'I Can't Watch Anymore' - by Julie Taylor (Paperback)

About the Book

A meticulously researched exposé of the dark side of high-level horse sport: entitlement and spineless regulation, always at the expense of the horse. This compelling book argues Equestrian should be dropped as unfit for the Olympic Games.

Book Synopsis

'Catalogues what happens to sport horses in plain sight ... should be compulsory reading for all of us who care about horses.' - Professor Paul McGreevy BVSc, PhD, FRCVS; author, Equine Behaviour

Passionate, yet rigorous and meticulously researched, this eye-opening book holds equestrian sport up to Olympic standards and finds it sadly wanting.

Doping agents that used to cost Olympic medals, rebranded as benign 'medication'. Shell federations with no riders or horses, propped up to make the sport seem 'global'. Judging that favours spectacle over the rules. From the myth of gender equality, to the failure to prevent rollkur, to the easing of the 'blood rule' to appease riders, to horses competing with the nerves in their legs cut to numb the pain of injuries: this is a tale of entitlement, privilege, and spineless regulation, always at the expense of the horse. 'I Can't Watch Anymore' chronicles and explains how the bureaucrats who run the Federation Equestre Internationale (FEI) have stripped and sold for parts one of the oldest Olympic sports in the world until finally, there is nothing left to preserve.

This compelling book challenges the reader to confront the reality of high-level equestrian competition today and say, along with so many others, 'I can't watch anymore'.

Review Quotes

'Catalogues what happens to sport horses in plain sight ... should be compulsory reading for all of us who care about horses´ - Professor Paul McGreevy BVSc, PhD, FRCVS; author, Equine Behaviour

'What a bombshell of a book. Julie Taylor spells it all out, saying what many feel: "I Can't Watch Anymore". She makes a compelling, evidenced case for dropping Equestrian from the Olympic Games!' - Dr Iris Bergmann, PhD, PhD, BEd, DipEd; Interspecies sustainability researcher

'In her most important book 'I Can't Watch Anymore' - The Case for Dropping Equestrian from the Olympic Games Julie Taylor exposes the ongoing psychological and physical abuse to which sentient and deeply emotional competition horses are subjected and carefully explains who horses are and the compassion and love they need to live high-quality lives. -- Marc Bekoff, Ph.D., author of The Animals' Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age and A Dog's World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World Without Humans (both with Jessica Pierce)

'This book is full of powerful, fact based evidence, and if this got into the wrong hands, it would be very bad for our sports.' - Dr Sue Dyson MA Vet ​MB PhD DEO DipECVSMR, former President of the British Equine Veterinary Association

'Julie Taylor has done the horse a favor. All who are interested in the horse will do themselves a favor by discovering her investigative reporting' - Dr Robert Cook, FRCVS., PhD., Professor of Surgery Emeritus of Tufts University, Massachusetts