Dujardin Whistleblower News

[Scribbler]

@Alterration

@Scribbler

She posted her own “junior worst fails” which were indeed pretty ugly as proof “she used to ride like this.” No, sweetie. No you did not. No you did not ride like an Olympic eventer. Just no.

Are we talking about the “trainer” that starts with an M?

Yes.

Local to me so my attention was called to her a couple years ago by adult beginner friends cooing over riding with no tack as Goals. Followed her on FB and deduced she was a burned out local level junior who reinvented herself at 25 as a horsemanship guru but has less time with groundwork and R+ than I do.

I’ve been getting increasingly uneasy about Holistic Horsepersonship type bloggers spreading misinformation that’s dangerous to newbies (liberty riding outside an arena) and bashing equestrians broadly to non-horse PETA types. I held off doing a rant about her on COTH because she is young and totally small potatoes and local, and not as far as I can see really working as a trainer in any real capacity. But then someone on COTH in another country cited her in passing as a good example of something or other in a nutrition thread. And I realized that despite being a nobody, her social media reach (I think she’s just on FB so far?) could be growing to the point she’s actually an “influencer.” So I feel OK critiquing her now as I think she’s gaining traction online, not as a trainer, just as a FB poster.

Anyhow she went ballistic during the Olympics with blown up frames of distorted photos or video stills of hooves and backs. And yes she links to Dressage Hub, likely has no clue that site is taboo to everyone.

[MadTrotter]

@Scribbler

But then someone on COTH in another country cited her in passing as a good example of something or other in a nutrition thread. And I realized that despite being a nobody, her social media reach (I think she’s just on FB so far?) could be growing to the point she’s actually an “influencer.”

Yes. This is dangerous. In our current media environment, these people have incredible power to influence public opinion, and thus, policy. And where money is spent.

While I welcome a closer eye on horse welfare, I find it incredibly worrying that many people just shrug and say, hey, it’s fine if the IOC axes equestrian from the Olympics. It’s fine if FEI horse sport disappears.

But then say goodbye to all the facilities, and new people introduced into the sport. Breeders disappear, horses become scarce. Watch while everything becomes more insular, more owned by the super wealthy.

And I can guarantee you that this group won’t give a shit about horse welfare when the public eye is turned away.

[mombc24]

She is actually quite big now, sdequus on Instagram and I think she has presented at some horse welfare conference in Paris where the FEI sent a spokesperson. If we’re talking about the same person?

[Scribbler]

@mombc24

She is actually quite big now, sdequus on Instagram and I think she has presented at some horse welfare conference in Paris where the FEI sent a spokesperson. If we’re talking about the same person?

Yes that’s her. I see 96k followers on IG.

She’s clearly good at the online stuff. And at marketing to non horse people and newbies.

Looks like she has a podcast as well. That’s her YouTube channel, just audio no video.

Shelby Dennis, Milestone Equestrian.

I would consider her at this point primarily a social media influencer, not a trainer. There’s a number of people like that online, if you aren’t local to them you don’t know how invisible they are IRL compared to their SM presence.

I don’t have a problem with ammies running My Fuzzy Pony type channels, but I don’t like the message she sends out and that she constructs her persona as an Experienced Horse Trainer to spread ideas that are dangerous and exaggerated.

I know perfectly well that anyone riding tack.free on a beach is doing it as a stunt with support (camera person, other horses your horse will run to) on a horse you’ve already trained in a bridle and feel totally safe on. But my newbie adult friends see this 11 second clip and think it’s Goals to eventually go trail riding hither and yon down the road with no tack when they can’t even sit a canter yet.

Then the misinformation that you can ride everywhere in no tack if you have the right relationship with your horse gets rolled back into the Bits are Mean Horse Welfare campaign.

She also sells bitless bridles.

[Knights_Mom]

Boy are you guys going to be surprised.

[Salty]

What does this mean?

[Knights_Mom]

It means the accepted norms of yesterday will not be the realities of tomorrow.

[Alterration]

I’m still not sure what you mean here. I’m all for alternative training - heck, I clicker train and ride my horses in the cordero, but there are responsible and irresponsible ways to do this.

I’ll give you an example of why sometimes this type of thing can be damaging, and maybe my perspective will be clearer.

I own a boarding stable. At one point here we had a lovely woman with a horse that had not been ridden in 7 years. Horse was just kind of a normal horse but the rider was over 70, and her prior experience had been nose to tail trail rides, one of which she had a terrible accident because she didn’t actually know how to ride, which left her completely shaken, hence her horse not being ridden.

I inherited this boarder. Boarder indicated she wanted to learn to ride her horse. Boarder also told me things like “she had such a bond with her horse that she never wanted the horse to have a bit in her mouth and she wanted to ride bareback”. Finally she bought a saddle, but wouldn’t tighten the girth because she believed it was hurting the horse. Every time she lessoned, I tightened the girth. I insisted that she rode in a mild snaffle because she was not ready to actually steer the horse with her body and the horse did not prefer the cheap cross under bitless she was trying to use.

Once, when I was out of town, she chose to ride on her own in her flat halter, without her girth tight. The horse took off with her, she stayed on by virtue of sheer luck, and when she, terrified, tried to get off the saddle slipped around her belly and it took weeks for the mare to get comfortable with a saddle again.

Why did this accident occur? Because this woman believed that if her bond was “just right” her horse would somehow cease to be a horse magically allow her to ride and fart butterflies out of her behind.

Again, I ride in all sorts of manner, and do all sorts of R+ but the uneducated have no business doing it. I don’t believe the reins are steering and brakes but for a beginner who does not yet understand equine psychology or how to control their own physiology it is oodles safer to have those as backup rather than a situation in which they are inspired to trail ride with nothing on their horses heads because they believe it to be somehow superior.

The woman didn’t die and thankfully she is no longer at my farm, because she was giving me hives.

[Knights_Mom]

I feel your pain. I do.

I don’t believe she’s the majority of horse owners though. And if you look at the people who post, many know the difference between a baby horse and a pony. I’m sure there are all levels of expertise there.

That’s why it’s important for a poster to explain their position as best they can.

Have the discussions, point - counterpoint. And sure sometimes things get animated and stupid but often there’s gems in there.

[Alterration]

I think that was for the other thread. This one was talking about a particular trainer who promotes things dangerously to newbies.

Admittedly I was on both threads lol so it’s easy to see why one might be confused.

[Scribbler]

@Alterration

I think that was for the other thread. This one was talking about a particular trainer who promotes things dangerously to newbies.

Admittedly I was on both threads lol so it’s easy to see why one might be confused.

Yeah I kind of contributed to derailing this thread to rant about bad dangerous advice for newbies

I also do R+ and liberty and in hand and obstacle ground work, and biomechanically correct dressage and back country trail riding. I too was a middle aged returning riders who still accesses her inner 11 year old at times. That’s why the bad liberty and R plus advice galls me so much.

The last fad for adult beginners was Parelli etc which kept people out of the saddle perfecting stupid games that soured horses. But at least there was some concept of teaching a horse things in bite sized chunks.

The liberty and no tack “trainers” and trainers on SM show stuff that I know are tricks and performance and moments out of time, and mystify how you get there. Everyone loves seeing a pretty girl gallop a horse with no tack on a beach or through a field of flowers for 13 or 20 seconds. But watching those videos teaches you nothing about training.

[Knights_Mom]

@Alterration

I think that was for the other thread. This one was talking about a particular trainer who promotes things dangerously to newbies.

Admittedly I was on both threads lol so it’s easy to see why one might be confused.

Oops.

[Angela_Freda]

@SillyHorse

Quite messy, indeed. Whoever the whistleblower is, though, doesn’t change the documented fact that CD was terribly abusive and deserved to be outed.

This woman (Dickinson) is a charlatan to be avoided. I’m glad she’s been outed, too.

The charlatans tend to run in packs.

[Angela_Freda]

@DownYonder

The article mentions that she was planning to use Dujardin to front a syndication for support of a young rider.

Any chance it was the rider in the infamous video?

[DownYonder]

@Angela_Freda

@DownYonder

The article mentions that she was planning to use Dujardin to front a syndication for support of a young rider.

Any chance it was the rider in the infamous video?

That is a likely guess.

[Warmblood1]

@DownYonder

No, but I am not completely convinced from seeing the CDJ video of how many times she actually hit the horse with the whip.

Multiple times IMO. I would say nearly every time since you can hear the whip make contact and see the horse physically react to the strike of the whip many times, either by tail swish or kicking out. Also considering the length of the whip and the proximity of Charlotte to the horse it is pretty impossible for it not to hit the horse.

And as an aside, if the argument is that the horse is a rearer and that this was absolutely necessary to do - it is still bad training to have a rider aboard who is clamped down and blocking forward movement. This is unfair to the horse no matter how it is dissected IMO. Perhaps the whistleblower is shady but it doesn’t detract from the wrong things done.

[DownYonder]

I am not disagreeing that her tactics were W-R-O-N-G. I will add though that my horse would often pin his ears, swish his tail, and sometimes kick out if he thought you were even going to pick up a whip (I suspect he had some hard schooling vis-a-vis whips before I got him). I got him to where I could use a lunge whip while lunging - could even gently swing it or point it at him but I hardly ever let go of the lash - usually held it firm against the shaft. Carrying a whip while riding was a different story - and God forbid if you committed the cardinal sin of touching him with it. He once went into a huge bucking fit when an asst trainer made the mistake of tapping him with a whip to get him more in front of the leg. He bucked halfway around the arena and thankfully I wasn’t on him because I would have come off with the second buck.

And truthfully, he is not the only horse I have known through the years that reacted to whips so strongly.

[Manni01]

I agree with you and what confuses me is that in the case of the Cesar Parra horse and the German Trainer the same argument was used.
The German trainer delivered a statement that said, the horse was a bad rearer and it was a dangerous situation for everybody…

[Alterration]

I have one that reacts to the whip that strongly and another that reacts very strongly to being pushed forward at all. Of course, I usually deal in problem horses with strong opinions. It usually means something was done incorrectly in their early breaking.

@Manni01

The German trainer delivered a statement that said, the horse was a bad rearer and it was a dangerous situation for everybody…

I do believe that some horses strongly object to the amount of hand/blocking and go up instead of through it. They are then deemed rearers. And while rearing is a dangerous vice, many of these rearers are situational. A softer hand and a non-blocking seat will not cause the same effect.

But - if you think about the trainer, often it’s easier (not better, not correct) to get the horse to adapt to a person’s way of riding than to change the person.

[Manni01]

Well I tend to believe that in Dujardins and Sandbrinks cases they used the rearing argument as an excuse to do what they did….
I know many people still think these training methods are rare but I am not sure about that…