ABSTRACT
How should we approach the ethics of training and riding horses? The fact that this is a cross-species relationship puts pressure on our usual ethical approaches, which rely on treating others as autonomous beings, as ends in themselves, or at the very least as beings whose interests are no less worthy of consideration than our own. The fact that it is a power relationship puts pressure on the egalitarianism that underpins most modern approaches to morality. This chapter will explore some of these tensions and some of the ways in which thoughtful riders and trainers have sought to deal with them. It will also examine the “political” turn in thinking about our relations with animals. What are the advantages and disadvantages of treating the relationship as one of co-citizenship, which allows for greater diversity between the parties concerned? Does this political theoretical approach allow us to conceive of relations between horses and riders as fair, just, or legitimate? Or is it rather a question of the ethos in terms of which we approach those relations?
