldn’t compete at a high level many powerful and rich people would lose a lot of money. But most horses can’t reach that level without aversive equipment. 

There is nowhere near as much money in dog sports. The ultra rich and powerful don’t care about dog competitions in the way that they are financially ingrained in horse competitions. 

Effective horse training makes a lot of money and results in a lot of fun for the rich and powerful involved in sports like polo, dressage, show jumping, and eventing. The general public isn’t really involved in the horse world. Politicians looking for a cause for the public to rally behind won’t get the results they are looking for if they focus on trying to criticize and ban training that the rich and powerful are involved in.

The general public is heavily involved in dog welfare, care, and training. It is easy for a politician to create a villain in the dog training industry and have the well meaning but poorly educated general public rally behind them. As long as there are exceptions for the rich and powerful and their horses they don’t mind the lies politicians spread about dog training. 

Effective dog training doesn’t make big bucks for anyone, especially not for the massive greedy companies that fund our veterinary institutions and pharmaceutical industries. So instead they promote a false ideology that dogs, unlike any other animal or human on this planet, must learn everything without any discomfort or corrections. And if they cannot learn after a ridiculous amount of expensive force free training sessions then that the dog is defective and should be medicated or killed. 

When you zoom out and see the big picture you can see how easily you are being played. How even the force free trainers who insist “death before discomfort” only care about those standards when it lines their pockets. How countries that happily ban dog training tools will look the other way when it comes to horses and legitimate abuse because of financial interest. 

I am not going to post the name of the dog trainer because she is a soulless entity that feeds off of attention on the internet and I don’t want to make her any more powerful. Here are just some horse trainers whose countries have ignored their abuse and continue to promote horse training tools while banning dog training tools:

Anna Maciniak- beat a horse with a whip for no reason during a training session with a client on videos. Still trains in the Netherlands where aversive dog training tools are banned.

Andreas Helgstrand- used training tools incorrectly to the point of bleeding and open wounds on the horses and was documented on undercover video made into a documentary about his abuse. He still trains and competes in Denmark where aversive dog training tools are banned. 

Carina Cassøe Krüth- beat a horse with a whip for no reason during a training session on video although the video has not been made public. She still trains and competes in Denmark where aversive dog training tools are banned.

Max Kuhner- beat horses legs with wooden poles over jumps to make them jump higher. No video evidence of this, but several first hand accounts. He still trains and competes in Germany where aversive dog training tools are banned. 

Caesar Parra- several accounts of beating horses with whips, misuse of nose bands and bits with a variety of video evidence. While he was banned from competing in America for 15 years, he still sells and trains horses all over the world and has a lot of financial ties to Germany where aversive dog training tools are banned.

Charlotte Dujardin- beat a horse with a whip for no reason during a training session with a client on video. While aversive dog training tools are not banned in the UK where she lives she regularly trains and competes in European countries where aversive dog training tools are banned. 

I am not saying that horse training tools should be banned. There is a time and a place for dog and horse training tools. My complaint is about irony and idiocracy that two industries with the same goal are being treated wildly differently because of political and financial interests. If the goal of these politicians and private groups were to create a more ethical environment for training animals their focus would be on education of proper use of tools in both industries, not banning and restricting tools in one industry and looking the other way in the other.