One of the things I was thinking about after Matt and Cecily’s post is that it seems to be the “trendy” (for lack of a better word) thing to do to ride aggressively on a “difficult” horse. I am mostly in the showjumping world and I have noticed that if a rider has a round where their horse isn’t quite under control, or they might have a few rails, they go through the timers and immediately start seesawing to prove a point. There seems to be this idea that you have to actively make your horse look “difficult” or as if they’re not listening if something doesn’t go your way to prove that it “isn’t the rider’s fault.” That’s what the post made me think of because big name riders and young riders alike do it all the time. There’s a huge difference between giving your horse a correction versus doing something under the guise of a correction that is actually unnecessary and, generally, people see it as acceptable.
I am sorry, this is doxing, no?
I am all for requiring governing bodies to take action, but calling upon the masses with pitchforks doesn’t feel like the right way to me.
No, it isn’t anything to do with timing. It is this " I myself, while disgusted by these actions, am not ready to be the whistleblower."
To me, that sounds like someone who will be shaking his head in sorrow while he walks the other way. And he will have a bit of self loathing (shame) at this. It isn’t clear if he is applying this to past behavior only, or if he would do the same thing when witnessing things going forward. Someone could probably go find him on Facebook and ask the direct question.
It reads a little bit like “He who lives in a glass house should not cast stones” sentiment when stated after the admission of having learned and used harsher and abusive training methods in his past.
I have no expectation that a professional will be coming forward to USEF and listing out a laundry list of every possible abuse he/she witnessed over the past XX years, but if it is a continuing behavior and they are looking the other way, they are part of the problem.
I’m going to try to coherently say the thing that’s been spinning around in my head since all of this started, because it’s a point of view I haven’t quite seen represented: statements like this freak me out. (Matt, not you ake) What do you mean you have personally witnessed this over the last few years? Did you do anything about it?? In this case, the answer appears to be unfortunately not, because he is “not ready to be the whistleblower”. Especially given the significant position of power and security he has when compared to so many others in the industry (grooms, etc) that’s a problem.
I do have my eyes open. I am paying attention. I based with a 5* rider for 10 years. I worked for him for some of that time, lived on site for periods of time, and was an owner of young horses before life took me to a different area of the country. As staff, I was oftentimes the first one in and the last one out. I would administer meds (as in, for allergies or antibiotics, not freaking IV magnesium), tack horses before he rode them, set jumps while he rode, and untacked after. Was everything roses? No, days are long and exhausting and not every day is a pizza party, but the shit that’s listed here just did not happen in that facility no matter how grumpy anyone got and it makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills when people put out statements saying “abuse is around almost every corner of every farm” and “most, if not all of our idols practice or have practiced some form of it”.
I’m not naive and I am certain the reports that are coming in are true, but telling everyone that this happens around every corner of every farm is destructive and let’s people off the hook and is just plain false. No, Matt, if in this moment we “condemn one” we should not “likely condemn all” because I don’t know what barns you have been in but they are just simply not all like this and telling people that they are is gross and unhelpful.
When I don’t feel like I’m personally going crazy, it makes me really, really sideeye the people that are saying it. Maybe I was at the unicorn barn, but it was a unicorn barn that brought home medals and sent horses around the world to compete, so it damn well can be done. It gives me the ick when someone publishes a big long list of things they have done wrong and then says:
You don’t have to lose control of your emotions to become someone who can “do real good in the lives of horses and students”. You can just be that person from the beginning.
I’m not trying to come down so specifically hard on him as I am, because I do think admitting your mistakes is critical, and I respect people who do it with honesty, but these posts are becoming more and more common and lauding them and holding them up as examples of our best sits very poorly with me.
On the other hand, I then think this post somehow swings too far to the other extreme. You get comments like:
I don’t remember that Kentucky round, so maybe he did overuse it, I’m not commenting on that. But the use of a whip (never, ever to beat a horse, but as a timing aid) is not inherently abusive, and I don’t think it does us any favors to start claiming that either. Mia Farley and Phelps over the Cottesmore Leap at Burghley last weekend is a great example. That fence is a bad fence for a horse to hesitate at. To avoid that mistake, three strides out she put her reins in her left hand and dropped her right hand with her stick down near her right leg. When she reached her takeoff point, she tapped him with it. She didn’t hit him, she didn’t beat him. It was contact that I doubt registered at any level greater than your average high five. But it said to the horse “3, 2, 1, go!” and they stepped over the fence with confidence and continued on. That’s not abuse, and I have no problem with it being legal - in fact, I would have a problem if it wasn’t.
Of course a whip can be used negatively - I’ve ridden horses that have been treated poorly before they came to me, and you couldn’t carry a whip with them at all they were so afraid. But on the other hand, my horses couldn’t care less what I do with my whip, except when I don’t use it to remove the biting bugs fast enough, and I don’t have a problem with people knowing I carry one. A whip is not inherently a tool of abuse, and I think portraying it as such is also very detrimental.
…that was long and rambling but @ake987 you asked how we interpreted it and what we take away from it and, well, that’s what I’ve got right now. Less coherent than usual, probably, and for that I apologize. There hasn’t been much about this situation from any direction that has made me feel good over the past few days.
One other note:
Oh my god.
No one is out to ruin the guys life, just want him to get away from horses 
It’s not a mistake if that’s how you operate. End of story.
He can go get a job cleaning toilets or something, far far away from helpless animals.
The apologists don’t make the sport look good. All too scared to call each other out.
Agreed.
If he came out right away and said I did it, I’m sorry and I’m mentally not well and will get help, therapy and anger management, this would be such a different conversation.
I so agree with you.
This man is an animal abuser, a criminal. If he was not a 5* eventer and just some idiot off the street who was in a video kicking a dog he would never ever be excused away.
Animal abusers are not mentally healthy. They are missing key emotional regulation and normal function.
100%–I felt the same way.
It got “liked” and shared by many people because it’s a long-ass post, and there are things some people can agree with in the first paragraph or two, but buried within it is the usual “well, we’ve all used a heavy hand when we didn’t know better” excuses. The truth is, it’s hard to oppose powerful people in any industry when they do wrong when your own position is precarious (which many people perceive themselves to be in the horse industry, pros and owners alike).
On the topic of forgiveness, I think that we all have different thresholds when it comes to that. Usually shaped by our life experiences, and I can respect that. I don’t have to agree, but I can appreciate where people are coming from.
I am, however, getting a wee bit sick of the mental health thing. Mental health is hugely important but sometimes I’m just thinking, is this just a case of a person not being able to or not wanting to handle the consequences of their own actions? Because God forbid you’re held accountable. We can’t do that. Think of their mental health!
We have to find a balance there. Sure, a person is struggling, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be held accountable or reality has to be put on hold. Perhaps if their mental health were truly a concern those that are crowing about that are close to the individual should’ve stepped in sooner because this person (or any abuser) is clearly not ok. You can’t be “ok” and do this to an animal. So for all of those years, where was your concern about mental health?
If a person acknowledges their mistakes, and genuinely wants to improve and never go down that road again, I’ll offer them a bit more grace, personally. It still doesn’t right their wrongs or undo any of the abuse and harm that they’ve caused, but at least it shows they don’t want to continue being a dirtbag.
If they have a long standing pattern of being abusive, I’m a bit less forgiving. Even moreso of those that stood by for so long and did nothing. You don’t get to be complacent and now go on about “what about their mental health” when you did f*ck all for so many years.
If you knew about the abuse, said this is wrong, and walked away, then fair enough. That’s not the real issue that I have.
My gob is just completely smacked over how some people could even think that what McConnon did is ok. Or why some (not anyone on here, I think) are still in denial when presented with evidence that is clear as day. Those that think that a horse deserves anything like that or even welts from a whip, are just incapable of actually training a horse. So their shortcomings are evident when they resort to abuse and force.
Sure, horses are “physical communicators” and at times you do need to make things crystal clear or be quite strict in the name of safety, but that is not at all what’s happening here. It’s just abuse. It’s just…stupid. I’d respect someone more if they walked away from horses and said, “I don’t have the mental capacity and/or resilience for this sport at this time” vs carried on, but that would require self awareness, reflection, and actually giving a f*ck.
On a somewhat related note, there seem to be far too many negative consequences to using animals in sport. The drive to be competitive and pure ego costs these animals way too much. It’s something that I contemplate often.
Sorry for the “random thoughts essay” but just had a few things I wanted to throw in for discussions sake.
Yes.
No one is out to ruin this guy’s life. He ruined his own life.
This is also the same person who posted a Gofundme on this thread to help save “Wakita” and when called out that that wasn’t even the horse in the videos, the post was removed. Someone with Halbert in her name also had been posting the same GFM all over FB.
Heck, the lady who got dumped by her horse at a Hamptons show and futilely kicked at him (really barely nudged him with her boot) had fewer online defenders.
[quote=“kt, post:650, topic:798895, full:true”]
So unhinged, heard.
US professional eventers. Serious answer.
Quoting this so everyone sees it again and again.
Great post Marigold. Thank you for sharing this perspective.
I feel like there is a weird social media see saw reaction playing out to this. One extreme group of people are conflating anything and everything with abuse, and on a path towards ending competitive equine sports as we know it. And though I am firmly anti abuse… I’m not part of that extreme group.
But there’s another weird group who seems to jump right to the position of having empathy for everyone and everything, explaining away and forgiving everything, and turning everything into a teachable moment or something.
@Bensmom had a superb post earlier that spoke towards some of the issues I find troubling about the mentality I see going on with group #2 … I will just quote this one portion though…
One of the questions this situation raises for me is whether society no longer has actions that justify casting someone out of the group for, in the end? At what point does drawing a boundary become an acceptable thing to do? Part of the rules that govern society are that there are behaviors so egregious that you will be cast out for crossing a line. Have we reached a point to where that is no longer a real threat, because before there is even a reckoning, an apology or a “holding accountable,” we are already saying, in essence, “Stay here in our warm group. We will still love you.” If that is the case, is that not a weakening of the rules involved in safely interacting with others if the possibility of banishment no longer has teeth?
The many discussions of SafeSport emphasized over and over that USEF is essentially a private club. When I saw @Bensmom ‘s passage about the notion of some transgressions meriting “banishment” … YEAH. Precisely. The photos and allegations I have now heard about with respect to AM? That’s the sort of stuff someone should be banished from the club for. This isn’t complicated. People need to screw their heads back on straight and see it for what it is.
Andrew McConnon’s professional equestrian career should be toast for now, probably forever.
He can figure out something else to do with his life where he doesn’t get so enraged as to cause harm to sentient beings.
Yes, @FitzE, enforcement is tricky. Maybe one way to hold the funders’ feet to the fire is to examine their goals and decide whether funding people who abuse horses can be part of those goals.
This is the stated mission and significant activity from USEA’s most recent publicly available not for profit IRS filing.
“THE EDUCATION OF MEMBERS, THE PROMOTION OF THE EQUESTRIAN SPORT OF EVENTING AND SAFE, STANDARDIZED EVENTING COMPETITION IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.” (Sorry about the all caps; it’s taken from the document directly."
When a not-for-profit goes against its mission, i.e. funds someone who does the opposite of its mission, the board members are responsible. This is a $4.5M operation.
The USEA has a half-million dollar separate foundation to actually funnel money to its grantees called the USEA Foundation. Its mission is: “TO CARRY OUT THE CHARITABLE PURPOSES AND SUPPORT EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES OF THE UNITED STATED EVENTING ASSOCIATION (USEA),” all members of both boards must ensure the mission is met, not perverted.
Click here for the USEA’s 990 filing, complete with board members, employee salaries, etc.
Click here for the USEA Foundation’s 990.
I will say that these organizations do at least one thing right, they give away more than the bare minimum required to maintain their tax-exempt status.
I agree this would go a long way. It doesn’t do anything to fix things for what’s been done but owning it and working on moving forward I think speaks better of people than trying to pretend it didn’t happen or wasn’t as bad as what we all saw. Attempts to dismiss this as “out of context” videos or “one moment of frustration” would just make it clear one doesn’t think they’ve done anything wrong. I know it’s kind of the standard statement to make, but they always seem to me to brush off the seriousness of what went on.
I’ve seen this re-shared all over facebook and it’s a bit of “there but for the grace of god go I”. Agree that many probably have had moments where they are ashamed of a split second reaction that may not have been the kindest to their horse. And have learnt and grown as horsemen over the years. But to have this kind of evidence of abuse - multiple videos - that the horses simply do not understand. And that, as far as I know, isn’t any sort of reliable training technique by any stretch of the imagination. This to me goes beyond that one in the heat of the moment instance.
It seems to me that to be deserving of any sort of grace, forgiveness, empathy there must be SOME response from the person doing this (not their father) to admit they were so very very very very very wrong, to come clean with what they were hoping to accomplish and to ASK for grace, forgiveness and empathy.
I’ve been in a fair few work meetings so don’t know if he has made any sort of public statement but days of simply nothing other than to pull down his social media smacks of arrogance and someone who, in my most humble opinion, is just sorry they were caught out.
