In April 2020 and in the interest of legacy I wrote a Wikipedia entry recording the thoughts and notable works of Harveywetdog. I admit I was ignorant of the rules concerning self promotion on Wikipedia and consequently my entry was correctly deleted and my account expunged from the system. As a result my original words and links were sadly lost but nevertheless here is a rewrite. Perhaps when I'm gone someone will be able to enter it onto Wikipedia as a fitting epitaph for my time on the Harveywetdog Project.
Providing for informed public and equestrian discussion - the Harveywetdog approach
In a previous blog we discussed the strategy the FEI Equine Ethics and Wellbeing Commission (EEWC) is proposing in order to address the issue of social license to operate when it comes to the use of horses in sport. At present this is little more than form a committee, hold a couple of meetings and produce a glossy PowerPoint presentation together with a list of actions; We've all been there!
While I set out what a possible case for the continued inclusion of horses in sport might look like, I also suggested that it was possibly the FEI's intention to scrape the equestrian world past the next Olympics, a) because they don't want to spoil the party and b) because the world view may have changed again after Paris 2024. But without wishing to appear overly sceptical about possible outcomes, the EEWC's strategy has made me rethink my use of social media.
A Good Life for Horses, EWWC Strategy Summary
The struggle for hearts and minds
While the whole strategy is ultimately of interest to members of the equestrian community, it was the left hand leg of the strategy that struck a chord with me as a member of the equestrian media/influencer pack. I've always been careful with what I post on social media, having learnt quite early on that what I thought was an innocent video of an Olympic rider delivering a "pony club kick" to their horse in the warm up can cause quite a stir once the key board warriors get going. Of course this is a double edged sword. We publish on social media to generate views but unfortunately, human nature being what it is, it is generally this type of incident, together with cross country and show jumping falls that people really want to see.
Early in 2023 I created my "think before you post" short which I've provided a link to here:
The basic message of the video was that social media thrived on the sensational, not the sensible and that we feed the beast at our peril. With this in mind for most of 2023 I've been careful with my posts and avoided too much argument when responding to comments that I didn't agree with.
Some comments are so spiteful and nasty that I have had no choice but to delete them immediately. There is never a justification for hate speech. With others, well argued from an extreme anti horses in sport position I've had no choice but to simply reply "in the struggle for hearts and minds, we have to accept some battles aren't worth fighting" and leave it at that.
"in the struggle for hearts and minds, we have to accept some battles aren't worth fighting"
It is difficult to make a judgement based on 15 seconds of video
In November 2023 I tried a change of approach. As I said initially my approach had been to hold back on what I posted and exercise caution. But looking back to my first memories of eventing, a fuzzy black and white BBC transmission from Locko Park featuring Mark Phillips and Princess Anne, as well as being amazed that such an event could be held in what felt like my back garden I also realised that the jeopardy involved in the sport was part of the attraction, part of the thrill and making it look easy was part of the skill. This didn't feel like something we should be afraid of explaining, surely it should be possible to hold a balanced discussion on such matters. Of course while we don’t mind seeing someone fall off or take a ducking we don't want them to break anything and we certainly don’t expect to see our equine athletes hurt.
Saturday afternoon at Blenheim 2023 proved particularly eventful. There was a 50 minute period where I witnessed four riders unseated in quick succession - it was quite unsettling. Obviously capturing a rider fall on camera is difficult because someone might be in pain and that isn’t appropriate to use in a video. But if the horse is fine and it’s just a case of injured pride then I have few qualms about using it these days. As I've said before I've trained myself to keep the camera running; I can always decide not to use it later. I can generally tuck such clips into my Director's cut versions in a none sensational manner. But this is harder to do with YouTube Shorts.
My YouTube Shorts portfolio really took off in 2023. I was lucky enough to be included in one of the YouTube Creator Development Programmes (yes at my age!) and while it hasn't all been people being unseated there is no doubt that Shorts featuring people taking a tumble (or being chased by a loose dog!) have earned me the most views and new subscriptions.
In my 'think before you post video' I'd said "we feed the beast at our peril" and that certainly proved to be the case with the shorts. The comments poured in, criticising people's riding and questioning the ability of course designers. As the ultimate arbiter of the comments that appeared on my channel I didn't want to simply delete those adopting an anti-horses in sport narrative (anything hateful is still deleted - whatever language you express it in) but I did set up my community guidelines to explain what I would and wouldn't accept.
Remember it is difficult to make a judgement based on 15 seconds of video, taken out of context and edited into portrait mode
Please THINK before you comment; is it true, is it helpful, is it inspiring, is it necessary and is it kind?
And of course watch the full video for context
Thank you
Debate is well informed and balanced
I produced Shorts from two of the four incidents I mentioned at Blenheim. One was Molly Faulkner and Call Me Cooley coming to a stop just before the Lapada Water, and one was from Cosby Green flying off Highly Suspicious aa they came out of the River Glyme at Fence 14. At the time of writing these two shorts combined have been watched approximately half a million times and have been liked 30 thousand times. Molly has 173 comments and Cosby has 366. Needless to say these are massive numbers for me as before I used Shorts I'd be lucky if I could exceed more than 300k combined views in a year for my traditional long format videos.
Initially I was a little bit lost with all these comments, especially those that were negative or I thought were plain wrong. As a nuclear professional I'd been trained to "challenge and welcome challenge" and "maintain a questioning attitude" so I tried not to dismiss comments out of hand if they didn't match my narrative although I would admit some days I did revert to some of my stock responses such as "hearts and minds" all ready mentioned, "there is some very dodgy opinion posing as science", “haters going to hate” or "I was trying to provide context rather than conjecture".
It doesn't look good - things can go wrong in the sport
Things really became clearer for me when I went back to the EWWC Strategy and looked again at that left hand leg. I interpreted this as asking me to enter into informed equestrian discussion and not to simply dismiss someone's views because I did not agree with them. It wasn't suggesting I hide what I thought or try and cover over things that can go wrong in the sport.
This has become my approach for 2024. I’ve treated people as “my critical friend”, listened to what they have to say and tried to put my perspective on what they think they are seeing. Let me give you a couple of examples.
Say what you see?
Let's start with the Lapada Water video. I have to imagine most people won't have ridden a 4 Star eventer at a log with a drop into water beyond it. But I would imagine more people have sat on a horse that is about to refuse a jump and/or run out; it's not a nice feeling. In this case the rider did all she could to get the horse to lock onto the jump but he let her down, swung away from the fence and the rider came out the side door. The air vest went off, the horse stayed where he was and the rider was quickly back up on her feet and they walked away to compete another day.
There were a number of comments blaming the rider for the refusal. This was a definite case where people needed to see the incident in context. You really needed to watch their full approach, the obstacle in front of them and others taking it on before you could make any sort of sensible comment. From an equine welfare point of view the incident was mostly positive as the equipment worked, the fence marshall responded immediately, the horse stayed put and was given a round of applause for his troubles.
The River Glyme video is different and as I said has generated double the comments. The real issue is that while it looks spectacular/nasty, you can't really tell what happened. I'm videoing from the other side of the river, the image is horribly foreshortened and there is a certain amount of spray. The negative comments have been aimed at the sport in general (putting ribbons before equine welfare) and the course designer in particular (fancy expecting horses to jump an angled fence out a river up a slope on slippery wet grass).
Encouraging people to see things in context helped address some of this. I provided a link to the video of Ian Cassells and Master Point making the same jump half an hour later but videoed on the other side of the river to show the space available and the condition of the take off. People argued that the horse had slipped (the rider used slip in her social media) and this was all evidence of poor course design.
The elephant in the room
I have now studied the video frame by frame and my best interpretation of what happened is that he started to jump but then put his front feet back down (refused) slid into the fence, ejected the rider and then the angled nature of the obstacle caused him to slide right and his back legs to appear to slip out from underneath him. It all happens very fast and is obviously open to other interpretations. Either way it didn't look particularly good for either horse or rider, especially if you're going to argue you're giving this horse a "good life" and that his involvement in sport doesn't compromise his welfare.
"it is one thing providing these sound bites, it is something else walking the talk"
This is the elephant in the room; it is one thing providing these sound bites, it is something else to walk the talk. Where to start - where did our aspirational safety case let us down, or has it?
The incident cuts straight across our aspirational case for the ethical involvement of horses in sport so here are the points that I've picked out.
Argument 1 stresses the importance of decision making. This would cover everything from the decision to site the fence just after the river crossing, to set it at an angle plus the decisions of the Technical Delegate, Ground Jury Members and riders to accept that it was safe to jump. The rider also made decisions relating to their approach to the jump which may have influenced the outcome.
Argument 2 relates to our corrective action programme and our willingness to apply lessons learned. As the rider fell I would assume this incident would have been reviewed post event. At present I do not know if this is a particularly open process or if it takes input from those outside the sport. From my own experience, while I witnessed (and videoed) a serious horse fatality in 2023 and provided my video to the TD at the time, I was not asked to provide any sort of statement of what I had seen and heard. So while I'd feel confident in saying that lessons are learned from incidents and improvements take place, it would be difficult to defend the openness of this process or claim that it was putting equine welfare first.
The evidence we would look for in support of Argument 3 would all be aimed at demonstrating that those involved (including equine athletes) were suitably qualified and experienced. This is a relatively high level of competition but clearly the combination had had to qualify in preparation for the event. Similarly the competition officials should have been drawn from the top levels of the sport. So while it should be possible to demonstrate that the the requirements of Argument 3 had been met, it would be down to the outcome of the corrective action programme (Argument 2) to demonstrate if in fact these requirements need to be strengthened as a result of this incident.
Argument 4 deals with standards. In relation to this incident this deals mainly with fence design. I received a lot of comments that the jump was not "safe". While I tried to respond that while it may have been challenging it was not unsafe per se. If it had been it would have been taken out of use.
But I realise that is semantics and so what we have to ask is, was the use of an angled fence, where there is no room for a less experienced horse to approach the obstacle square on, really prioritising equine welfare? Then there are the comments relating to the slipperiness of the grass caused by the repeated soakings and the state of the approach to the jump which was heavily cut up by the end of the evidence in the light of our operating experience. There are a number of comments that the fence should be collapsible. Argument 4 also deals with equine medication which in this instance would probably need to draw on evidence of the testing arrangements that were in place for the event to demonstrate that horses were fit to compete.
We then come to the most difficult argument of all, Argument 5, which is all about our commitment to manage the risks involved to be as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP). Difficult because nothing in life can ever be 100% safe.
Our old friend the ALARP triangle
The concept of ALARP helps us come to terms with this fact as a society. As individuals we all have different tolerance levels. For some people it is simply not acceptable for horses to be used in sport for man's pleasure and we have to respect that opinion. I feel most of us are sitting in the tolerable region. We understand there are risks involved but are nevertheless shocked when “shit happens”. When I asked my father about the risks involved in being called up to serve in WWII his response had been to say "you believe it is always going to happen to someone else"; as riders we probably have the same mentality.
To keep the majority mindset in the tolerable region we have to be seen to be making a commitment to reaching the broadly tolerable region and taking action if things go wrong and prevent us from reaching our goal. This is the heart of the current social license debate. The question always has to be could we spend more money to address any equine welfare issues that have arisen. The centre of an ALARP argument is always examining the cost of making any improvement and if it is wildly disproportionate to the safety benefit it delivers accepting this as a justification for not implementing the change. With the incident at Blenheim we could argue that the fence should have been frangible. As it wasn’t then I would expect to see evidence that this was the correct decision; in other words that someone has looked at the cost of making all fences frangible, the number of accidents at each type of fence and demonstrated the acceptability of allowing certain types of fences to remain of solid construction on cross country courses.
Argument 6 deals with internal and external regulation. I'm not experienced enough to comment on how well this operates within BE and the FEI. I certainly don't get the impression that it is very independent at present. I welcome the suggestion in the EWWC strategy that suggests that the FEI should maintain an independent equine ethics and wellbeing review programme; for now I'm just happy to be a critical friend.
And finally
Posting videos of things not going as planned in equestrian competitions has allowed me to enjoy a wide spectrum of opinion on the circumstances that led to these two rider falls. The desire for informed public and equestrian discussion has given me a basis for responding in an open and balanced manner. There have been some comments that have been hateful and which I've ended up deleting but largely the process has been useful in helping me understand the strength of opinion that exists around the world when it comes to horses in sport; this opinion is both positive and negative.
I can appreciate that some will not want to engage in the debate, especially when things tend towards the personal. But for those who do remember to maintain the moral high ground, listen to what is being said, keep things in context and respond respectfully.
"The obstacle itself is not unsafe per se but as with all cross country fences there is an element of challenge in completing it successfully. The challenge will have been set by the course designer and assessed by a Technical Director, Ground Jury and the riders themselves prior to the event and judged to be acceptable for a suitably qualified and experienced 4 Star combination to take on safely. If things had changed on the day of competition action would be taken to address the issue and keep the course “safe”. But as with all things in life nothing is 100% safe. There is jeopardy in everything we do; horse riding and ownership is no different."
David spent approaching 50 years in Her Majesty's Electricity Supply Industry before retiring
He was part of the highly successful design team on the Sizewell B Nuclear Power Station Project before spending 25 years producing safety cases to keep our aging AGR fleet generating for the good of the nation
He is responsible for the Harveywetdog YouTube Channel which he maintains as an outlet for his creative talents
David has recently recovered from blood cancer but refuses to be a victim
All views are his own but might be influenced by the medication he's had to take
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