05/30/2026
A much needed discussion about burnout in the horse world.
I started training professionally in 2017.
For the first several years that I was offering public services, I was riding upwards of 20 horses a day.
Generally speaking, half of those would be racehorses and then the other half would be clients at my regular Barn.
Throughout this time, I sustained multiple injuries that I then had to ride through in order to continue to be able to make a living.
I galloped racehorses with a broken hand.
I rode after too short of a break following a concussion.
I sustained a serious fall and injured my back and only took a couple of days off, out of complete necessity because I was so sore that I could not ride.
I was often applauded for my work ethic and how much I was riding.
I took pride in my ability to ride horses through all sorts of behaviors, no matter how dangerous.
I maintained the perspective that if I wanted to “make it” I simply had to work harder.
Now, after a couple years of slowing down, I am still paying for the damage that I did to my mind and body burning myself out and the way that I did.
I am still trying to heal from long-term damage that was sustained due to chasing a dream.
My story is not unique. It also isn’t specific to only people who are training and riding horses.
We see similar stories of people who are working in barns as well.
The workload and what people are expected to sustain over a long periods of time often isn’t conducive to physical and mental health.
People are often encouraged to work through injuries, or, out of necessity, because if they do not work, they do not continue to make any sort of income.
This workaholic type culture that is so prevalent in our industry, ends up robbing people of their love for horses.
Even people who don’t burn out and take a break.
You see the impacts of burnout in how they treat the horses.
Lack of patience.
Easily frustrated.
Demanding.
Punitive.
Viewing horse behaviour through the lens of horses “intentionally” misbehaving.
Far too many people end up having their love for horses robbed or altered because of how unforgiving this industry can be.
For a decent portion of my professional career, I found myself in situations where I had to choose between doing things that felt morally wrong to me and getting paid.
This is the honest reality of so many professional trainers.
And while I have chosen to change how I go about my practice in order to maintain my ethics, this is easier said than done.
When you run the risk of no longer being able to pay your rent if you don’t do what your client is asking you to do, things get a lot more complicated.
I say this for the purpose of opening a discussion that revolves around ethics for both horses and humans.
I truly believe that the vast majority of people in this industries, choose to get into it professionally out of the love that they have for horses.
But, along the way, that love often gets skewed because of the demands associated with “making it” in the industry.
Oftentimes, what is most profitable is not aligned with what is most ethical.
And so, people find themselves in a cognitive dissonance.
When you need to continue generating an income and don’t want to come to terms with what you were actually doing to maintain it, it is easy to go into denial.
I think that is why we often see such a visceral response from so much of the industry when ethics are questioned.
I think one of the biggest ethical dilemmas that our industry faces is the amount of pressure that all sorts of professionals are under to maintain expectations of people within the competitive industry in specific.
This doesn’t just apply to trainers.
It is something that is applicable to saddle fitters, vets, bodyworkers and more.
When there is such a priority on riding and continuing to chase competition goals, any perspective that puts doing so in jeopardy can be dismissed.
So, a lot of belief systems are centred around maintaining the capacity for people to ride horses.
Whether it is in the best interest of the horses or not.
And, so, we see horses pushed into training programs that they are not ready for a physically or mentally.
We see horses with atrophied top lines being fitted for saddles by saddle fitters despite the fact that a horse in that condition should not be getting sat on in the first place.
We see Horse is getting injected with corticosteroids to mass the unsoundness that comes with tired and damaged joints from the workloads that they have been under.
We see horses who are physically damaged and incredibly sore being put through programs that serve the purpose of masking the pain as much as possible so that people can continue riding.
This is the reality of the industry, whether most professionals will admit it or not.
These ethical dilemmas exist constantly.
And there is so much pressure to maintain certain belief systems in order to remain palatable to the popular opinion in the Horse industry.
This is largely why I have taken such a massive step back from taking regular clients.
Because, repeatedly, I felt like I was being put between a rock and a hard place.
Where I had to choose between pleasing the client and maintaining access to them and speaking out for the horse.
So, overall, it was in my best interest to develop revenue streams that made me less reliant on the income generated from clients.
Otherwise, I was perpetually in a precarious position that tied my income to the decisions that other people want to make with their horses.
So many professionals in our industry become profoundly burnt out because of the ethical and physical demands.
Not to mention all of the emphasis on pushing through struggle, pulling up your boot straps and not complaining.
All of that comes at a cost, even if you don’t see it right away.
