Not all curb bits for a double have significant enough tongue relief to prevent a blue tongue from occurring.
Also, Getty images published pictures of Werth whose horse had a blue tongue. Is Getty image photo manipulating all the blue tongue photos and lying about them?
LT horse had an injury. They didnāt want to risk sending a possibly unsound horse, so I understand their decision there.
I figured something like that!
In an article on COTH today:
Isabell Werth, the most decorated equestrian in Olympic history, had a tense exchange Wednesday after her Grand Prix ride on Wendy, a horse formerly campaigned by Helgstrand, who was barred from representing Denmark after a TV exposĆ© showed riders at his sales stable handling horses poorly and riding horses aggressively. The reporter questioned why she chose to work with Helgstrand, saying heād been āsuspended for animal abuse.ā
āHeās not suspended because of abuse, but I donāt want to talk about this,ā she fired back. āIt happened, and it was a rider in a stable. It was not him, and I donāt discuss this here. Not more Charlotte, not more Andreas, not more Parra, nothing more. Everything is said. And I got a fantastic mare, and a very great, beloved mare, and I got super other horses from Helgstrand Dressage, so thereās nothing more to discuss.ā
When the reporter insisted Helgstrand had admitted the situation was his fault, Werth retorted, āMaybe you know everything and everywhere, the overview about other people. He, not. This, he had to accept. But thereās nothing more to say. Sorry.ā
Link to article: https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/horse-sports-under-a-hot-olympic-spotlight-after-dujardin-scandal/
yikes
Those who train in glass stables apparently donāt like the mirror turned, eh? I find her arrogance and dismissiveness intensely infuriating.
The Helgstrand machine is a bigger problem than 50 Charlotte DJ videos. CD isnāt fantastically wealthy and sheās paying dearly. And it should sting. But anyone doing business with Helgstrand will just wait it out, switch barns/brand names/horses/riders until the outrage machine finds fresh meat. Business as usual.
Agreed. She has a platform and a world stage to condemn those actions and set and example but instead she played the gameā¦
What are the images you are talking about? Is the tongue truly blue?
Bars are usually high enough to prevent total loss of blood flow to the tongue, and the horse can go behind the bit to evade. Mullen mouth curbs are used and regularly sold. They should make a tongue blue, but they donāt. Onsight officials should be able to disqualify a horse with a truly blue tongue.
I Googled Getty Images and Isabel Worth and easily found a blue tongue on the first page. Confirming that itās definitely not pink.
Bolding mine. What? That makes no sense whatsoever.
Why should a mullen mouthpiece make a tongue blue? They donāt. Harsh hands make a tongue blue. Officials are not disqualifying riders whose horses have gaping mouths and blue tongues, that is the problem.
Once the pressure that cuts off the circulation is removed, the tongue will no longer be blue. So, obviously, the tongue wonāt be blue at the bit check, post ride.
You seem to you think the gaping mouths and blue tongues can be defended. āIs the tongue really blue?ā (yes, yes it is) But, but, āmy horse has a gaping mouth at times.ā (Well then, you have an issue with your training and/or your hands.)
This attitude is an example of the problem that dressage is experiencing now. There can be no more of this ostrich like thinking, if UL dressage is to continue.
I took a quick look at the artery supplying blood to the tongue and whilst I agree with you that that a bit in and of itself should not be sufficient to compress the artery because the bit rests on the bars and the artery runs below the line of the bars at the bottom of the tongue, I think that the action of the curb chain also needs to be taken into consideration. In other words the blue tongue is caused by the tongue being compressed vice-like between bit and curb chain, not purely by the bit alone.
Just my opinion, happy to be corrected.
I just looked at my anatomy program.
The horseās tongue extends to the level of the back of the mandible.
This area of the horseās head/neck gets squished when the horse is behind the vertical.
The harsh hands causing the blue tongues could block blood flow WAY above the level of the bit, way back in the horseās head. The area near the root of the tongue also has the linguofacial trunk, the origin of the lingual artery which goes down the horseās tongue. When the horse is behind vertical there is less room in this area for the windpipe and blood vessels, leading to worse blood circulation toward the end of the tongue which we see in the blue tongue pictures.
It is not just the bit, any bit. Horses ridden BTV are being āslightlyā strangled right when they are called upon to perform strenuous physical activity.
It is harsh, unforgiving hands that set up the horseās head and neck to reduce circulation in the horseās tongue. The bit(s) are what the rider uses to set up this unfortunate āhead setā. It can also happen with unforgiving hands with some of the bitless bridles. The horse, to try and reduce the pain of the bits on the horseās bars and tongue or facial bones, goes behind the vertical resulting in the reduced blood flow.
I saw that article and that statement by Werth and am disgusted with her philosophy. There have been whisperings for years about her own training methods and she could have used the Dujardin controversy as an opportunity for some self-reflection and to take a leadership role in publicly denouncing abuse and harsh training methods.
Instead, she publicly defends buying horses from Andreas Helgstrand, who is under suspension for harsh training methods that he allows/encourages/teaches his assistant trainers and students - and without a doubt, he does the same even if he hasnāt been caught on video doing it.
IOW, Werth doesnāt want to talk about abuse because she gets great horses from an abuser, and made it clear that she will continue to support abusers with her money. Pretty short-sighted of her because that puts her own training methods even more under suspicion - and please God, I hope she gets caught on video one day.
IW is deeply immersed in the abuse railroad.
IMO she is disgusting. Playing the innocent when she is the sinner. Using her self imposed role as an innocent to defend another sinner.
Itās so absurd as to be ironic and laughable were it not for the suffering horses.
This is a picture of the arteries in a horseās face (taken from here as a photo not a direct link so that you get the actual photo https://pressbooks.umn.edu/largeanimalanatomy/chapter/neck-head/ and you donāt have to wade through a thousand pictures of equine skulls.
You can see how easy it would be to kink that artery, given a head position in overflexion for any period of time.
Since I donāt believe a horse would willingly strangle itself if left to itās own devices, I have to presume that it is from the horse being driven into a heavy hand, rather than a horse who is in vertical flexion due to a degree of collection from the hind end.
Or, the horse is about to have a heart attack and maybe shouldnāt be competing at this level. Theyāll go blue when they have circulatory problems as well.
Oh and Jackieās already gotten there before I could finish the post 
It shouldnāt be necessary to even debate whether, how, or to what extent the blood flow to a horseās tongue may or may not be compromised in the examples under discussion.
Anyone qualified to judge a test should be able to recognize improper/abusive riding.
Ring a couple of them out of the arena and see what happens.
What Iām reading is, the judges keep rewarding this behaviour.
Why arenāt we holding the judges accountable? Why are they not being discussed to the extreme of these riders?
Wow. In addition to those atrocious statements, has Werth ever had a day of PR training in her life?
I think there just arenāt a TON of judges to begin with. It takes a long time to become a judge, and is also very difficult, making them very tough to replace. Frankly, I think thereās just not a lot of leverage to be had there to hold them accountable, and the judges know it.
Also, most judges are older (see above reasons) and so I imagine it can be difficult to get some real buy in from some of them when some of these training methods are things that were perfectly normal/acceptable 30/40/50 years ago when many of these judges were learning to ride/train themselves. Some of them are on board, Iām sure, but add in the politics, and I think itās just a really tough battle to win.
My first thought was that the blue tongue was caused by hyper-flexion, however it seems only to have commenced post the Anky era, and if hyper-flexion is the cause I would have expected it to have been raised as a problem then. I therefore considered the curb chain as a contributing factor as Anky / Sjef were known for loosening the curb chain.
Having said that whatever training or equipment method is the cause, it needs to stop now.
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