It’s time for Connemara discrimination to be ancient history

All indications are that horse discrimination based on appearance — including inspections that fail Connemaras that aren’t Connemara enough — will die with the elderly generation that has tried so hard to keep diversity at bay.

The clock is ticking, and younger minds are simply more evolved, taking diversity as a given. We can assume that 10 years from now, inspections and similar forms of sanctioned discrimination against horses will be over, though a lot of money will be wasted in the meantime and a lot of opportunities to focus on other things will be lost.

Look around. Poll numbers show the majority of those 65 and older are against gay marriage but those under 65 are for it.

On “Meet the Press” on Feb. 16, 2014, former top presidential adviser David Axelrod said America is divided by generation, and gay marriage is an inexorable, or unstoppable, movement. He’s a guy who studies polls for a living.

On the same show, in a taped segment, figure skater Brian Boitano told Russia that it will become irrelevant if it doesn’t evolve.

In December 2013, Boitano was appointed to be part of a presidential delegation at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Three members of the five-member delegation were gay, and they were appointed by the Obama administration as a not-so-subtle message of how it felt about Russia’s anti-gay laws.

In the segment on “Meet the Press,” Boitano said he is convinced that the games will never again be held in a country that is proud of its prejudices. “I truly believe that the IOC will never again choose a country to have the Olympics in that doesn’t have a good human rights record or a country that is not tolerant.”

His response reminded me of a question on a survey sent to me by the United States Equestrian Federation in January 2014. The survey asked me what I thought of USEF setting a uniform set of rules for all horse groups. I believe USEF is laying the groundwork to end unacceptable practices that are clung to primarily by older generations of horsemen.

Over the past decade, USEF’s hands have been tied in trying to deal with the flawed and inhumane practices of some of its affiliates such as the soring tactics in the Tennessee Walking Horse group and the drugging practices in the hunter and jumper sector. In addition, USEF hasn’t been able to step into the battle over cloning in the American Quarter Horse Association, which has wound up being fought openly in the courts. But Olympic officials have accepted cloned horses and likely USEF would as well, as it should. Why should a horse be penalized based on how it arrived in this world? We don’t do that with humans.

I hope breed standards and inspections become part of those unacceptable practices.
USEF announced in June 2013 that its mission going forward would be the welfare of the horse. Several questions on the survey concerned USEF’s role in pursuing that mission.

Prejudice against Connemaras in the form of inspections goes against USEF’s mission.

The American Connemara Pony Society would argue that it’s trying to save the Connemara breed by preserving the “correctly shaped” horse, but this is a flawed argument. The society is trying to preserve what it says is the “original” Connemara — a chunky, short, short-legged animal — though there was actually no original Connemara. The breed is a mutt created by many breeds arriving on the same Irish shores over time. Forcing Connemaras to be chunky, short and short-legged does not appear to mesh with the needs of horsemen in the 21st century, which would achieve the opposite effect of saving Connemaras: It would probably doom them to extinction.

What can chunky, short, short-legged Connemaras do? Pull potato carts, as they did in Ireland way back when? And how many ponies do we need to pull potato carts in America in the 21st century? Not so many.

Making USEF the collective conscience of the American horse world would speed up the evolution process. The Connemara society’s sole focus on inspections, designed to keep out diversity and make all Connemaras the same shape, would simply be banned.

It’s time.