I am going to bring up yet again my brain damage from the sitting trot hypothesis.
I feel pretty confident that all or most of these top riders started off like a lot of us here totally in love with horses. Fired by educated fantasies of “merging into one” with an individual of another species while “dancing” in a close embrace, two bodies moving as one with brains in harmony.
WHY do some of the top horse riders end up being horribly cruel to their previously beloved horses?
Figuring out the challenge of riding each different horse is a totally absorbing intellectual and emotional learning experience. The subtleties of how each different equine body moves so that horse and rider can truly and joyfully “dance” together is a never ending process that uses a LOT of our brains and engages our emotions.
IF these riders use a lot of the sitting trot could not the jarring from the horse’s back, no matter how well the rider absorbs these shocks in their bodies, cause repeated mini-concussions in the brains, brain stems and upper spinal cords?
Could these mini-concussions cause damage in the parts of the brain that control planning and the parts that control emotions?
Could this damage, which comes in incremental doses, get to be enough to turn a previously sensitive and empathetic rider into a rather inhumane totalitarian dictator while riding a horse?
With my brain damage from my case of Multiple Sclerosis I have noticed increasing difficulties with my ability to control my body AND my emotions. This is a huge part of the reason that I do not want to ride anymore outside of a lesson with a riding teacher who has educated eyes. I trust my riding teachers to limit my damaged brain’s reactions to the movements of the horse and I also rely on them to call me out if they see anything from me that leads to me abusing their horses.
Because my MS can cause ever increasing brain damage I know that I have to check what I am doing with the horse constantly. I am constantly having to learn how to deal with my changed brain, physically, emotionally and intellectually. IF I did not have my riding teachers keeping close track on how my actions affect their horses I could well end up being just as abusive as the top riders/trainers that this thread is discussing. If I did not listen to the horses I ride and consider the horses’ actions a valid judgment on the part of the horse about my riding I would end up abusing the horses I ride.
For my damaged brain riding is physical, intellectual and emotional therapy, guided by skilled teachers. If I did not realize that I need this help I could go off merrily riding on my own and end up with an extremely unhappy horse who is silently screaming that I need to ride better and more humanely. That would end up in a disaster for me.