Dirty Stoppers

[Stoney447]

After reading these responses, I guess I should reform what I consider a “dirty stopper” is. Growing up, I always referred to the horse I rode the jumpers on the Florida circuit as a dirty stopper…but now I am not so sure that is fair to him (maybe he was just a non-dirty stopper).

With him, I always knew the types of fences he would stop (the outs of combinations). Some days he would be fine, others he would stop without warning, lowering his shoulders and slamming on the breaks into the fence. I guess that does fit the description of dirty, but I was always prepared for the possibility. I guess it doesn’t help that he was a 15.2 hand appy jumping the level 5s and he didn’t quite have the step for some of the longer combinations which would scare him (probably a better rider than my teenage self could have helped him out, but alas he was stuck with me)…he had the scope in spades, but his legs were too darn short. It’s a shame, because years later and $$$ horses later I still consider him the best horse I have ever owned.

[cnvh]

I had the (mis)fortune of a long period of free rides on a dirty stopper, trying to rehab her for a lesson program. I’ve been riding for over 30 years and can pretty much sit a stop or spook like nobody’s business (or at least I could THEN), but that mare was freaking TALENTED in her evil-ness. I used to call her the “rubber band” for her ability to go straight to the jump but then whip backwards in midair, right out from underneath me. I think she must have been a cutting horse in a former life… And yes, she really rocked my confidence, bigtime-- I had the broken collarbone and sprained ankle and everything.

She got cycled through a few different owners after I left that barn, and I heard she eventually wound up at auction… Seems she had decided to start those maneuvers on the flat, too, and got one too many people hurt.

I can deal with a regular stopper-- they start asking questions a stride or two out, you know it might be coming and you can deal with it. IMO, the “dirty” stopper is way too calculating and cunning for my taste… Call it anthropomorphizing if you will, but my time and money and safety are better spent elsewhere.

Thankfully my current horse will go over absolutely whatever you put in front of him… it might be an ugly effort, he might do it from a virtual standstill if it’s particularly looky, but he goes over. He may not be the prettiest technician, but at least he’s honest!

[suzier444]

When I was a kid I rode a pony who was a dirty stopper. He would wait until the last second and chuck riders over his shoulder and into the fence like an assault missile, and it was very clearly deliberate. He was really good at it, too. His backstory as it was told to me is that he got physically beat when he screwed up over fences and he came to my barn free because somebody took pity on him, even though he was far from fancy. So in his case, I’d say it was purely mental and caused by bad-to-maybe-even-abusive training methods. I rode him and one AA rode him, and he made it very clear we were His People. There’s no clear reason why that I can tell, as I wasn’t a particularly clever rider, but he never stopped on me. He may have run out, but he didn’t try that launch-the-rider thing. What’s funny is I’m typically quite a safety-conscious person (read: chicken), but I trusted him implicitly for no good reason, and he trusted me in return. I actually took him to a show at the barn where his prior “bad trainer” was and we got 4th place over fences, silly little local schooling show but my goodness I felt proud of that! He was probably the most “heart horse” equine I’ve had in my life. I loved him so much, flaws and all.