Two weeks away from the Fédération Equestre Internationale World Equestrian Games (WEG), I find myself at the 10th annual conference of the International Society for Equitation Science in Bredsten, Denmark.

The talks hone in on the science of riding—the way we ride now, the way we shouldn’t ride, and suggestions on the ways riding should evolve. They’re also about what kinds of stress we put on horses when we’re riding them. And the stress they experience when we’re competing them, and when we’re transporting them, or separating them, or housing them.

The researchers have—as researchers are prone to do—found scientific reasons to criticize the way things are done now. Competition horses undergo a lot of physical and emotional stress: sometimes confusion, sometimes anxiety, sometimes pain. High-level competition horses can go through as much of this as amateur level horses do, or even more. And in worst-case scenarios, the horses break down—physically, emotionally, or both. We see physical strains and fractures, and if we were looking more closely, we’d also be seeing the signs of depression or “learned helplessness,” as the researchers call it, in horses who have just, emotionally, given up.

One highly acclaimed scientist even said dressage horse movements are becoming “extravagant” to the point of being “ridiculous,” and that we are no longer considering the basic concept of dressage, which is to “shape” a horse to perform at his personal best with lightness