Join friends, Karen Luke and Meta Osborne, as they take a lighthearted and lively look into the serious task of making equestrian sport and racing sustainable into the future. The show's key ingredient is exploring new perspectives and not shying away from tough conversations. Curious to learn how leading scientists, jockeys, journalists and practitioners see future for horses in sport? Then buckle up for this fun adventure as we start Changing Rein!
I Live for Eventing — But I Live for the Horses More | With 5* Eventer Matt Brown and FEI Dressage Rider Cecily Clark
What if the problem in equestrian sport isn't the riders who make the headlines, but the culture that produced them?
In December, five-star eventer Matt Brown and FEI dressage rider Cecily Clark posted an open letter to the equestrian world. It struck a nerve — thousands of reactions and a flood of private messages from people who'd felt the same unease but thought they were the only one.
In this episode, the husband-and-wife team behind East West Training Stables sit down with Karen and Meta to talk about what it really costs to compete at the top, and why Matt describes being named an Olympic alternate as one of the lowest moments of his career. Together they move the conversation away from singling out individuals and toward something harder to look at: the culture we've built around competition, and the things we've simply grown to accept.
Along the way they explore the horses who've gone quiet in the warm-up ring — shut down, chins to their chests — the education gap that leaves even professionals unsure how a horse actually sees the world, and why choosing the slower, kinder path so often feels like failure long before it feels like progress.
An honest, generous conversation about welfare, culture, and change — and why none of us needs to be perfect to start trying to do better.
📩 Read the open letter that started it all (https://www.facebook.com/cecily.clark.9/posts/pfbid02dApnFXLYAAQRMdJWd5VdnYzh8so5Za9eFwMP5g9VcYWHCDCGFP59PdxuJJmSEPUEl)
5 May 2026
The Stories We Inherit About Risk in Racing | Jessie McCarthy on Welfare and Social Licence
"It's in their constitution to be injured."
"We've bred them to be like this."
Both of these came up in the same conversation — and the paradox sitting between them is one of the patterns Jessie McCarthy's research (https://doi.org/10.1111/evj.14561) surfaces about how racing talks to itself about risk.
In this week's episode, Karen and Meta sit down with Jessie McCarthy, a final-year veterinary student at the University of Surrey, with a Master's in Animal Welfare, Ethics and Law from the University of Glasgow. Her recently published paper (https://doi.org/10.1111/evj.14561), co-authored with Euan Bennett and Heather Cameron-Whytock, takes a less common approach to social licence in racing: rather than starting from outside the sport, she interviewed twelve insiders about how they perceive the risks horses face, and the language they reach for when things go wrong.
What emerges is a quietly revealing portrait of a sport in conversation with itself. Risk often gets reframed as a communication problem rather than a welfare one.
Responsibility gets dispersed across the sport — until, as Jessie's research shows, it often quietly settles on the horses themselves. Their fragility. Their nature. Their breeding.
But of course — we bred them.
In this conversation, we explore:
Why the words we reach for ("accident," "incident," "adverse event") shape what we believe is possible
How tradition and identity in the horse world can act as a brake on reform
Pin firing, generational change, and what the next generation of equine vets is choosing differently
Why a horse's welfare may be shaped less by race day than by the other 360 days
The question of equine consent — and why only one of twelve stakeholders raised it
And, offered any wish in the world, Jessie's is gloriously simple: more turnout, more friends, more forage
A thoughtful, generous conversation with a young vet whose research invites the horse world — insiders and outsiders alike — to reflect on the stories we've inherited.
🎧 Subscribe and share with someone who loves horses.
🌐 changingrein.com.au
📧 team@changingrein.com.au (mailto:team@changingrein.com.au)
#ChangingRein #EquineWelfare #SocialLicence #Racing
18 Apr 2026
When Love Isn't Enough: What We Owe Our Animals
We love our animals. But is that enough?
Captive animal welfare specialist Georgina Groves joins Karen and Meta for a conversation about the uncomfortable gap between what we know about animal welfare and what we actually do.
Georgina's work takes her into some of the world's most under-resourced zoos — but the parallels she draws for horse people are striking. Stables that haven't meaningfully changed in a century. Animals who've forgotten how to be their own species. A health-centric idea of care that protects the body while quietly constraining the life.
This is an episode about welfare washing, moral duty, and the difference between caring for an animal and caring about one.
Featuring the story of four bears who had to relearn how to be bears — and what that might mean for the horses in our care.
🎧 Listen in, then join the conversation.
Guest: Georgina Groves, captive animal welfare specialist and co-founder of Wild Welfare
Hosts: Dr Karen Luke and Meta Osborne
GEORGINA'S LINKEDIN POST (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/georgina-groves-81208236_the-last-part-of-my-work-in-japan-was-for-activity-7386324543625351168-Gkr6?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAADqDWHoBWOLDNxO_YERQj_2SPcxGxHQwiYk)LINK TO WILD WELFARE (https://wildwelfare.org/our-team/)
Who has been a guest on Changing Rein
Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
Dr Megan Ross
Dr Miriam Baumgartner
Professor Paddy Wall
Dr. Mette Uldahl
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
5,101
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
3 ratings
Spotify
4.7 / 5
24 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 63 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
76
Social presence
0
YouTube
74
Engagement
51
Contact Changing Rein
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