6 Jun 2016
Suzanne Rogers and Lisa Lanfear discuss the issues surrounding tethering in a Welsh community and if, in this case, it is preferable to stables.
Vet days are an excellent opportunity for the Community Horse and Pony Scheme team to talk with urban horse owners.
The practice of tethering horses and ponies is widespread across the world, including in urban and rural horse-owning communities across the UK. Insufficient forage, shelter and water, as well as a risk of road traffic injuries in case of escape, are among welfare concerns.
Swansea has a large number of urban horses owned by some of the most deprived communities in the UK. A committee has been set up to consider the proposal by a local campaign group (Friends of Swansea Horses; FOSH) to ban tethering. However, a growing number of leading animal behaviourists, vets and animal welfare charities are speaking out to oppose the ban.
On the surface, this might seem an unlikely stance for professionals and organisations focused on improving animal welfare. However, the findings of another organisation help us understand the complexities of the situation.
The Community Horse and Pony Scheme (CHAPS) works closely with urban horse owners in Swansea. It has become a valuable resource in the community, directly helping animals, providing accessible veterinary services and a haven for disadvantaged children and young people. Importantly, it has gained the trust of the urban horse-owning community because of its respectful, integrated approach.
CHAPS has researched the possible outcomes if a ban was introduced by consulting with organisations working internationally and groups working with traveller communities across the UK, as well as directly exploring the issue with urban horse owners.
When tethering is discouraged or prevented, the likelihood is horses are moved out of public sight, to even less suitable environments, such as unsuitable yards, garages and garden sheds. There is often no exercise area, the stables are rarely cleaned and food and water provision is often woefully inadequate – animals suffer more than they would if they were tethered. In addition, when kept inside on private premises, it is more difficult for welfare organisations and concerned members of the public to monitor the animals. Out of sight becomes out of mind and a welfare issue is not solved, but changed and hidden.
As FOSH highlights, tethering compromises welfare and is far from the ideal way of keeping horses. However, so is stabling. Both systems severely compromise several of the five freedoms – the framework used for welfare assessment. It could be argued the welfare of a horse kept in a stable for long periods of time is more compromised than a horse tethered in an appropriate place using safe materials and tether design. To condemn one type of management and not the other discriminates against the culture of urban horse owners.
This statement from a young horse owner in Swansea, who wishes to remain anonymous, illustrates the complex nature of the issue: “I have one horse on a farm and one on a tether. I had to bring the one on a tether back from the farm because it’s so out of the way, it was getting ill all the time and the farm is hard to get to. I couldn’t get there very often and because I was going up in the dark to feed, it I didn’t notice its mother wasn’t well and, as a result, got sick and died.
“The farmer who was looking after it knows nothing about horses and kept saying it was okay until it was too late. I am trying to get the last one off the farm, but because it’s so hard to get to I don’t have time to spend with it. It’s two and I can’t even lead it. The one back on the tether is much better now and has gained weight because it has more attention.”
If a ban was introduced, mitigation measures would need to be implemented and a strategy for full enforcement developed with urban horse owners to find practical and achievable solutions. Such mitigation is incredibly resource-intensive, impracticable and the communities are unlikely to be open to engagement if threatened by the ban.
It has been suggested horses could be seized or relinquished and transferred to an animal sanctuary. This has already been done for a number of animals. However, it is not the end of the journey for some owners – they replace those horses and hide them to avoid the same thing happening again.
The solution lies not in banning a widespread management practice, such as tethering, but in working, through education and appropriate community engagement, to address the underlying causes of the welfare issues. Some of the communities in Swansea are on one of the highest wards of deprivation on the Welsh index.
An integrated effort by organisations working to address social deprivation issues, alongside authorities and animal welfare charities, is needed. Of course, there is also the issue of the majority of tethered horses being on land owned by the local authority – known as fly grazing. A solution that needs to be explored, which has been successful in Ireland, is community grazing, where land is allocated to a community partly for grazing, but also creating a valuable resource for other activities.
CHAPS is writing a report for the working group to consider, which will outline an evidence-based proposal for a sustainable solution.
Solving one welfare problem by creating another is neither an ethical, nor a rational, approach towards improving animal welfare or working with communities. The solution is not easy, but lies in thinking about equine welfare from the horse’s point of view, and if we were horses we would rather be tethered using good practice than confined in an unsuitable stable.
To live out in a field with occasional access to a stable when needed is not a realistic option for most rural and urban horses currently tethered. We welcome comments from vets working with tethered horses anywhere in the UK.
