New tool to tackle old problems for horse welfare
Researchers have spent decades documenting horse welfare issues in equestrian sports – yet change has been slow.
An Australian researcher has now developed a tool that helps explain why, and points to potential solutions.
Dr Karen Luke completed her PhD research into improving horse welfare at CQUniversity in 2024, and this month is taking her research global.
The equine scientist and horse owner will share the insights at the Science for Animal Welfare Centenary Conference in London across 23 - 25 June, earning a research award to attend.
Her topic A scientific framework for navigating horse welfare science for the next 100 years? comes as equestrian sports grapple with growing public scrutiny of practices such as whipping, bits and tight nosebands – longstanding issues that have proven stubbornly difficult to shift.
Old problems, new perspective
Dr Luke’s latest research introduces the Horse Welfare 12 (HW12), a framework that maps the horse industry as a system and reveals the full range of places where people could act to improve welfare – from surface-level limits and equipment through to the deeper goals and beliefs that shape the industry.
The tool is designed for researchers and practitioners, helping them see intervention points that often go unnoticed and focus effort where it is likely to have the most effect.
“Most horse welfare research, and most regulation, focuses on the easiest things to measure and change – adjusting a limit here, banning a piece of equipment there,” Dr Luke said.
“But on their own, those changes rarely shift behaviour, because they don’t touch the deeper mechanisms and assumptions driving the practice. The HW12 doesn’t replace that work – it builds on it, and shows where else we could be looking.”
The paper, published in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, uses two everyday examples to show the framework in action: the stabling of horses, and the way horses are scored in dressage.
"For instance, horses in sport and racing are traditionally viewed, at least in part, as athletic equipment – we even call stables ‘boxes’, language that quietly reinforces the idea of the horse as equipment to be stored,” Dr Luke said.
“Yet horses are social creatures, and there is long-standing evidence that confining them in stables can harm both their mental and physical health.
“The HW12 helps us trace how that practice is held in place – by habits, facilities, rules and assumptions – and that opens up new options for change that go beyond simply telling owners to do better.”
The second example looks at dressage, where some horse behaviours are scored as “disobedience” when research suggests they are often signs of discomfort or stress.
“What’s interesting is how these things connect. When the rules reward control and obedience, that shapes the wider mindset about what horses are for. The HW12 lets us see those links, and ask different questions about where change might start.”
Social license
Across a decade researching horse welfare, Dr Luke has seen growing public criticism of how horses are treated in sport.
“The future of equestrian sport is at risk due to loss of social license caused by poor horse welfare, so the need to change our horse training and keeping practices is as urgent for industry as it is for welfare advocates,” she said.
Tough penalties for competitors using excessive whipping made headlines around the Paris Olympics in 2024, and are in focus ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
“We’re seeing small shifts in regulation – for instance the FEI (global body Fédération Equestre Internationale) introduced a maximum noseband tightness limit for international competitions in 2025, but so far adoption of the new rule by national federations is voluntary,” Dr Luke said.
Research by the Melbourne-based scientist has previously revealed how amateur equestrians rarely consider a horse’s mental state as part of overall welfare management, and has established a link between horse welfare and rider safety.
Her latest research was co-authored by UK academics Dr Jo Hockenhull, Dr Tamzin Furtado, Naomi Ainley and Dr Meta Osborne.
Explore pathways for research at CQUniversity’s Research Higher Degrees website.
