“It is like SLC2 writes people are too protected in the horse scene”
Not protected enough, I think. Information is the best weapon.
But I feel we can’t always blame ‘someone else’. Some of it, we have to ask ourselves, why we are afraid to do what alexandra did. I know very few people who would actually do something like that - many would say they would, but couldn’t when it came down to it.
I don’t disagree with discipline for horses. But it has to have limits and Ms Wels is well beyond any sort of rational limit of anything, even some sense of her own self preservation. My SO watched that video and said, ‘She must want to commit suicide, that seems to be as effective a way as any’. Horses that are beaten and roughed up are, first and foremost, erratic, unpredictable and dangerous.
Most of the old timer trainers I’ve met were not at all ethically against getting after a horse, but all taught me one thing - if you want to lose your temper, be sure you understand the one most likely to be harmed next is - YOU. Anyone who does what Wels does has to have some sort of self destructive impulse (probably not actually consciously wanting to self harm, just not having the control of temper to prevent it).
I’ve seen horses of all types, any type, any breeding turn on people, and frankly, the most fearful, timid animal is probably THE most dangerous abused animal of all.
The WORST thing I ever saw was the timid, quiet warmblood that stood there all cowed and trembling obediently standing there, and the next second just flew across the stall in the air, all teeth and front feet at the vet the next second. The cowed, obedient, timid horse is THE most likely to surprise one. The vet was VERY ready to run out the stall and in fact had already positioned herself to make a hasty escape.
This, however is the important fact. She told me, ‘Any horse can do that, ANY, at ANY TIME. Don’t you EVER think anything different, Don’t you EVER imagine that can’t happen at any time’.
Various posts here suggesting some breeds won’t and others will harm a handler or trainer if put in a spot, are totally, completely ridiculous. In fact, these are both dangerous and irresponsible statements, and people saying that kind of nonsense should apologize here. I’ve never read anything so ridiculous in my life that ‘warmbloods put up with abuse’ or ‘thoroughbreds and arabs won’t’. It’s embarassing to even imagine anyone would ever say such a thing that is so untrue.
The timider and more forebearing the animal, the quieter and more cooperative, the more likely he is to be put into a tight corner and then go completely insane.
I don’t feel everyone has a rational or reasonable concept of discipline and I feel that training needs to be both persistent and at times firm, how people might word, in an internet post, where they draw the line, is usually far LESS different than arguments here might suggest.
The key for me is that some people do NOT have sufficient control of their temper where they should be working with horses at all.
People like Christina Wels do not change. They plead guilty in court when it serves their purposes. They are hard-wired to act like this. They do not change. I have yet, in my long and bumpy life, ever seen anyone change that, except for one man who actually had a brain condition that caused his violence, which was almost like a seizure. Medication completely stopped his violence. But unlike Wels, he lives every day regretting what he did.
Wels made it very obvious in the videos that she has no capability of remorse. In fact, she attempted to argue that all horse trainers do what she does and that it is normal, and people who don’t GET that are just ignorant. This is very typical of the kinds of rationalizations you hear from these people.
This sort of thinking pattern never actually goes away. It’s an innate part of a person, it is hard wired, in the brain. There is something missing from the brain. You can’t put it in there. All you can do is put the person on a short leash and watch them like a hawk, because they will never, ever be any different. This woman is nearly sixty years old if i recall. She has been like this for decades. She cannot develop a theory of mind.
It is the inability to feel, to have a theory of mind about how sentient beings react to what one does.
If a child trips and falls near me, I do the ‘mom thing’. I’m sure most moms feel this, quite a few people do, to the point of wincing or even feeling a twinge of pain themselves. When their kid hurts, THEY HURT. This is theory of mind in action. You know, you feel, you SENSE, what the other one feels. YOU KNOW IT HURTS.
Years ago I was in college, and a lady told me her father trained her horse to always go in the barn when it was called. One time it would not, and the father taught the horse never to do that again. Even in a large pasture.
The lady told me that the father chased the horse around the pasture for hours, throwing a hammer at its head til its head was bloody. He wasn’t just throwing the hammer, he was connecting. Alot. She said if the horse ever wouldn’t go in the barn when called, all you had to do is bend over and act like you were picking something up, and the horse would run for the barn, no matter how far away from you it was in the pasture.
She laughed about it. She laughed the entire time she told the story.
I’m not sure, but the laughter suggested to me that she thought it was funny to throw a hammer at a horse’s head and bloody it. Perhaps just funny how mad her father was. In any case, she thought SOMETHING about it was funny. She had plenty of compassion for people; she was taught to feel this way about livestock. In the end, what is innate in us and what we learn, BOTH may be relatively inflexible.
Learning can be very, very hard to unlearn. It can be just about as fixed as biology, unless the person is taken out of the environment that taught him that. Taken out of his usual environment, even the surviving Mumbai terrorist quickly began to wonder at how easily and quickly he was brainwashed into participating in those attacks. Send him back to where he came from, it will be the same again, it’s a place where those attacks are noble and admired.
A doctor told me my autistic friend’s mom he didn’t need a local anasthetic to get stitches in a large cut because ‘they don’t feel things like we do’, despite the fact the kid was sitting there screaming his head off while he stitched.
Learning is amazingly powerful. For better or worse.
One way or the other, some people aren’t ever going to have much sense around livestock. They, as well as Christine Wels, should be permanently prevented from having anything to do with horses. I frankly don’t understand the court’s judgement, especially in a country that is far better than ours at prosecuting animal abusers.
