Horse Network: Let’s Talk About Horse Welfare and What USEF Is Doing About It

Article by Brittany Parrillo. Published on Horse Network on June 16, 2025.

When Caroline Howe wrote an open letter to USEF on May 27 that was published in The Chronicle of the Horse, she blew open a conversation about dire horse welfare issues that a USEF representative said is “threatening the sport right now.”

Howe’s letter garnered hundreds of passionate responses and shares with resounding frustration about the level of abuse happening to sport horses in the United States, as well as the lack of action and timeliness of US Equestrian on the matter.

Howe, an amateur hunter/jumper rider and the founder of North-Carolina-based Horse Welfare Collective, has done extensive work around the slaughter pipeline, but said the worst abuse she witnessed was in her own sport. In her letter, Howe references the story of Cobain, a horse scheduled to compete in a USEF-licensed competition the morning of July 31, 2021, who died from gross negligence and mistreatment.

“Cobain was hard tied to the highest rail in his stall for allegedly not loading onto a trailer and left alone,” Howe told the Horse Person podcast. “He was found later that morning having broken his neck and knocked out his lower incisors, still hanging from the halter. Those photographs have stayed with me and rivaled anything I have seen in the slaughter pipeline.”

Howe says Cobain’s story changed her relationship with the sport, and she personally reached out to USEF about their lack of response to the case. She stated that although USEF was made aware of Cobain’s story in January of 2023, the person responsible for his death was allowed to compete in USEF-sponsored competitions until May 2025, when they were officially expelled from the federation. 

Both Howe and USEF Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel Sonja Keating spoke to Horse Person about Howe’s letter, and the email USEF sent to its members that same day calling for the community to unite against horse abuse. That letter detailed a number of measures the federation had taken, as well as some they plan to take in the future to address horse abuse in sport. 

Both parties spoke of the need to unite over a shared goal to end the abuse against horses in sport, and for a true culture-shift around reporting. Howe said of the decision to write the letter, “I didn’t want to burn bridges, I wanted to build them.” 

Keating, for her part, acknowledged members’ growing frustration, and said USEF’s ability to police and respond to horse abuse in sport is “an area where there is room for improvement.”  

“For us to achieve our shared goals we need to approach these collectively and not divisively,” Keating said. “The sport is at a crossroads and we need to try to unite and come together and move forward together.” 

It was not until December 2024 that USEF extended their jurisdiction beyond competition grounds. A move, Howe said, that came way too late, and allowed “unnecessary horse suffering and an unwelcome environment for reporting.” 

The FEI, in comparison, had taken similar action in 2020. 

One of the key obstacles to the official change in USEF policy, said Keating, was the matter of resources, and doubts that USEF had the bandwidth to carry out that charge effectively. 

“As an administrative private association, our power is limited if you will,” she said. “We don’t have subpoena power. We don’t have the ability to go and obtain a warrant. So I can’t go onto your private property without your permission or I’m trespassing and I certainly can’t go into your private barns and observe or put up surveillance on your private property.” 

Keating also explained when cases, like Cobain’s, are playing out in civil or criminal court that USEF’s policy is to “sit tight” until the courts make a decision before carrying out their own sanctions. This is because criminal authorities have investigative resources unavailable to the federation, and because many witnesses are not able to cooperate with USEF during an ongoing court case. But, she said, USEF does have the ability to enforce temporary suspensions in such cases to “mitigate harm.” 

The number one action Howe would like to see from USEF in order to improve the welfare of equine partners, she said, is to put out an official position on how they view horses ideologically. 

“I think that is the number one thing they need to do because as a community we have the common ground of the horse and our love for them,” she said. “We need to galvanize and come together and say this is what our horses mean to us. And that’s our North Star going forward.”

Number two, she said, would be “granular guidelines to what constitutes abuse.”

USEF is currently looking to simplify certain areas of the rule book, said Keating. One example where they are looking at possible changes are the rules around whips, and how they vary between disciplines and breeds.

“A universal rule would be much easier to educate people about, and on the enforcement end, it would be easier for the officials,” she said.

Listen to the full conversations with both Howe and Keating on the Horse Person podcast now.