Diann Langer’s abuse article

[skydy]

@BrownDerby

@mroades

Andy Kocher just showed here in my home town this past weekend. It is all over the socials…I am disgusted, but not a rated show and his brother is dating the trainer.
Squick ick and more ick

Yes, the schooling shows have welcomed him with open hands the last few years.

Horrific, but not surprising. At least he is kept out of USEF (for now). They’d better rethink and ban him for life. Unfortunately the no rules schooling shows may actually keep him in business as they have other sketchy people.

It’s too bad, because I remember schooling shows fondly as part of my riding education when I was a kiddo. They were practice time, to prepare for rated shows and thus actual “schooling”. No one was there to win.

Times have changed, and it’s a shame that people take advantage of the reason schooling shows existed in the first place. They seem now to be a competition of their own, with no enforceable rules, instead of what they were meant to be, a preparation for rated competition, or a check, to be judged to see if you are progressing with your horse as you had hoped, and to have the chance ride out some of the kinks before you show where it counts.

[cutter99]

@hey101

On the Yellowstone thread in Off topic, a sidebar on how reining trainers have a rider “school” a horse for an hour or two at the lope and then hand it over for the “trainer” , not a word of protest and to me it seemed like the hunter equivalent of LTD. No real outcry.

Since you decided to misquote me, @hey101, while referencing the Yellowstone thread, here is what I actually said, which you have not only misquoted but took out of context. Have you ever attended a reining or cutting show? Ridden a reiner or cutter? Been involved in training one?

Loping is NOT schooling. I am not sure I have ever lunged a cutter. We actually get on and ride!

Next you’ll be telling me that 4-6 hour trail rides are cruel too. You want to go round on that one? Or maybe just stick to your lane?

[Nikki]

She sounds absolutely insane and a control freak.

1. Looking though tack trucks and tack stalls? Really? That is invasion of privacy.
   a. What’s next? Looking into horse trailers and trucks/cars? Homes? Barns?

2. Locking lunge rings and having timed lunges? No thank you. The show is hectic enough and sometimes you need to lunge.

3. Certification of trainers? That costs money and doesn’t work. It’s easy to study for an exam. She can pay the fees for everyone if she likes.
   a. There are lots of trainers who go pro at 18 because they had to proper education as a junior. That’s the pathway to becoming a pro.

4. Juniors can give injections. It’s part of horsemanship. Some of these riders will go to college to be vets.

As for gas in the water? Top hunter riders/trainers do this. Some even put the TV on with the volume up so the horse cannot sleep. One famous rider comes to mind.

Want to stop cheating? How about drug test 1st-3rd winners. Educate the owners on the what and whys.

[Sing_Mia_Song]

Plus, there are regulations in many states restricting people from recording without consent of at least one of the parties involved.

[OverandOnward]

@Sing_Mia_Song

Plus, there are regulations in many states restricting people from recording without consent of at least one of the parties involved.

If it’s in a publicly accesible space, they can record/video. And share and/or publish the recording/video.

The entire show grounds, including the barns, is likely to be deemed a ‘publicly accessible space’.

This is why the USEF is trying to cue participants, and caution trainers/others, that while they are on the show grounds, they can be video’d at any time, by anyone.

This area of the law has been thoroughly trodden at the state and federal level. Mostly by people video’ing & photo’ing celebrities. But by others as well. You don’t have to be a celebrity to be legally recorded / video’d / photo’d, and those contents shared with the public, or with anyone else the content owner wants to share with (e.g. regulators, gov’t or organizational). The person creating the video / recording / photo is the owner of the content. As long as it was captured in a publicly accessible space, for the most part they can do with it as they wish.

The laws in other countries are usually different, fwiw. But in the U.S. the laws grant remarkable freedom to publish the publicly visible activities of other people.

[Rumorhasit93]

@kenyarider

I do think it’s ironic given our repressive drug laws, that there are containers for needles all over horse shows.

And they are OVERFLOWING. I almost wish there was a 0 tolerance unless with a vet note (allergies). To me, it’s honestly ridiculous that we allow most drugs. Give a little too much? Take a risk of getting caught and get a slap on the wrist. Just like NH who commented on DiAnn’s post on SM blabbing on about horsemanship. Sir, YOU have been suspended before. Same with AC3, a judge. Same with…SO many at the top. I’d love to think we have a say in this fight, but it just isn’t so.

[OverandOnward]

@Rumorhasit93

Just like NH who commented on DiAnn’s post on SM blabbing on about horsemanship. Sir, YOU have been suspended before. Same with AC3, a judge.

Please, please, please do not use initials to “out” someone while actually protecting them from public knowledge of their misdeeds.

So many people reading this thread have ZERO (-0-) idea who the hell you are referring to.

If you intend to hold them accountable, spell out their names. Otherwise you are contributing to the culture of SILENCE, PROTECTION and NO ACCOUNTABILITY.

And no information to people who would like to avoid them.

@Rumorhasit93

I’d love to think we have a say in this fight, but it just isn’t so.

It’s on us. Because we don’t follow through. Because we fall down the rabbit hole of protecting, of shielding, of maintaining the status quo through avoidance.

We DO have a say. Even here in this thread. IF we STEP UP.

Please, name the names. NOT the initials.

[Rumorhasit93]

Nick Haness has been suspended for using too much of a legal drug (the details escape me, and for the life of me I cannot find an archive of drug violations on USEF…I digress)

Archie Cox has also been suspended. He is an R judge.

https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/court-upholds-archie-cox-usef-suspension/

These are just a couple. And just the times they’ve been caught.

[Rumorhasit93]

@Nikki

Want to stop cheating? How about drug test 1st-3rd winners. Educate the owners on the what and whys.

Can we start this petition?

[Demerara_Stables]

@DMK @OverandOnward

FWIW I also had a hunter (I was his groom ) randomly selected at WEF in 2009 for testing. Went back to the testing stall, wouldn’t pee, they gave up after 45 min or so. Never pulled blood.

[hey101]

And this why I fear the greater “horse” industry is ultimately doomed. I did not quote you. I don’t even k ow you. I made a very general reference to a tangential discussion on a TV show. But yet you took offense, pulled up your own quote on a thread that had fallen quite far down in the queue and brought it back for discussion.

People like you are so lost in the trees you can’t see the forest.

[aohunter0629]

The problem with drug testing for usef is the current test cannot test all of these drugs. The second problem is there are vets that have the usef test constantly testing other drugs against the usef test. So when one gets banned their client “any BNT” just goes to the next drug. I will say this is not really a very limited issue, it’s very widespread amongst most of the BNT.

[skydy]

@Nikki

She sounds absolutely insane and a control freak.

1. Looking though tack trucks and tack stalls? Really? That is invasion of privacy.
   a. What’s next? Looking into horse trailers and trucks/cars? Homes? Barns?

2. Locking lunge rings and having timed lunges? No thank you. The show is hectic enough and sometimes you need to lunge.

3. Certification of trainers? That costs money and doesn’t work. It’s easy to study for an exam. She can pay the fees for everyone if she likes.
   a. There are lots of trainers who go pro at 18 because they had to proper education as a junior. That’s the pathway to becoming a pro.

4. Juniors can give injections. It’s part of horsemanship. Some of these riders will go to college to be vets.

As for gas in the water? Top hunter riders/trainers do this. Some even put the TV on with the volume up so the horse cannot sleep. One famous rider comes to mind.

Want to stop cheating? How about drug test 1st-3rd winners. Educate the owners on the what and whys.

There is so much in this post that I find odd. QFP and will revisit.

[2bayboys]

@Rumorhasit93

Nick Haness has been suspended for using too much of a legal drug (the details escape me, and for the life of me I cannot find an archive of drug violations on USEF…I digress)

Archie Cox has also been suspended. He is an R judge.

https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/court-upholds-archie-cox-usef-suspension/

These are just a couple. And just the times they’ve been caught.

Circling back around to the suggested requirement for trainer certification, do we really think that Haness and Cox violated the drug rules because of a lack of education?

[MissMillyMolly]

Violations need to be more publicized. In any USEF or USHJA publication (print, online, social media) a trainer, owner, and horse with a positive drug test should have a mention of that positive test EVERY time their name is mentioned for at least a year. BNT won something riding your horse? Great, but the announcement will have a sentence mentioning that trainer had a violation in the past 12 months. Dobbin won at indoors? Congrats, but his positive test from the spring gets mentioned in the article. Owners and riders can decide if they want to be more publicly tied to a “dirty” trainer, or not.
Allowing violators to disappear for a little while and then come back like nothing ever happened is not helping the lover level riders, owners and parents understand the extent of the problem in the upper ranks. Lack of knowledge makes it very hard for these people to make different choices about who to trust with their horses.
You can’t mandate it, but I’d encourage the Chronicle, Plaid Horse etc to do the same in all of their coverage. (Yes I know, a pipe dream)

[starsandsun]

Just one more comment.

I’m a believer in accurate gossip. Why? Because it has an evolutionary purpose to keep groups safe. But, we are persistently being bullied by the bullies themselves into not speaking ill of them - they shame accurate gossipers and make us feel like we can’t bring to light the crap they do.

I call horseshit on that.

We need to be much more comfortable exposing the rot.

[Ponyplusaninch]

I must have a different POV. She sounds like she is at wit’s end and willing to try anything and everything to improve horse welfare–I empathize.

Now, some of these things I agree just aren’t possible.

The random tack trunk/tack stalls will not fly. That is a lawsuit waiting to happen. And I am also in the camp that certification of trainers is a money suck/time waste/not going to solve the core problem.

I DO think she is onto something with monitored lunge rings and having a steward man that ring. Just like any warmup ring. I see super shitty human behavior and choices made in lunge areas. Bad enough it makes me not want to take my horse out there, because he is a victim of peer pressure and gets worked up when some yahoo is out there yelling at their horse and throwing stuff at it on either the shortest lunge line ever or the longest lead rope. I would GLADLY pay an extra $15/show to have that extra steward monitoring.

The injections by juniors reminds me a lot of juniors and golf carts. I hear you on horsemanship but I would not say no to adult supervision and an age limit. Kids pre-frontal cortexes are still developing rapidly (up until age 25, actually). A lot of bad decision making can happen.

And owners should absolutely be punished alongside trainers. You can have the first offense be a real minor infraction but the second time around should sting like the dickens and wake people up to be smarter about the company they keep and their horse’s welfare.

[Small_Change]

A little off topic, but is there any reason that people couldn’t be trained to be equine phlebotomists, as we have in human medicine? If you had a group of highly specialized techs trained specifically for blood draws, wouldn’t that help things a bit. There’s really not that much special technique needed to hit a vein on a horse, more around getting the horse to cooperate if they’re needle shy.

In human medicine, it’s basically everyone BUT the doc who draws blood - nurses and phlebotomists primarily, but other trained members of the health care team as well. Why could phlebotomists not be utilized in this situation as well, similar to the EC designates who collect urine specimens? Less $/hr than the vet, so the opportunity to have more of them, offloads some of the work from the vet, and increases the chances of horses having blood pulled to be potentially tested. I would think that the increased chance of having a sample taken would be a deterrent, even if not everything drawn actually gets sent for testing.

[Rumorhasit93]

@2bayboys

Circling back around to the suggested requirement for trainer certification, do we really think that Haness and Cox violated the drug rules because of a lack of education?

Of course not (I know this wasn’t necessarily directed at me).

I believe they are two entirely separate issues. We have a vast majority of trainers in the US that are glorified amateurs who grew up with grooms riding perfectly prepped horses who know how to find 8 perfect distances. (Education)

Then we have trainers who know how to perfectly medicate (and sometimes not so perfectly and get caught) and have next to zero consequences. Maybe once you’ve been caught you move up the priority list on future testing?

Of course there is overlap. I don’t know what the solution is, but I’m sick of it.

[Ghazzu]

I suspect that could have the opposite effect from what you desire.
IOW, people grow accustomed to seeing it and begin to regard it as NBD.