OMG, that Buck guy!!! The other day this group comes up on my feed (and I think I joined it a long time ago) because Catherine Haddad Staller posted a bunch of nice photos of a horse showing the development of the horse’s outline through the levels. It was great and Buck takes her on about the correctness of it all. Groan. THAT discussion was a waste of time for everyone!!! What would have been nice is to ask her questions about what level each photo depicted (because that certainly varies in interpretation–particularly by judges and coaches of Young Horse Finals) and what the elements/exercises were to reach that level for the horse. I have never really seen useful educational discourse on that forum–just lots of rider bashing and something about precipitation or precipitous, or some other such p-word mumbo jumbo, flexion (which I took to mean rollkur) by the infamous bard of Washington State.
precipitous flexion, omg.
I don’t think it’s just rollkur though, I think it’s any “incorrect” bending that she’s talking about, essentially riding front to back and the horse breaking at c3 instead of the atlas which can happen with or without the dreaded R-word.
But I have also tired of the phrase. It’s…everywhere. On every dressage thread everywhere. Exhausting. I don’t know how she has time. Of course I’ve posted a lot over the last few days, but it’s because we are having a heat wave which means I cannot ride, and I don’t feel like working either. I’m sure she’s lovely, but man, I have no idea how she does it.
The thread referenced above was only enjoyable in that no one except Kyra guessed that the horse was in pirouette (everyone else thought it piaffe or passage, the first I can sort of see except the rider is turning and the latter makes no sense at all given the photo in question).
I do find it mildly amusing that even the ODGs didn’t agree. Spirited discussions about whether a horse was to be worked in walk or not, the role of the aids, etc. turned just as vicious as they are today. There is no one “Classical” any more than there is any one “Competition” dressage. Discussing the history of different theories and the horses that helped to develop those theories is interesting (e.g. the differences between the warmblood, anglo-arabian and iberian horses that shaped the German, French, and Spanish/Portugese schools of thought) but even within those schools there was mass dissent. The main difference now is that anyone has a platform, and the dissent is not confined to the salons of Europe and the publication of books. For the salons discussions and books you did have to at least have some proof that your methods produced something, even if people didn’t agree that the something was the correct something.
Did you happen to catch the video AB posted, of the correct way to develop a dressage horse? (It looked like a walk trot test).
He’s a master, all right. Right up there with the maestro.
My theory is that she joined because she might be a part some FEI meetings who are supposed to fix problems in Dressage and maybe she wants to get a feeling what the problems are…
Sadly I believe she doesn’t really see any problems with modern dressage ( I recommended “schooling the eye” by Anja Beran to her and I hope she looks at it…
What??? This lunatic is in WA? What dreadful news.
From 2012 on this COTH thread Edward Allen Buck's Latest Lawsuit Hits a Snag.
Apparently back then, he was bemoaning on Facebook the fact that no one would pay him to give Dressage clinics.
This was his response when I mentioned a few reasons why people may not be interested.
Buck, posting as Dragonharte8:
“For you arrogant and selfrighteous folks who ‘hide’ you real identity.
The two criminal cases against me could be easily cleared up if I had a Federal Grand Jury because I do have the physical evidence that proves violations of due process and a few other criminal acts by the State.
As for me running for President…well at least I had the guts to write put into print viable solutions.
As for my law suits here in Utah…the cases were and are predicated upon evidence. If you take the time to actually read the cases you will see that rulings were issued in violation of the actual laws presented. In fact, my best friend who is a law professor even stated to me that he was dumb founded on the rulings.
So you can continue your slamming me all you want, but it clearly shows your ignorance”.
I think she meant Paula, who is not a lunatic, IMO, just prolific.
Yes, PK, who is very loquacious, was the WA state resident last time I remember.
EAB is, IMO, an uneducated fanatic. Last I remember, he is a resident of Utah.
PK has cred. My beef with PK is her inflexibility. Rollkur, or bending at the 3rd, or whatever, are a symptom not a cause. We need to talk more about causes.
I would love to see this FEI discussion, for example (and yes I just watched most of US Dressage Young Horse championships last weekend): is it fair to reward a 4 year old horse with the top prize for presenting an FEI frame and the rider sitting the trot? Is it possible that rewarding that is what is causing training of 2 year olds and use of gadgets to train a frame and horses washed up and disappearing? Or should we harken back to the training scale and reward what a 4 year old should look like at this stage of development and penalize the under and over? Maybe it is not fair to show a 4 year old before it is actually 4? If you have a 4 year old who shows a GP frame before it’s 4 year old actual birthday, what do we think went into achieving that? At GP, we might ask a question whether it is fair reward a horse and rider with 7s for halts that never execute? Why are the horses not sitting/engaged in piaffe? Should we severely ding faults of rhythm? Is it possible that faults of rhythm are connected to irregular piaffes? Could the blue tongues be a result of contact issues? Shouldn’t contact be presented at the highest level? Why did we remove a test of self carriage from the GP? Shouldn’t basics be re-established to a higher scale at every level? Shouldn’t there be a score for each of the basics of the training scale as a modifier rather than a gait score imbedded into each movement? What would that look like? Wouldn’t that allow us to penalize the lack of relaxation? Also, should a horse/rider team be officially a pair at least a year before any championship? These are just a few of the questions I have that, I believe, are connected to horse welfare.
This is one of my new favorite sayings, thank you.
This is what has gone wrong in other equine sports, too. The minute there’s a young horse thing, and the horses are rewarded for going like older horses, there’s a problem.
Exactly. I’d prefer to hear that than a bunch of people claiming “abuse” without delving further.
Try to get those points to her! Why not taking advantage of her presence….
Omg I remember PK from Ultimate Dressage. She was a prolific poster.
She was pretty prolific here too.
For anyone interested in Buck’s (COTH names Spirithorse Dragonharte8) lawsuits here are some links.
I had forgotten that he was trying so hard to make his fortune with the “Spirit Bridle” by suing the Kentucky Racing Commission because they don’t allow TB racing in bitless bridles.
Here is another:https://ca10.washburnlaw.edu/cases/2007/07/06-4236.htm
and another https://casetext.com/case/buck-v-salt-lake-tribute
This one was particularly strange. Apparently the Reverend didn’t know that you have to be an attorney to represent someone else in court. https://cases.justia.com/utah/court-of-appeals-unpublished/buck110608.pdf
The result of his involving himself in the Parra controversy over the horse William, by suing Cesar Parra: https://casetext.com/case/buck-v-parra
He sued the AQHA as well, but the suit was dismissed because Buck couldn’t afford the costs of serving the papers to the people he was suing. It was around $500.00 if I remember correctly.
He sued Obama as well.
He’s…something else.
Yes, the links I posted aren’t representative of all of his lawsuits.
His weird Presidential campaign site is still around. It’s about what you’d expect. 
As far as his Spirit Bitless bridle goes–I have 3 varieties of cross-under bitless bridles (Nurtural, Dr. Cook’s bitless, and, gasp, a Spirit bitless bridle.
I had a saddler shorten the reins on my Spirit bridle, and out of the cross-unders it is my favorite. My riding teacher agrees with me about this after using it on her crazy Arab (he got better) while she was doing competitive trail riding.
His Spirit bitless, with the shortened reins, would be the one I reach for first if I decided the horse needed a cross-under. The release of this bitless bridle is so much better than the other cross-unders.
I have also bought and used many other bitless systems. For the record my favorite bitless bridle is the Light Rider bitless bridle (a modified Scawbrig). The release of the hand aids is good with that one. Right now I am doing a “double bridle” using the Light Rider bitless bridle with a Fager leather snaffle (the Adam) until my hands get better from my recent bout with fibromyalgia.
After “discussions” with the lesson horses I ride I went back to bits (I now use a double bridle) because I get much better results even with my hand problems from MS. I will switch back to the bitted double bridle when both me and my riding teacher think I am ready to go back to using a curb bit again.
I just get too bored using a bitless bridle, but the Spirit bitless bridle is my 2nd favorite bitless bridle after the Light Rider. Alan Buck did good work when he developed that bridle except for the reins being WAY too long.
He never agreed with me about the way I ride, Forward Seat, which he thinks is horribly cruel and abusive. Shrug. He surely is not the only one I have gotten such feedback from, and Alan Buck and the other FS nay-sayers never saw me ride a horse. Again, shrug. I listen to the horses I ride and my riding teachers and these horses have no or almost no problems with me riding them FS and my riding teachers like watching me ride their horses humanely.
From the reactions of the horses I ride, with my hands they prefer me using a properly selected bit, thank you very much. Once I got the titanium bits the horses have been HAPPY!
Have you seen him ride, or have his videos all been scrubbed from the internet?
Trust me, you ain’t seen nothing so ugly as the Reverend Edward Allen Buck jumping over an 18 inch jump in an exercise saddle on a horse with chains on its front pasterns, or him manhandling a very confused and lame horse while in a chair seat, and calling it “Dressage”.
I mostly just lurk there. I guess the thing that’s sort of sad to me about the whole endeavor is how completely miserable he seems to be about running it, about dressage, and about conversing with others. He’s chronically obnoxious, rude, and threatening in his tone, the threat being he’ll kick you out of the group. I can’t recall the last conversation there where he generally comported himself like a functional adult.
