Naked English vets and admirable Swiss regulations

I get such amusement out of my German horse magazine. Things are just so different here.

There are actually ads targeting people who want to give up their horse to slaughter. Actually, that makes it easier on the horse, targeted individually and often put down in its home.

But that's not funny, it's just a hope I have that horses suffer less.

This month's magazine had a last-minute Christmas idea that surprised me. You can buy a calendar for 2016 featuring vets doing their work with horses.

Not having any clothes on.
     
I was always a little taken aback by the "Grooms" calendar featuring topless muscle guys leading horses around. This is...yah.....not that.





     

I always read the readers' letters section cuz I am curious if other people react the way I do to their articles. Like the one about how fat you're allowed to be before you shouldn't ride a horse. That got some attention. People on the verge of being un-ridably fat wrote in and wondered why men at their weight are OK but women are not OK.

I like to take notes in the margins for S, who I always recycle my magazine to.

OK, this one was great. The cover story was about happy horses. I'm referring to the chestnut horse on the right, the one leaning its head into the lady. That was the cover in dispute.

Someone wrote in and said,

"How blind do you have to be to see how 'deeply sad' the horse on your cover is?"

I was "not deeply sad" that the magazine gave a point by point description of facial features for that reader, to try to teach how to read emotions in horses. It was odd, however, that they said, "This horse is fine because it was photographed by our very own photographer." Huh? That was the line my husband pointed out to me that I'd missed. OK then. But they do give a detailed description - lips, eyes, mouth, ears, to try to teach what relaxation looks like.

     


     
On the opposite end of relaxation, there was an excerpt about how in Switzerland, draw reins won't be permitted in the show ring or warm-up ring anymore. I think that's great. But honestly, I've never seen anyone use draw reins yet here, they all use a type that----instead of ending at the rider's hand, the reins attach back to the saddle. So there is no possibility of release by the rider, ever. Draw reins are more ethical, in m mind, than the Vienna reins (?) I've seen so often, and had been forced to use in lessons. Get the horse's head down, don't teach it, just force it.

That's more ethical because the alternative is that the horse goes to slaughter due to a sore back. I was actually told that by the barn owner.

Switzerland made it illegal to smoke at train stations first. Switzerland is working on the welfare of the horse more rapidly than any other nation I know of. They investigate instances of rollkur and pursue it, publicizing it. I just wanna give my voice - draw reins aren't great, but they are not nearly as bad as riding with side reins attached to the saddle, which is what I've seen most often here.