Alan Balch - Awake yet?

Article by Alan F. Balch

I don’t know about you, but as for me, a couple of years ago when I started hearing about being “woke,” and since then have been relentlessly pounded with the expression, I hadn’t a clue what that meant.

I’m not sure I entirely understand it now . . . but I did some research.

At just about the time of his commemorative holiday in January, I learned that the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last Sunday sermon prior to his 1968 murder was entitled, “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.”  Dr. King referred to the tale of Rip Van Winkle, who had been asleep for 20 years, dozing off during the reign of King George III of England, and awakening during the presidency of George Washington.  He literally slept through the American revolution.

King preached that his congregations needed to awaken to the injustice still all around them, and demand meaningful change.  He exhorted them "to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.”

If I had fallen asleep in 1990, when I had major responsibilities at both Golden Gate Fields and Santa Anita, and awakened today, I would recognize the San Francisco Bay and the San Gabriel Mountains immediately.  But I would have slept through a different kind of revolution than Rip did.

Given the ages and longevity of racing’s community of trainers – in California and elsewhere – is it any wonder that the era of critical change our sport has faced and continues to undergo feels threatening, daunting, and sometimes even overwhelming?

While racing has perennially (ever since its modern conception in the 1930s) been the most heavily regulated of all professional sports, by far, recent additions of a new federal regulatory structure, added to various and sometimes inconsistent state and track rules, have made for an even heavier burden on all those responsible for the welfare of horses.  Each new straw on this camel’s back can seem like a tree.

If the trainers and veterinarians need to be wide awake, so too do the owners, regulators, media, and track managements!  The impetus for Congressional action and federal regulation of racing, on its surface, was to harmonize and improve oversight of the sport.  Wasn’t it?!  Not to mystify and complicate it any further.

Training a horse . . . and horsemanship itself . . . are infinitely complex by themselves.  To begin with.  There are plenty of books about these subjects, but no manuals.  The rules governing training have sometimes been conceived, enforced, and praised, by individuals whose experience doesn’t include even one working minute in a stall or shed-row, and who couldn’t begin to persuasively define horsemanship.  And who then wonder why morale on the backstretch isn’t positive?!

All of us in racing or non-racing equestrian sport, worldwide, have been raised with the mantra that the welfare of the horse is paramount.  But actions speak louder than words.  With all the attention to elaborate rules and regulatory structures, where is the corresponding attention to and investment in backstretch conditions, for both human and equine residents?  In track conditions and the latest surfaces and technologies?

We hear a great deal today about equestrian sports’ “social license to operate,” that the treatment of animals must match the public’s expectation of proper welfare practices.

“Well,” I’ve always been tempted to say, “let’s bring the public to the horses, where they live, so the public will see how well they are treated.”  At Santa Anita, we did that for years, and very successfully.  But when I see many of today’s backstretches, as opposed to how they looked when I went to sleep 30 years ago, I’m appalled.  If regulators and track managements expect the professionals who care for the horses to bear the burden of more onerous requirements and regulations for behavior than ever before, shouldn’t the conditions under which the horses live/train and the professionals (including veterinarians) practice their trades be at the highest levels of expectation as well?

In all the “social license” and horse welfare discussions, it’s appealing but wrong to ascribe human characteristics to horses – as animal “rights” groups consistently do.  We who love horses, as horses, must do better, in our own language, to avoid the traps the enemies of sport with horses are setting for us, whether consciously or not.  Two-year-old colts or fillies (or even foals and weanlings) should not be referred to as “babies.”  They aren’t.   We shouldn’t call males or females “boys or girls,” either.  They aren’t.  We shouldn’t say, “he loves being a race horse.”  He doesn’t know what that means.  The concepts of “love,” or even “happiness,” are human, not equine.  He probably does “love” carrots or sugar; actually, he doesn’t, because he doesn’t think like we do.  But a good trainer knows when a horse is content, satisfied, happy . . .  or nervous, upset, and unhappy!  Even though the horse is not those things in human terms, but instead in the context of being an equine.  An animal. 

In 1824, William Wilberforce, member of the British Parliament, was a founder of what became the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the very first animal welfare organization in the world.  He was among the most wide-awake of all humans at the time, and maybe ever:  he was the leading English advocate for the abolition of slavery.  He was a man of conscience, rather than party.  He led his peers in advocating new ideas, remained vigilant, and unflinchingly faced the challenges of necessary change.

He knew the differences between humans and animals, and that real animal welfare can only be achieved and maintained by humans.