Alison Franklin Equestrian

Back in the day!

I don't know if we're celebrating it here, but!😍

🐴 World Horse Day 2026

Today, we celebrate the extraordinary contribution horses make to communities and livelihoods across the world.💙

From a simple interaction over the field fence, to the first time in the saddle and competing at the highest level, their impact goes far…

💫 £1.2 billion of social value delivered by equestrianism every year
🏇 178 million riding days take place across the UK annually
🌱 Up to £3,500 of social value per year for young people who ride weekly
👥 4.3 million people in Britain have a direct interest in horses
❤️ Weekly volunteering with horses can generate over £2,100 in social value per year

Thank you to the horses and to everyone who makes our sector so special.

Find out more about the incredible power of horses: https://bit.ly/BEFSocialValue



📷© British Equestrian / Adam Fanthorpe

A great book, seemingly as divisive as ever, judging by the virulence of some of the comments.😑

She never set out to write a children’s classic.

She wanted to stop people from hurting horses.

By the time Anna Sewell began writing Black Beauty, she had spent decades watching them suffer. As a teenager, she slipped on a rainy road and permanently injured both ankles. The treatments of the day only made things worse. For the rest of her life, she lived with chronic pain, relying on horse-drawn carriages to get almost everywhere. Unlike most Victorians, she didn’t see horses as scenery or machines. She depended on them. She spoke to them gently. And she noticed everything.

She watched exhausted cab horses whipped through city streets. She saw animals worked until they collapsed. She despised the fashionable “bearing rein,” a leather strap that forced horses to hold their heads unnaturally high simply because wealthy owners thought it looked elegant. It was painful, unnecessary, and everywhere.

Confined to bed as her health deteriorated, Sewell spent six years writing the only novel of her life. Too weak to write for long, she often dictated chapters to her mother, Mary, who carefully transcribed them. Her revolutionary idea was simple: let the horse tell the story.

Instead of preaching, Black Beauty invited readers inside the mind of an animal. Suddenly, the horse wasn’t property. It had fears, memories, joy, exhaustion, and pain. Readers who had walked past working horses every day found themselves unable to look away.

Published in November 1877, the book was an immediate success. Anna Sewell died just five months later, never knowing it would sell more than 50 million copies, be translated into dozens of languages, and become one of the most influential animal welfare books ever written.

At her funeral, her mother made one final request: the horses pulling Anna’s hearse would wear no bearing reins.

It was a quiet tribute to a woman who changed the world simply by giving a horse a voice.

Nifty exercise that we can all do from Piggy!

When did you last trot to a fence? Canter is usually the preferred choice for finding the perfect take-off spot, but according to 2022 Burghley and 2019 Badminton winner Piggy March, it is useful to regularly try jumping out of trot too — and be prepared for it to feel untidy.

This is a training exercise that Piggy regularly uses at home with her own horses. It tests rider balance and helps achieve an agile, rideable horse.

Discover more via link in comments.

Great to see this happening!

The use of equestrian safety vests has become common practice, but when it comes to their efficacy, hard data is sorely lacking. That will soon change.

A scientific study launching under the FEI’s Equestrian Safety Vest Working Group will examine rider falls through comprehensive video analysis, assess how different vest styles and combinations affect riders’ range of motion, and develop a computer simulation to better understand how safety vests protect riders during falls.

Read more about the effort at the link in comments.

📸 Sportfot