Veganism and animal sports?

[Athena]

Would a vegan play polo, or attend a horse race?

Even when the animals are well taken care of, is racing and playing sports, or being in show, etc, with or against their will and nature?

[Dan.Linehan]

I wouldn't, but I probably wouldn't have before I went vegan either..

The use of animals for sport pretty much always creeped me out.

[Athena]

What about according to vegan or natural ethics?

Also what about just riding a horse?

And, to the full spectrum, what about keeping any kind of pets? Including domesticated ones like cats and dogs? Isn't domestication, in principle, against nature?

[Dan.Linehan]

My own vegan ethics are to treat all living things with respect and love. Basically do no harm. Riding horses and keeping pets are fine by me.

I used to like the idea of animals in sports, until I found out why Broncos buck.

[Athena]

Where is the line of what is ethical by natural principles, between keeping an animal, giving it work, or using it in sport?

And, what about between traditionally wild animals, and semi-domesticated ones like horses, and fully domesticated ones like cats and dogs?

What is appropriate and what is not, by natural law?

[funchy]

Good question.

The underlying question is : is the activity harming the animal or not in his best interests?

I own horses and am involved in horse rescue work. I see what horse racing does to horses, how damaged their body is, how many are shipped to slaghter instead of being retired, etc. I would argue that horse racing *uses* the horse as an object and discards him as trash. While there are individuals who do care for their horses, the overall spirit of the horse is to breed and run horses for only one purpose: speed; everything else is irrelevent.

I don't feel that owning a horse goes against the beliefs of veganism. If you turned a domestic horse loose on an open range, he's not likely to survive. It's as cruel at dumping a poodle in the woods and letting him starve.

Breeding horses is a grey area. One might argue that a really good breeder is ensuring happy healthy horses are available, to ensure the domestic horse doesn't vanish. But the reality is that some breeders just don't care how frail their foals are or how disposable their broodmares are (shipped to slaughter as soon as they lose fertility). And the bigger picture is that at the moment we have more horses than homes; therefore, to continue to breed in quantity means that the horse slaughterhouses will always have a cheap supply.

Riding a horse depends on how he's being ridden. If he's forced into submission, beaten and spurred to exhaustion, then that's absolutely unacceptable. However, some horses are happy to get out on the trail, just like an eager dog on a leash. As long as his saddle fits and the weight doesn't cause discomfort, I don't see a problem with it. I train my own horses using positive reinforcement based training. If they don't want to do something, there are no negative consequences. If they do try to do what is asked, there is reward. And once the horse understands these rules, it's really his choice to want to cooperate (and generally they do cooperate).

[WilliWibald]

What about a race with mentally retarded people?

If you take good care of them and do it in a loving way.

To me it is really borderline to use a sentient being for my pleisure just because it can't do anything against it.

I don't believe in the theory that we should use animals. They have their own lifes to live.

Feels absolutely wrong to me.