From Choice to Compassion: Towards a Stewardship Model for Contemporary Equine Welfare – A Conceptual Review

Abstract

                Background

                Equine welfare has shifted significantly from preventing suffering to promoting positive welfare. Horses are increasingly being seen as sentient beings capable of experiencing agency, choice and positive affective states. Despite the advancements in welfare science, improvements in equine welfare are not mirrored consistently in everyday practice across the equestrian community.

                Aim

                This literature review explores whether the concept of stewardship can provide an ethical framework that integrates contemporary welfare science with everyday equine management. It considers three questions:

1. How has the philosophy underpinning Equine-Assisted Services (EASs) evolved over the last decade?
2. What ethical responsibilities do humans have in promoting positive welfare?
3. How can emerging principles within EASs inform welfare across the wider equestrian sector?

                Approach

                Literature from equine science, veterinary ethics, healthcare, child welfare, environmental ethics and Indigenous philosophy was synthesised to examine the development of positive welfare, agency, ethical decision-making and stewardship.

                Findings

                Existing welfare models provide increasingly sophisticated methods for assessing welfare but much less guidance regarding the ethical decisions that create positive welfare throughout a horse's lifetime. Stewardship emerged as a recurring ethical principle across multiple disciplines, and is characterised by attentiveness, responsibility, reciprocity and continual reflective practice. Applying stewardship to breeding, youngstock management, leisure horses, competition, retirement and EASs demonstrates how welfare can be understood as the cumulative outcome of everyday human decisions rather than isolated interactions.

                Conclusion

                We do not need another welfare assessment framework; This review argues that stewardship provides an ethical model that overarches welfare assessment and guides the everyday decisions through which horses experience their lives. The next phase of welfare is likely to depend less on generating new scientific knowledge than on embedding a culture of reflective stewardship that enables horses to thrive.