I don’t doubt that happened, but now, USEF rules allow judges to excuse a horse from the ring due to lameness, no Veterinary opinion required and the judge’s decision is final.
Thankfully USEF judges are expected to be competent enough to know a lame horse when they see one.
Can someone tell me what horse/ rider we are arguing about crashing at Devon pleeease
To be fair they could, and probably did, continue to not place lame horses without citing the reason. If it’s subjectively judged and competitors either don’t have a recorded score or have to jump through hoops to see the score it’s pretty low risk for the judge to just not place or score just below the cutoff and not place.
However there’s a proposed rule (or maybe it passed) that at FEI jogs the vet has the final say when it comes to soundness. As a person who was put in the box after my very first time jogging with an insanely sound pony, and then watched the vet delegate argue over my pony’s soundness with the ground jury before they accepted him, I can appreciate the wisdom of this idea.
I actually spent time with her later as we were doing his final pony measurement and asked her about it because I had no idea what they saw. They saw “motion” in his stifle joint. Not a hitch, not sticky, not a flat tire stride from it catching. But a loosely goosey stifle. He was also a young pony with some typical post legged pony conformation in his first year of competing. I was a little pissed about that, mostly because his fine self got out and into deer corn about 5 days earlier and we did laminitis preventative treatment without violating USEF drug rules (it was USEF natl ch. not FEI). As I was waiting forever in the holding area, I was just SURE that I was just not correctly seeing how horribly foot sore the pony was, and I sucked so hard for putting a laminitis pony on a trailer and hauling him 400 miles and it would be ok if they just shot me for my crimes (it was dramatic, I admit).
The pony was not laminitic, not lame, but he did win 2 out of 3 phases including dressage the next day and ended up reserve national champion. 
But I can certainly see the point about vets and lamenesses when it comes to jogs.
It is, but it’s not new. There is something about horses that really affects the human ego.
Whether it’s people learning to ride and then criticizing others while somehow truly believing they know more than they do and are qualified to teach when they aren’t, or those who see what they think is an opportunity to make money until it becomes obvious that they are really scam artists.
Both types are usually found out when they compete at rated shows where there are rules and higher expectations, and it’s more difficult to fake competence or to get away with riding a lame horse than it is at home or at schooling shows. The lack of exposure to rated competition can also help to keep their “students” from realizing how unqualified their trainers really are.
The common denominator of the trainers who are clueless about their own skills, that I have noticed on the COTH forums, is a defensiveness and rudeness (and sometimes downright anger) when asked to provide a CV, which is not a normal response from a qualified trainer. It’s a big red flag.
There are many very qualified judges, trainers, veterinarians and breeders here, who for years have been happy to answer questions and have provided their bona fides when asked, without rancor, which is as it should be.
There’s lame and then there’s lame. I (finally) pulled my horse from a BNT barn when the (assistant) trainer said “oh, that’s just the way he goes” of my horse (that I’d bought because his gaits were like butter) was herky-jerky at the trot. Not uneven mind you (so, not technically “lame”) but very far from ok.
It’s certainly possible to get caught up in the woo. I did, for years, and will never forgive myself.
You were paying a trainer for expert advice. You aren’t in need of forgiveness, they are.
It’s easy for most people to see limping or head bobbing lame, though we’ve had “trainers” post videos on COTH of their rides on lame horses, which I would think they would not do if they realized the horse was lame.
NQR is much more difficult to pinpoint and until we have the experience to see it (if ever), it is what most people expect the professionals they employ and trust, to be able to recognize.
Anyone who takes peoples money for their training expertise and either ignores lameness, or is incapable of recognizing it, is a problem, and there is no excuse for either the willful deception, or the actual ignorance.
The number of incompetent “trainers” is astounding, and a shame. Their posting on COTH has been helpful to expose some of them.
However, there are people here that when asked “is this horse NQR?” can and will give an educated answer.
I totally can relate and just know there’s nothing we could’ve done as we thought we were doing our absolute best. Just know there’s other of you out there 
I was taught IM shots as a teenage working student in the 90s.
I was not confident and hesitant, but luckily there were almost always two or more of us working at a time so giving injections didn’t have to be part of my toolkit. We didn’t give them often and when we did, there was always someone else to do it (often a working student between the age of 19 and 21, some of whom had Pony Club backgrounds). But yeah, on the whole, in the really retrograde old days, the ability to give IM shots was not an uncommon skill to have, as I recall.
I just love this comment: " The more we are learning about horses and their longevity and wellbeing, the more we should be taking measures to protect them." Well said!
Many of us were, back in the day. However, now that we know better we do better, and there is no excuse whatsoever for juniors to be injecting horses at any show, rated or not, which was DiAnn Langer’s point.
Respectfully, I wasn’t disagreeing with DiAnn, let alone in those explicit terms.
I was responding to another comment from what I took to be a slight detour in the discussion, of whether or not this was ever done.
I’m sorry if I misunderstood your post. 
I realized I could’ve been more clear, going down a side street 
I’m also over-sensitive about my increasing age and getting left behind in the cultural shift 
No sweat.
the best is when they want to give them Lasix when they don’t pee. I absolutely will not allow them to dehydrate my horse with a drug that has NO THERAPEUTIC PURPOSE IN THIS INSTANCE in order to see if I’m using drugs that have no therapeutic purpose. Ridic.
I use IV banamine because mine won’t eat it. I also use Legend at shows. Am I abusing my horse with drugs? I prefer to use a proper disposal container.
You can squirt the injectable into their mouth, but it sounds like you’re comfortable w/ injection technique.
And yes, I think that sharps containers are a better solution than tosssing them in the trash.
Oh I’m not saying that overflowing sharps = horse abuse, but it’s a lot of needles…I’d say most barns (at least the ones I’ve worked at) give paste or tabs of things, so that’s not to say one horses needles for legit, humane reasons don’t add up.
Most of the people I know at shows use IV banamine. I guess to each their own.
I don’t see overflowing med boxes regularly at shows. And I’m going to guess that if you are shooting a horse w phenobarbital, you are not above disposing of needles in a place other than a sharps container. Or you might have your own. I actually had my own at a show because I couldn’t find one, and the show vet gave me one
ETA: I guess this argument of having sharps containers condones injecting horses is akin to giving condoms to teenagers encourages them to have sex. It’s going to happen anyway.
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