This level of ammie ignorance runs through most social media but the horse stuff is most obvious to us and the algorithm is pushing it into our faces. The level of ignorance around human health and nutrition and the amount of snake oil and bad ideas is even more extreme, but likely we don’t feel as compelled to watch every “weight loss tea” and “detox cleanse diet” out there.
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If this chick took my mustang in training, she’d just be sitting there while the mustang stuffed grass into her belly.
If she took my old jumper in training, she’d be dead. Because I doubt if she could stay on while he ran around jumping all the things.
I think we have the same horses 
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As an eventer to the core I get it. The EBVMA ( I’m a member) had a meeting a few months ago and they wanted farmers to get involved. Guess what happened because they announced it publicly on Twitter, the meeting got zoom bombed but we shut that down. Even if eventers aren’t into joining, they put out a lot of good information and ISES is also quite good. I’m actually amazed that I didn’t get attacked for my comment. Conditioning and the chilling effect are obstacles to be cleared. Becoming familiar with their rhetoric, when activists start making certain comments has helped me to recognize it at an early stage.
It seems to be a problem not only with keyboard warriors but also riding students and clients at the lower levels. They can get influenced to join the quacktastic army
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One of my favorite parts of this whole FEI pile on is one of the photo carousels the commenters are going to town on is a grey wearing a Fairfax with an anatomical flash. Tell me you have no idea what’s actually going on in the photos and are just commenting for cheap social media points…
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ugh they have showed up on my local fb page - someone shared an ad for a 25 yr qh gelding sound w/t/c, no one here to ride him $1500. The comments - he shouldn’t be rode with that back (he actually has whithers 
), he’s in pain, he should be retired, evil people trying to squeeze the last money out of the poor old horse. Try and say maybe the old horse likes attention and would be a great first horse for a little kid and omg the pearl clutching. And the ad called him a palomino when he’s actually a buckskin so the people are awful and ignorant - IDK my husband calls them all brownish or the spotted one so I’m not going to judge them on colour names.
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if it’s the vet I am thinking of, I got suckered and went down the rabbit hole of absolute nonsense with her with my horse. Months of “rehab” that did nothing but waste my time and money.
That seems to be the trend with her practice and other vets that follow her footsteps.
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Not sure this forum and TikTok draw from the same user base, but there is a woman/“trainer” who says she trains only via positive reinforcement, no bits, spurs, whips, etc. The horses “choose” whether they want to participate in the day’s activity-- all while she throws grain in front of their face the entire time.
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There are a number of those on social media. Should (ideally) be bridleless too 
The “purely positive” contingent – dogs or horses – are insufferable, IMO. And I would consider myself to be a 99% positive dog trainer.
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They rave about their backyard stock horses topline too when it’s actually just fat. Meanwhile would look at burghley jogs and claim most horses aren’t fit to compete.
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OMG this actually sounds very similar to the one I found. Is this a TREND? I’m sadly guessing it is.
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It is a trend. The training with “consent” crowd took some buzzwords and trending tags and have used it to create massive online followings. Positive training or whatever they call it. Tons of videos of a person approaching a horse with a saddle, horse shifts it’s weight or flicks an ear back (or is actually legitimately girthy), and the person puts the saddle away and pats the horse.
Now I’m ALL for listening to what the horse is trying to tell you, making it the horse’s idea and having the right choice be easy, as well as realizing that a lot of the “traditional” training methods are a bit rough or plain ineffective. But these people are creating monsters, as well as avoiding dealing with legitimate problems like ulcers, obesity related issues, actually poor fitting tack or untrained horses, the person’s own fear of the animals, etc etc.
There’s a whole commentary here about social media and the intense desire to be 100% unproblematic in every corner of life, but it’s not relevant to this discussion. A lot of the content creators are simply playing the algorithm for $$$ and cheap fame, but some people are really getting sucked into it all. Good luck getting your horse to “consent” to get on a trailer to the emergency vet - or do you let them choose to roll and twist their intestines?
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I’m disappointed to see Panther Run Saddlery join this nonsense. I learned a lot about fitting from her, but now question a lot of things if she’s part of this horse-hockey bandwagon.
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The bodyworkers and saddle fitters are leading the charge in the online anti-riding community. And again all for listening to horses, but there has to be some common sense too.
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Uhmmm - has anyone told them that they will be out of business and horses will disappear if there is no riding?
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I think it is hard as a saddle fitter. We see so much and most of us are in it to help. I think we get glimpses into multiple barns that most people don’t including different types if training programs. We by far get to see the most people riding. In addition we spend a lot of time studying anatomy and Biomechanics.
We have to keep in mind, each person is on their own journey. People only change if they want to change and the best way to help is by example. However it is so hard sometimes to not say anything.
Also right now I feel like social media is getting more and more extreme and it is hard to not get sucked in. To get views and clicks you have to come up with a viewpoint that will get attention. Reasonable and moderate views don’t sell well. I see this in saddle fitting. Some of the most popular social media for saddle fitting are taking everything away from the middle view point.
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I agree with you. For a few years I was interested in becoming a saddle fitter. What turned me off was that there are so many components into making a sound horse: I saw a lot of horses with genuinely horrible feet, visibly lame, demonstrating ulcer behavior, stalled 18h a day, etc. I also saw how many people were resistant to changing their husbandry practices to make their horses healthier and happier – and how quickly clients could turn on their fitter for XYZ issue when it may not even have a root in the saddle fitting at all. What turned me off the most was the number of lame horses I saw in an active program. I don’t mind servicably sound horses in a lesson program, but many of these were competitive horses.
You saddle fitters are in a really unenviable position; you see the best and the worst of the barns you service, and sometimes saying things how they really are can cause you to lose clients. You[g] are one of the first people blamed when a horse goes lame - not the management, not the riding, not the fact the horse was lame before you came and put a saddle on their back.
On the other hand… there are a lot of bad saddle fitters out there, who will blame anything and everything before they accept they did their client a disservice.
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pretty much true for being a farrier - I bloody well don’t have a magic rasp, owner has to do their part too and somethings just ain’t going to fix
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