Everyone who shows at USEF shows knows how to reach the show Vet and show management, as @JenEM said, it’s in the prizelist and posted on the grounds.
Not knowing how to reach them is not the issue.
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I don’t think you have a horse and I’m pretty sure you don’t show often, but I have been in a scenario more than once where I come around the corner to find something terrifying going on and I need to call the vet right away. Knowing how to reach the vet is not the issue, having the number posted everywhere so that anyone can call them immediately is a better idea than having it listed in a 50 page prize list.
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Believe me, that needle will move on the day the owners start figuring out how to make it happen. People with the money to maintain show horses under the training and care of others can afford these upgrades and changes more than most industries.
The will to do so has been lacking, because so far, the owner can just blame the trainer and skate themselves.
There will be a whole new wave of professional oversight services and tools to help owners monitor their horses.
Not for nothing, many of these owners already have such monitoring in place in businesses they own. Many already monitor workers for theft and behavior – or they hire someone to do it.
If nothing else, nanny cams that can be monitored by owners. Security cams used by retail stores to monitor for theft. In-home and facility babysitters and caregivers, as well as retail workers, order fulfillers, and thousands of other jobs deal with this daily.
Other methods will also come to light, once there is an incentive for them from those who have the money to maintain show horses.
No whining from trainers about “I don’t want videos watching me”, and they don’t want other forms of monitoring. Welcome to the world the rest of us live in at our jobs. Workers everywhere have been living with this for decades and you can live with it, too.
Methods of monitoring for bad behavior is up there with the changes by Safesport that mandated more education and more monitoring of trainers and other horse professionals. The rest of the world has been living with these things since the '90’s. The horse world is just behind the curve – as usual.
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To be perfectly honest, I think it’s a shame that those who have the power to enact change (both in showing and my current sport, racing) would rather write articles about how badly change is needed than step up and do something to make those changes.
Deputizing everyone on the showgrounds to report what they see? Sure, it sounds good. But I’d like to know what the USEF’s next step will be. Will they ask for definitive proof? Or gently slap some big trainer’s wrist?
Maybe I’m just cynical in my old age. Or maybe I’ve read too many articles like this one over the years–and seen little or no action from the governing body to take its own words seriously.
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Why go in search of a problem that doesn’t exist? (apparently it exists at the schooling shows you attend but USEF can’t help that.) Emergency numbers are on the stall cards.
There are plenty of issues at rated shows that need to be addressed. Knowing who to call in an emergency isn’t one of them.
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One more thought in favor of videos … it was stealth videos of training practices in the TWH trainer barns that pulled the extreme levels of abuse out into the open.
It was video that made it so much more real and validated to the public. Even to some who had previously been in denial. Dismissive of the validity of verbal and written reports.
It was video that truly began to break the back of a horrendous system of common, but extreme, abuses in Big Lick showing.
Video is one of the most powerful tools for enforcement that exists today.
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Believe me, I want this as much as anyone but even if we increase responsibility for owners, at the end of the day the people actually doing the abuse need to be held more accountable than they are now. I just don’t see how an owner who keeps a horse at a training barn has any capability or right to put up cameras in the barn that the trainer owns or leases.
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Louder for those in Lexington to hear you.
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Simple. The owners (generally) require it, or no horses in training.
Owners generally need to adopt new standards for training and care of their horses that includes monitoring. The changes must. be. mandatory. Without that will, the hidden abuse continues.
All or the majority of owners have to do it, of course. If only a few, of course those will be frozen out.
Workplaces also didn’t want cameras. Police officers didn’t want body cams. Military officers didn’t want the enlisted in basic training to be allowed to have their cell phones. Etc.
But mandating these changes has made huge differences in behavior. That is the real value that has kept the monitoring in place.
This is old territory. It’s just new to horse showing. The way has been shown. The experts in those ways need to be called in to help solve the problems.
People of course resist change and see nothing but objections. Those are natural responses. But that can’t be allowed to block productive change – as has been the case to date.
At some point the effort has to find the will to push through the roadblocks and objections. So far, though, when it comes to horse shows, that will hasn’t been found.
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It’s a noble cause but putting cameras in private barns just isn’t going to happen. There are enough new owners coming to the sport that don’t know anything about anything and will continue to unfortunately not require oversight. They see ribbons on the walls and accolades at the horse show and that’s all they need to keep their horse and training.
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Ok. You’re right. Cancel the effort. Abuse continues. We can stop now with all these good intentions and ideas.
The TWH people went through this, too. They haven’t completely cleaned up the problem. But they did make it much smaller. Probably without in-barn monitoring, too.
But we’ve quit trying, so we don’t need to find out more.
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Don’t put words in my mouth.
We need to hold the trainers accountable, we should be using the number to text USEF, and USEF needs to follow through. Doing all of those things will greatly reduce the amount of abuse that happens and frankly is much lower hanging fruit than telling owners they should require cameras in their trainer’s barn.
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Putting cameras in rated show barns is a good idea however, and hopefully USEF can make a policy of doing so.
There are plenty of caring owners in USEF sport. You may not know them, but they are there.
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I agree, things won’t change until USEF gets over its fear of lawsuits and begins banning people (like Andy Kocher) for life.
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I think everyone on this thread has a point; some owners don’t care, some trainers don’t care. Some owners care and some trainers care. Some people like to win at any cost. However we can try to make a difference, we should.
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And that’s the way it’s always been. I’m glad that Mary Knowlton started the ball rolling, albeit slowly (as balls tend to roll in USEF and USHJA) when she was leading USHJA.
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That was unnecessary - I have no idea who @skydy is IRL or their horse/showing status, but plenty of people who may not have horses or show often spend LOTS of time at horse shows for a variety of reasons and have a deep understanding of how it all works.
I personally don’t show at all any more, but my horses do with their pros or lessees. Legitimately everyone on the show grounds who is a professional, groom or involved owner knows who the show vet is, where their truck is during the day and how to reach them after hours. I’ve had to use them for emergencies on more than one occasion and it just isn’t hard. Would it be great to have the info posted everywhere? For sure. Is it necessary? Not really.
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I don’t care that they didn’t know. They should know and they should be held accountable. If you own an animal you need to be it’s advocate.
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Then again, LLCs, partnerships and corporations that own animals don’t have the ability to care and leasers and their agents chasing qualification and year end awards let somebody else worry. It gets complicated.
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You know that many training barns have cameras already there, right?
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