28/12/2025
I had a lovely day out today with family, visiting the Christmas lights at Chatsworth House.
While I was there, like any true horse lover, I couldn’t help but notice a sculpture of a horse and immediately went to take a closer look.
What I saw up close made me feel unexpectedly sad.
To me, this was not a majestic or beautiful representation of the horse. Instead, it reflected something far more troubling, an image that has become all too familiar in today’s equestrian culture.
The horse was overbent and behind the vertical, with a clear look of stress and discomfort in its expression. The ears were pinned back; the face appeared sunken and pinched. The eyes looked tense and peaked, and the muzzle was tight and strained—classic indicators of stress and pain, as described by the equine facial pain scale.
While this may “only” be a sculpture, it saddened me that this is how an artist chose to represent a horse.
And perhaps more importantly—why was this representation chosen at all?
Because this is what we are exposed to every day. In equestrian media. In both high- and low-level competition. In countless images shared daily across social media platforms.
So I have to ask: where are the soft faces? Where are the relaxed expressions, the stress-free representations of horses?
We need to stop normalising tension and start celebrating softness, comfort, and true wellbeing in the horse.
