Thank you for the explanation DownYonder and for sharing the video. I had no idea something like this was used on horses.
Anyone know if anything ever came of this? Seems like they are back to competing and coaching from social media check
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oh they were allowed to compete again until their hearings 
Oof. Well glad to hear they haven’t fully swept it away, I read a random fb comment saying their lawyers go it to “go away”.
Evie is riding at the Royal Winter Fair tonight, how awful she was invited 
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She wasn’t invited. She had to qualify.
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Guess her ban was lifted?
Can’t find any current updates of the proceedings…
I’m really confused by the video of the alleged abuse. While the injuries are horrible, they don’t seem to be indicative of abuse to me, but more the horse maybe got cast in it’s stall or fell in a trailer? Are there videos of abusive riding under saddle? Did someone see this abuse under saddle and then take video of the horse in a stall?
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Dressage hub (I know) had an hr long interview with a former groom. Just absolutely awful stuff and I can’t believe they allowed her to compete at the Royal!
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After lurking here for years and years, I made an account to share this.
I just listened to the Dressage Hub interview. I can confirm that 100% of these things were true in 2001, over 2 decades ago. I was a dressage groom at the time, for a barn not too far from Evi’s. A working student came to us from her, because her horse had been beaten by Evi so severely that her eyes had swollen shut, she had blood dripping from her stomach, and edema - JUST like this groom described.
The student had her own rig and took her mare out of the ring, and put her directly on a trailer and drove out. She ended up with us. I’ll never forget the state they were both in when they arrived.
Evi has always been like this.
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Awful!
Can someone summarize the DH interview? Any timelines? I really don’t want to venture over there
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I didn’t catch the timeline but basically these are the takeaways;
PSA This is my take from one listen, please feel free to correct anything wrong. I only listened once as it was awful to get through.
Horses abused on a daily basis. This includes whipping the horse on the hind, the sides and regularly on the face.
Horses are whipped so violently that they would often have edema on their bellies at the end of training sessions filled with fluid and hemotomas.
Spur marks were a regular thing.
Horses were whipped in the face from the ground and under saddle. Horses eyes were often swollen shut.
Horses were whipped for the purpose of getting them “through”. This was their “method” (They sell a lot of horses, so I would guess this was done to hurry the progress)
Horses appeared to have learned helplessness when there.
Horses were lunged with side reins secured to the curb bit and whipped repeatedly into exhaustion.
The groom was seriously injured in an accident when her horse flipped over from fear of being whipped by Evie on the ground.
The groom confirmed the vets were aware but were too scared to turn down business due to the nature of the Strasser’s, they used bullying, threats, and intimidation based on their connections to keep people quiet.
Every horse in their barn had damaged tongues. Tongues were severed often and one horse in particular had permanent nerve damage and couldn’t keep his tongue in his mouth properly after years of abuse.
Evie was known to verbally abuse her daughter and mock her for her weight often.
She was abusive to her staff and used coercive control to keep grooms quiet. Staff were kept financially strapped and without options when wanting to leave.
She would threaten staff who left, carrying on after they had left to make sure they never spoke out.
At least 8 other grooms came forward to this groom to confirm they experience the same thing.
Evie would know how long it took horses to heal and would stop the abuse in enough time so they had no damage when potential buyers would be coming.
EC ignored the grooms reports previously.
Having seen their horses go over the years, you can definitely tell they were trained with their heads cranked between their legs. They always had long overdeveloped necks in the wrong vertebrae.
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If all of this was seen, reported and ignored then the people who ignored and could have done something should also be held accountable…EC?
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As an update, I reported this to the FEI. It was over two decades ago, but nonetheless. I hope it helps prove a pattern of abuse in some way. This sport desperately needs to change. And, I daresay, especially in Canada.
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Anyone see this article with Carl Hester? He expressed his disappointment the FEI didn’t attend this symposium on the future of the sport.
FEI pretty useless at this point. Just look at the Andrew McConnon thread.
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