The day’s training had come to an end. The horse ranch, in the evening, was filled with the scent of fresh hay. I led my horse, Jiaotang, back to the stable. Three-year-old Jiaotang always came to me, asking for pets. Looking at her adorable face, I recalled the first time we met. A year ago, we met by chance during a training session. At that time, we had just finished the physical training and I was leaning against the fence to rest when I saw my coach leading a young horse I had never seen before. Unlike the others, she didn’t walk in calmly, as if careful to observe the other horses training. Jiaotangwas just an ordinary, timid, and mischievous horse, without a noble bloodline or any outstanding achievements. Even when facing unfamiliar obstacles, she would tense up and shrink back, like a child who had not yet learned to be brave.
In that moment, I made up my mind to help her break through overcoming her fears.
During this year, we gradually built a close bond together. I taught her with patience, never forcing her to do anything beyond what she could handle. Watching her improve at jumping hurdles made me genuinely happy, even more than if I had won an award myself. In our daily interactions, we learned to understand each other and made progress together. She has never been a tool for my training, but rather a friend has who grew alongside me.
From our harmonious relationship, I’ve grown to see her as a true equal and friend, not just a horse to train. This shift in how I treated my own horse changed my perspective of the equestrian industry when I later learned about the inhumane abuse that innocent racehorses endured behind closed doors. My coach once told me about how top-quality racehorseswould be sold off after they retired and stopped competing, but I didn’t believe him at first. It wasn’t until I uncovered the full truth of just how horrifying that offhand “reselling” really was months later that I truly understood.
When I watched The Dark Side of the Australian Horse Industry documentary, I saw horrific scenes of horses being auctioned off, slaughtered and brutally killed, all captured by pinhole cameras (ABC News in Depth 05: 47). As racehorses grew older and retired, they were treated as worthless waste, auctioned off and slaughtered at will, no matter how successful and rich they made their previous owners. Those scenes exposed the reality of the equestrian industry and are still vivid in my mind today.
At first, I just thought these were cruel acts committed by a few people. However, as I studied more about the dark underbelly of the global equestrian culture, I realized that there was a larger system behind it: the objectification of animals. This concept frames humans as inherently superior to animals, granting people absolute, unchallenged power to dominate, use, and discard animals at will; it is also a core part of human-animal dualism in equestrian culture (Eichler). Faunalytics, an animal welfare research database, puts it perfectly:
An owner’s care for their horse wasn’t necessarily for the horse’s sake as a sentient being. Rather, it was tied to the objectified horse’s role as an athlete or investment (Hanes).
According to Hanes, racehorses are objectified through the conditional care they receive. Since their so-called care are never for the animals’ good and used to maximize their competitive value instead, they become mere tools for their owners to win races. However, when a horse has no racing or low value, its owner will either abuse it to increase its performance rankings or discard it for profit. Official data from 2025 records that 811 retired racehorses were slaughtered in Great Britain and Ireland, while 642 racehorses with poor performances were subjected to whipping abuse (Animal Aid).
The deliberate human choice to objectify the racehorses through conditional care was at the core of their mistreatment post-retirement.
While it would never cross my mind to abuse Jiaotang for losing races or sell her after retirement. I felt deeply guilty for being part of the industry that practiced these things. While I was aware of the objectification of racehorses, I had never questioned it. A heavy question took root in my heart: why do humans claim the right to decide the start and end of an animal’s life?
I soon realized that this materialized relationship of human-animal dualism was not merely an individual behavior, but a reflection of a larger group culture of shared values between equestrian riders (Cheung et al.). Many riders have been exposed since childhood to the wrong notion that “horse racing is a commodity,” which leads them to think that so-called abuse and abandonment was normal and taken-for-granted phenomena (Cheung et al.). Yet when they realized that that these actions were morally wrong, they experienced cognitive dissonance to justify their existence (Cotton).
For example, they might claim “horses did not feel pain” or “this was just an unchangeable industry rule” to justify their cruel or neglectful actions. The cognitive dissonance allowed them to find excuses to ease their minds, suppress their guilt, and gradually accept these contradictory facts. More importantly, these riders tacitly accepted in their actions that horses without competition value needed to be disposed of, even if they never consulted with each other. Finally, the individual acts of cognitive dissonance eventually hardens into a societal system built on animal abuse—since there are no mandatory rules today to track retired horses, the unreported training injuries found from Animal Aid are just the tip of the iceberg of this major problem.
Through my continuous research, I finally understood that it was human-superiority-to-animal dualism, the core of equestrian culture’s flawed logic, that was the core belief that gave people the right to manipulate and shape animals at will (Eichler).
But can this cycle really not be broken? Then I looked at Jiaotang, right next to me, healthy and content. Unlike the racehorses trapped in the industry’s cycle of abuse, my coach and I chose to care for her with kindness and respect. We cared about her greatly, treating her like a friend, and I realized that the choices we humans make decide what happens to these animals. I didn’t take a self-centered perspective, seeing myself as her savior or good master, but regarded her as an equal friend. This truly broke us out of this cycle and allowed us to resist dualism.
When I take care of Jiaotang, I also do so meticulously, as if she is my companion. Rather than treating her as a tool to build my career on, disregarding her sentience, or forcing her to race with a tongue-tie and whip, I make sure she is healthy, happy, and able to pursue her own goals even if she never wins any medals.
This journey has made me understand that real compassion and responsibility mean rejecting the rampant beliefs of human-animal dualism in the horse racing industry. Humans have no moral justification for reducing animals to disposable tools and abandoning them at will. We also have no right to end their lives for profit. True sympathy meansregarding the horse as a living and emotional being, as I do with Jiaotang. It is precisely with such a sense of compassion that I am driven to oppose the dehumanization, objectification, and abuse of racehorses and to advocate for them when they can’t.
Fortunately, more people are criticizing this system built on human-animal dualism. Welfare groups, such as the International Group for Safety and Racing Values (IGSRV), have set life-long protection rules, and equine shelters haverescued abandoned racehorses. When I dove deeper throughout my research, I found there are ways to treat racehorses better after they “retire,” not just kill them and sell them (Keim). After they retire, they can also stay in farms, like the thoroughbred rehabilitation and re homing center located in Elkton, which takes in retired thoroughbred racehorses, help the horses find good homes, and assist with rehabilitation. Many people have established animal shelters to give the horses better care. Every small act of kindness, every choice of respect rather than exploitation, stems from this shared compassion, which is our greatest responsibility to all living beings.
Works Cited
Animal Aid. Victims of British and Irish Horse Racing: Annual Report 2025-6. Feb. 2026, www.animalaid.org.uk/campaign-resource/victims-of-british-and-irish-horse-racing-2025/. Accessed 2 Mar. 2026.
Cheung, Erica, et al. “‘But My Horse Is Well Cared For’: A Qualitative Exploration of Cognitive Dissonance and Enculturation in Equestrian Attitudes toward Performance Horses and Their Welfare.” Animal Welfare, vol. 34, 1 Jan. 2025, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/animal-welfare/article/but-my-horse-is-well-cared-for-a-qualitative-exploration-of-cognitive-dissonance-and-enculturation-in-equestrian-attitudes-toward-performance-horses-and-their-welfare/6FF0114E2170F90E2AA50D67 1F56B8FE, https://doi.org/10.1017/awf.2025.10028.
Cotton, John L. “Cognitive Dissonance in Selective Exposure.” Selective Exposure to Communication, edited by Dolf Zillmann and Jennings Bryant. Routledge, 1985, pp. 11–33.
“The Dark Side of Australia's Horse Racing Industry | 7.30.” YouTube, uploaded by ABC News In-depth, 18 Oct. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp-ALoBRW20.
Eichler, Lauren. “Countering Genocidal Dehumanization: Paulo Freire and Thomas Norton-Smith on Humans and Animals.” International Journal of Philosophy, ijp.tamu.edu/?page_id=857. Accessed 2 Mar. 2026.
Equine Advocates. “Horse Sanctuary.” Equine Advocates, www.equineadvocates.org/sanctuary/. Accessed 2 Mar. 2026.
Cheung, E., Mills, D., & Ventura, B. A. “How Equestrian Culture Cultivates Horse Welfare Beliefs.” Faunalytics, 15 Mar. 2021, faunalytics.org/how-equestrian-culture-cultivates-horse-welfare-beliefs/. Accessed 2 Mar. 2026.
International Group for Safety and Racing Values (IGSRV). “Welfare Guidelines for Horseracing.” IGSRV, 2023, igsrv.org/welfare-statement/. Accessed 2 Mar. 2026.
Keim, Christina. “Caring for the Older Horse.” Academic Equestrian. 25 Mar. 2015, christinakeim.com/2015/03/25/caring-for-the-older-horse/. Accessed 2 Mar. 2026.
RSPCA Australia. “Key Issues in Horse Racing.” RSPCA, www.rspca.org.au/key-issues/horse-racing/. Accessed 2 Mar. 2026.
Wild Jolie. “How Much Does a Racing Horse Cost? (Price Chart).” Wild Jolie, wildjolie.com/blogs/guide/how-much-does-a-racing-horse-cost. Accessed 27 Mar. 2026.
Williams, David. “Is it ethical to continue to race horses?” Veterinary Record, vol. 187, no. 1, 2020, p. 38. doi:10.1136/vr.m2778.