Dressage Champion Charlotte Dujardin's withdrawal from the Olympics when video footage showed her maltreating a horse raise questions about where the balance lies between discipline and abuse. How can we find the middle way?

There’s been a sad prelude to today’s Olympics opening ceremony: the video of Dressage Champion Charlotte Dujardin whipping a horse’s legs. It’s a tough watch: the horse backs away, plainly distressed. The rider says she’s ashamed and has withdrawn from the competition. 

The magic of dressage is creating an equine ballet that harmonises horse and rider, but the footage has raised questions about practices behind the scenes. In training, some riders may use reins, bits and whips more gently to guide a horse; others rely on weight and balance. But what constitutes undue control? When does discipline become abuse? 

Every collaboration between humans and animals prompts ethical questions, and though I’m a dog owner, some of my friends would never even own a pet on the grounds that domestication means imposing our will on other beings. In this view, the natural way is the good way. There’s something in that, but I also reflect that Buddhist practice is called a training, and the guiding principle is the middle way. 

One story describes a disciple of the Buddha’s who was so determined to become Enlightened that he practiced walking meditation until the soles of his feet were bleeding. Before becoming a monk, he’d been a musician, and the Buddha reminded him how he’d tuned a lute. If the strings were too taut or too loose, the instrument was unplayable, but tuned to the right pitch it resonated harmoniously. 

This is the middle way. It means balance, not striving for an imagined perfection. As a mindfulness teacher I see the psychological strain that comes from judging ourselves according to how we think things should be. Many of us dwell on what we need to do to be good enough and how we lack discipline, but research links attitudes like these to stress, anxiety and depression. 

The alternative isn’t making no effort. There’s a place for training. For Buddhism, ethics is a skill we develop through patient effort, and the Buddhist path is sometimes called the three trainings of ethics, meditation and wisdom, all of which are undertaken with a careful, balanced effort.

Psychological violence towards ourselves is bad enough, but physical force directed to other beings prompts an instinctive revulsion. Of course it will bring obedience. The animal will bend to our will. But there’s a moral cost. The alternative involves collaboration, communication, respect and, as Buddhism suggests, a middle way.