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Modern cars come equipped with excellent air conditioning and heating systems, to ensure the utmost comfort during a journey. The benefits of these components in a long journey are self-evident and once you are used to them, it is hard to imagine travel without such luxuries.

Since February there have been an increased number of reports of NSW horses displaying unusual nervous signs. Similar cases have also been reported in Victoria and South Australia.

We’ve either done it, or seen it done, a horse refuses a fence and gets a whack, a horse moves in too close to its handler and gets a slap on the nose, a horse bucks and gets some smacks with the whip, horse refuses to load onto a float and gets a leadrope aimed at their rump, horse kicks out at a child and gets a hiding from an angry parent, a horse dumps its rider so is put away without its usual ration of feed to teach it a lesson. Is this ever justified and what in effect are we actually doing when we “punish” a horse in this way?

While much of Japan’s Thoroughbred Racing Industry seems to have escaped the devastating earthquake and tsunami it is unclear how the disaster has impacted the island nation’s Equestrian Industry.