Black Beauty and horse welfare.

What book influenced you as a young rider? It’s fun to ask this to my riding clinic participants.
Black Beauty typically tops the list! But this classic is more influential than I thought …

Written from the horse’s point of view, Anna Sewell’s story shed light on the life of working horses. The voices of Black Beauty and Ginger awoke empathy for horses – in a time in which horsepower ran almost everything.

Sewell’s keen observation of horse behaviour created a stir, whose ripple effect would influence horse welfare legislation in the horse drawn taxi industry. For example, policies were proposed to eliminate the overcheck – tack, less about function and more about a fashionable carriage-horse outline. Black Beauty comments on the overcheck:
“Some people think it very fine to see this and say, ‘What fine, spirited creatures’ – but, it is just as unnatural for horses as for men to foam at the mouth.”