Sunday, January 17, 2010

Some smart people and some really really dumb ones...

As many of you know i am very VERY against Rolkur.
and me and  my mom found a great magazine that expresses lots of views on Rolkur and other articles that relate to the riders aids, equipment, and relationships between horse and rider, with the added bonus of great pictures of lippizans and other absolutly stunning horses. Most of the articles are on training, which i think is amazing, because most of us riding dressage and other disaplines don't have horses that are already trained to grand prix or whatever level you aspire to. I would read this magazine even if you don't do dressage it has great techniques in it that apply to all kinds of riding. And for you dressage people it has all the great masters like Nuno Olivera (my personal favorite) and an assortment of spanish riding school gurus.
here is the link


So i know most of you have seen the blue-tongue video and if not here it is


in all its blue-tongued glory, i chose the un-cut version because some people think he only rode like that for maybe a minute, however that 9 minutes was nothing, that horse was ridden like this for TWO HOURS STRAIGHT
how anyone can even think this is ok is absolutly beyond me, and he even has the balls to put that poor horses tongue back in his mouth. There is a list of people i really want to drop-kick one day, this guy just made the list right under Monty Merola. This is just sick. sick. sick.
This guy has obviously put winning a 99 cent ribbon ahead of his horses well-being.  
just. sick.

rant over

3 comments:

Dressager said...

I concur! It's shoddy dressage. If you're going to do it, do it right. I actually did a presentation on rollkur to my sociology class (it was a hefty task, mind you, as nobody in my class knows diddly squat about riding except that "you shake the reins to get the horse to go, right?") as a part of a "what drives people to animal cruelty" topic.

My "theory": a couple buys a horse as part of a romanticized dream that they've been harboring since childhood (a lot of problems start out this way, don't they?). Innocent enough, right? Oh, but they can afford the green, hot warmblood that's promised to go to the Olympics, so they go for it! They are now noobs with a green, hot, promising warmblood that they don't know what to do with. So they send it to a trainer. Oh, but they can afford the Olympic-level trainer, so they go for it! Now from here it can either branch off into the owners become impatient to start showing him (what they thought would take a few months to a year will take more than six years if you want him trained PROPERLY to even THINK about going to Grand Prix shows) or they want to start showing him right away so they can get thier money's worth. Finance and impatience. Afterall, the nice stable, awesome trainer, and horse altogether are not cheap.

The trainer, if they haven't sent the horse to a different one by this point, whips out some quick tricks so he doesn't lose any bucks, tricks like rollkur and fancy martingales and complicated bits. The horse, probably through pain or will to please, submits VERY quickly, though not comfortably or correctly, and NOW they can go off to a show. It looks flashy, the owners take it, (sadly) most of the judges take it, and the trainer can go right on riding crappily. But hey, the owner's impatience is quelled and they got their money back right? All in a matter of no more than five years or so.

I understand it doesn't ALWAYS go like this, but from what I've read, it's not uncommon. Sorry that was long it just struck me as odd that there were a few stories with that similarity.

Merideth said...

i've seen that one before.
i always tell greenies that "green + green = black and blue"
the amount of people that think they can train horses is just appalling, and it ALWAYS ends up with a trip to the hospital

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