‘I'd rather wear out than rust out’: autobiologies of ageing equestriennes

Abstract

Horse–human relationships expressed as a kind of co-embodied engagement or mutual physicality between horse and rider receive note in emerging literatures on equine sports and multi-species ethnography. Less attention focuses on the impacts of equestrienne activities on ageing female bodies. This study is based on analysis of narrative data collected from open-ended qualitative interviews with 36 women, aged 40–70, who participate in a variety of equestrian activities and sports in the North American Midwest and Arctic Norway. Although ageing informants associate animal partnerships with the maintenance of health, and although informants' narratives show some accord with master narratives of ageing athletes identified by sports sociologists, the natures of horse–human relationships invite more explicit, horse- specific contexts of analysis. The phrase ‘autobiologies of ageing’ denotes how women's narratives of equestrienne ageing privilege and centre a subjective sense of physical identity or embodied self where the rider's experience of her body becomes entangled with and impartible from that of the horse or horses she rides.

The Architecture of Happiness

“…We’ll briefly consider each. Indeed, even these do not exhaust the possibilities, with a handful of studies exploring the impact on happiness of such chemicals as dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEA-S) (Sonnenblick et al, 2018), testosterone (Masuda et al, 2014), vitamin D (Schäfer et al, 2016), oestradiol (Lacker et al, 2020), FSH, LH, prolactin (PRL) (Castanho et al, 2014), IGF-I, and IGFBP-3 (Emeny et al, 2014). However, we shall briefly just discuss the eight mentioned above, as these have a larger literature.…”

“…Moreover, a shift in perspective may be also required here; just as thoughts may not only generate but actually constitute happiness – as noted above – so too might behaviour. Certain actions might best be seen as the physical embodiment and expression of happiness, rather than just being a precipitating cause or a contingent response (Davis et al, 2016). Imagine a sports fan leaping up in joy at their team winning.…”

Multispecies leisure: Human-animal interactions in leisure landscapes

“…Equestrian leisure requires high levels of commitment, in terms of time, emotion and financial input, and so often becomes an important marker of individual and collective identity (Dashper, 2017b;Dashper, Abbott & Wallace, 2019). Dominant themes emerging from the human-horse leisure literature include: the gendered nature of this form of multispecies leisure (Dashper, 2016;Finkel & Danby, 2018;Linghede, 2019); the role of equestrian leisure at different stages of the (human and equine) lifecourse (Davis et al, 2016;Sanchez, 2017;Franklin & Schuurman, 2017); and, the importance of partnership in human-horse relationships (Maurstad et al, 2013;Dashper, 2017b). This growing field of study illustrates some of the complexities of multispecies leisure, which can be simultaneously joyous and rewarding, as well as risky and potentially heartbreaking.…”

Multispecies leisure: human-animal interactions in leisure landscapes

“…Equestrian leisure requires high levels of commitment, in terms of time, emotion and financial input, and so often becomes an important marker of individual and collective identity (Dashper, 2017b;Dashper, Abbott, & Wallace, 2019). Dominant themes emerging from the human-horse leisure literature include: the gendered nature of this form of multispecies leisure (Dashper, 2016;Finkel & Danby, 2018;Linghede, 2019); the role of equestrian leisure at different stages of the (human and equine) lifecourse (Davis, Maurstad, & Dean, 2016;Franklin & Schuurman, 2017;Sanchez, 2017); and, the importance of partnership in human-horse relationships (Dashper, 2017b;Maurstad et al, 2013). This growing field of study illustrates some of the complexities of multispecies leisure, which can be simultaneously joyous and rewarding, as well as risky and potentially heartbreaking.…”