Horses used in therapeutic riding, hippotherapy, and equine-assisted therapy provide genuine benefits to human participants. Ensuring the welfare of these working horses requires specific standards appropriate to their unique role.
Therapeutic horses occupy a paradoxical welfare space: they provide profound benefits to vulnerable human participants while facing specific welfare risks from the nature of that work. Carrying riders with limited balance, responding to unpredictable movements, and working in environments with unusual stimuli creates cognitive and physical demands that differ from conventional riding. Horses cannot consent to therapeutic work, making human responsibility for their welfare particularly important. Signs of stress in therapeutic horses — ear pinning, tail swishing, increased head movement, and attempts to evade mounting — can be misinterpreted as behavioral problems rather than welfare signals. Genuine welfare-centered therapeutic programs implement horse behavioral assessment, work hour limits, regular veterinary monitoring, and prompt retirement of horses showing behavioral signs of distress, even when this creates logistical challenges for program delivery.