I don’t think he looks all that stressed - annoyed, yes, and maybe a bit confused about why he is being asked to do what is apparently an effort for him. He isn’t sitting into the right hind and is avoiding bringing it under and through - whether because of a mechanical/pain issue (hocks or stifles?), or because it just isn’t his general MO. He also isn’t going forward into the bridle, maybe because the rider is grabbing onto his face too much, maybe because of tension about the situation. It could also be that he is stiff to the right and hollow to the left - either because that is his natural tendency or because the rider is also a bit crooked in that direction. It would be super interesting to see him going in the other direction and see if he also had the same issue of not wanting to come through on that inside hind.
But whatever the reason, CDJ’s actions are certainly way over the top. She SHOULD be ashamed, and I hope every single dressage trainer is now starting to think hard about their own training techniques.
Interestingly, I am very long in the torso and for awhile rode with a coach who has essentially no torso. It’s freaky how her hips are basically at the bottom of her rib cage. So she would comment on the length of my reins and angle of my elbows until I finally said to her "you do understand that you are 4 inches shorter than me and wear breeches that are 3 inches longer than mine? " and we found a happy medium.
his body language screams stress and fear. I guess this is the issue that people can’t recognize when a horse is dying inside.
ETA a lot of horses are stoic and don’t show fear the way you would think by launching or running off. A lot of them internalize it but their body language says it all.
Breaking a glass or slamming a door is VASTLY different from using a lunge whip to deliberately and repeatedly hit, wait- ATTACK- a horse to the point that he’s running away in fear. There is NO comparison.
The original video posted by COTH that I saw this morning was cut short. In this video https://youtu.be/3Y8_ROb0ZUk?si=kLxMrNJ8t3wFIHR_ the horse is consistently tail swishing, kicks out at CD multiple times, and tucks his tail away from the whip in at least one instance I can see. If this doesn’t look a stressed horse to you(g) then I think you’ve been desensitized to stressed horses.
The reins are taught throughout the entire clip and the horse is often almost cantering in place indicating he’s trying to go forward but there’s no where to go because the rider has a stranglehold on him -that’s what I mean by against the bridle.
The interesting part to me in the video is that she not only cracks the whip in a backhand motion then an overhand motion. It could be considered encouraging forward motion cracking the whip behind the horse moving forward. But the overhanded strikes aren’t in the same vein. They are just striking the horse. They are coming forward to back, and to me that’s definitely sending mixed messages to the horse. The horse is at VERY LEAST confused with what’s being asked of them. We have no way of knowing how long they’d been riding before this. But maybe the horse doesn’t bolt because they are mentally tired at this point. The calm nature of it all is chilling to watch.
To echo so many people here, if this is what it takes to be at the top, are we doing the right thing for our companions?
The horse in the video learned nothing from that session; he was already mentally and physically tired.
IMHO, if one can clearly hear a horse’s heavy breathing from across the ring, it’s time to stop.
Meanwhile Werth and Kittel are competing for their teams. I guess abuse of the horse’s mouth is OK with the FEI. There are photos of those poor horses’ blue tongues and open mouths.
None of this is OK and I am very disappointed in all of UL Dressage at this point.
I guess whipping is more easily seen as abuse by the general public, than is the egregious abuse of a horse’s mouth.
I am going to argue this point.
Horses do not typically come out of he womb stoic, babies are reactive because every new thing is the “WORST THING EVER” And it keeps them alive in the wild.
Horses BECOME stoic through learning that reacting is only going to get more of the same.
Let’s assume that a majority of dressage riders and fans are in some state of shock today. And knowing that, and reading a wide, wiiiide (!) range of posts here, one isn’t surprised to find coping mechanisms at play that work for the person who writes and don’t really work for others. Fascinating display of reactions to breaking news of recorded abuse.
Horses are so very patient with us humans, their stewards. They endure us, enable us, and excel with us if treated fairly. This video isn’t fair to that poor member of the horse family, it is outrageous and undeserved and stomach-wrenching to witness, and it stands for others that aren’t filmed when they undergo this kind of training. Man o man. It has to stop. How nuts is this as a ‘sport,’ how rotten.
I love dressage, and riding in general, it’s my life. I hate that Charlotte, for whatever reason, has added to the disgrace of bad, greedy, careless horsemanship.
The claimant is the person who filmed the clip, not the rider.
From Horse & Hound today: "The girl riding the horse in the video is not in any way involved in raising the official complaint.
‘My client is the one filming and the girl on the horse in the lesson has nothing to do with it,’ said Mr Wensing. ‘My client was a former student of Charlotte Dujardin and had been to her barn a couple of times and had noticed what she now considers abuse.’"
I am actually pretty good at reading a horse’s body language - so much so that several of my past trainers thought I was some sort of freak.
I guess I have been around and ridden more than a few horses over the years who acted like this guy and they were not particularly terrified - maybe a bit worried, a bit anxious, but not upset enough to explode. IME, the truly terrified ones go into a blind panic at some point and bolt, rear, try to flee. Of course, we only saw a few seconds of this video so who knows what happened later - this guy may in fact have reached the boiling point.
For sure, mine is the cheap plastic one and I don’t even have it at the barn right now. My question is - why would you have anything different if it’s just an extension of your arm?!
And this. Also, dear people, who say that this never happens with their UL coach. Do you really think that the average North American BNT is gonna risk the reputation damage and liability when they can just tell you to buy a more expensive horse that they can conveniently help you find. Almost all know exactly how the [imported “European] sausage” is made but for their own commercial interests choose to stay out of the sausage factory business at least when in the public eye or in front of their clients.
To those of you who say I’m justifying abuse I’m not. My conscience is pretty clear, hand on my heart I’ve never whipped a horse like CD nor do I endorse it. I ride in simple snaffles, don’t own draw reins, and feel guilty for even taking a crop on my rides every now and then. I love my horses as pets or family members and don’t face the pressures of a commercial operation.
And yet I have totally lost my cool from time to time, drilled a bit too much, lunged the horse off when it wasn’t the right call and there probably was a lunging whip involved, given a good crack on the butt or see sawed with hands when the horse was blatantly ignoring my “whoa”. If you haven’t done any of it, then congrats to you but that is a crazy high standard we for sure should try to emulate but I’ve yet to see ANYONE pull that off at scale (meaning over many years with many horses and never not a single lapse of judgment) unless of course they bought a made horse that is always tuned up by the coach.
I’m saying this not because CD is some idol for me, but I do find it extremely hypocritical or at least lacking in perspective that a lot of the local circuit people yelling “OMG abuse” are the same type that ride in a D-Ring snaffle where the mouthpiece is actually a double twisted wire that cuts through the tongue or makes it hang out blue while not having the kindest hands, drill the horse in draw reins, lunge them off in the AM for 2 hours before the show, don’t mind stalling the horse for 23 hours a day etc. But guess what, there was never any hitting involved or apparent conflict between rider and the (resigned) horse so that’s not considered abuse.
We are OK with the whipping going on at racing or Western or even FEI jumping but not in the dressage arena. Any guess how many SJ horses got poled before the Olympics? Nobody will ever know but I can guarantee you that number is >0. These people are just better at hiding the details.
I think it’s important to recognise that a lot of what goes into producing a “good egg” or a “schoolmaster” is not always pretty. Personal experience - both of my horses came to me with history of behavioural problems that somebody else couldn’t quite eradicate (one bucked the other kept backing into things threatening to rear) and it was reflected in the price.
From what I’ve seen at the local boarding barns these types quickly get on the trailer either to a cowboy and come back reformed or are never to be seen again. It seems that to these hobby riders abuse is OK, as long as they don’t need to see or engage with it. It’s easy to act holier than thou when you can outsource your problems to someone else and/or keep churning horses like disposable tissues.
I am curious about the context of the video - was this a long term student or was this a horse brought in for a clinic type situation? I am also curious about the rationale for this lesson going in.
A lot of people commented on the chuckling on the video, and to me that makes me wonder about the behavior of the horse before the footage.
I am not clear from the video itself that contact was made on the horse for most let alone all of the swings.
I don’t think this was a productive minute. I can’t see the horse’s face enough to judge how upset it is. This is where seeing like the next 10 minutes of video is actually probably more important for judging what is happening.
If the effort is to get the horse going forward, it seems like there is a lot of pressure on the bridle, and this is where training a horse and coaching a horse and rider pair can be so different. I have always admired the lightness and harmony of Charlotte’s horses when she competes them, but I’m not aware that she has highly successful human students (so far). They are two very different skillsets, and even there, the clinic skillset and the long term student/mentor skillset are also so different.
I don’t object per se to the use of a lunge whip to try to get a horse to go more forward. If the horse is insufficiently responsive to the whip (such that merely signaling with it with less intensity does not get a response), likely better to address and consider that unmounted. Here I think the rider and Charlotte were not enough of a team to give the horse clarity on what was wanted. Sometimes you find that out by failing. And this is where - if this was a representative sample of 30 minutes of activity, it’s a very different situation than if this is the only minute like this. And maybe CD is one of those people who does right by her own horses but still has to grow as a teacher.
One thing that I think is important for horse sport as a whole is to professionalize our teaching practices. So few of our coaches at any level have any true instruction in how people learn or even how horses learn. Winning an Olympic medal does not actually qualify anyone to shape another human’s behavior or performance. We are all taught to “shut up and ride” which is good advice in some contexts but also sometimes prevents appropriate and needed conversation.
I will be interested to see what the investigation returns. I am saddened, and I hope that for the cost of this incident we in general can learn to be a bit smarter and kinder in our horse and human relationships.
As we learn more, something about the timing of this is strange. A former student had been to her barn a “few” times? What abuse did she purportedly see? Why didn’t she report it when she saw it? The person who released the video said didn’t want CDJ to win any more medals?
I’m not condoning what happened in the video. Not at all. It was bad. There is just something that stinks here.
