ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates how riders and trainers orient towards the need of the horse during training sessions in sports dressage. The results show that riders and trainers both act as interpreters giving voice to cognitive, emotional, and physical needs of the horse and use the interpretations as resources in negotiations on what the behaviour of the horse means and how the rider should respond to it. The chapter argues that equine welfare can be understood as locally accomplished ethics-in-practices, emerging in the local, contextualised interaction between horse, rider, and trainer. Such practices differ between various contexts, and over time they sediment into rather stable practices that can, but must not, conform with equine welfare standards.
