The first place I boarded at down here almost 50 years ago had a Hitchcock pen. I have never seen one since (or before then for that matter.) They can be very useful with training a horse to jump at first and to help develop jumping muscles before the trainer gets up on their back for jumping.
I’d rather use a Hitchcock pen rather than lungeing horses over jumps if I was still starting horses off.
They’re useful. The farm I had in the early 1970’s had one. I used it quite a bit for starting horses under saddle as well as over jumps.
The list of people donating to Athletes for Equity is… Interesting. I’m shocked they’ve raised as much as they have.
As far as crest releases, I initially learned to jump from a German, and she lost her MIND when I tried the crest release in a lesson. It was all automatic all the time. I’m just getting back into jumping, and my horse has a jump that’s fairly difficult to ride. In the interest of sparing his face, I do use a short crest release so I don’t accidentally pop him. He actually hates the feeling of being dropped that he gets from a long crest release, so this is our compromise.
And their comments are priceless.
Some don’t surprise me at all. Some do and I just lost some respect for them. And I have another reason for not supporting a show management team that has an unfortunate tendency to move classes around the night before and whose office staff was pretty rude to me a few years ago.
So… it has an inner fence to create a continuous chute?
Or no inner fence and it’s English world’s larger round pen?
Yes. There is an inner fence.
“Lower inside”, so I’m guessing it is like a mini track
And the Venn Diagram of people also screaming about Micheal Vick and how horrible the NFL is would be interesting.
I went to the Athletes for Equity website, and I have to agree with much of what others have posted. I am surprised that they have been able to raise a dime, and I found the list of people who donated to be very interesting. Who in their right mind donates money to a group of lawyers who make a living defending child molesters to help them promote that business interest?
I read through the Athletes for Equity mission. As far as I can tell, their mission is essentially to protect the rights of child abusers and molesters. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong. They want to minimize the damage to people’s reputations until “final adjudication” is accomplished. Well, that pretty much means saying/doing nothing and allowing a potential molester or abuser to continue molesting or abusing youth participants for months while an investigation takes place. This doesn’t work out like this in ANY other place in real life. At your kids’ schools, if someone came forward with a complaint that a teacher was molesting students, that teacher would be immediately suspended while an investigation took place. The reason, which I think most people agree with, is that in a situation of molestation or abuse, preventing further abuse is a priority that transcends reputation. Athletes for Equity’s mission is to prioritize protecting reputations over stopping ongoing abuse.
The rest of what they say is extremely vague. Obviously everyone supports a “fair and equitable process,” but they give very little detail about exact changes they are hoping to make. They discuss their plan to “establish the legal boundaries intended by Congress in amending the Ted Stevens Act as it pertains to the use of the Center for SafeSport to protect amateur athletes against abuse.” This is a VERY vague but important sounding statement. Are they trying to say that the Hunter discipline shouldn’t be affected by Safe Sport because they aren’t an Olympic discipline? What boundaries are they trying to establish on Safe Sport? I feel that if they were working towards setting some acceptable boundaries, they would just spell it out.
I would be glad for any lawyer on the forums to clarify.
@BeeHoney I don’t think any lawyer on here can explain their logic. Well at least the ones who support the mission of Safe Sport and have full lives outside of the horse world.
Well some lawyers in this forum appear to have donated?! So perhaps THOSE lawyers could have a go at explaining the logic.
:eek:
ETA: I’m not sure why I’m surprised.
People never fail to disappoint me
Hitchcock Pen has an inner fence. The track is usually about 10’ wide, so you can put jump poles across it to create a series of in and outs if you want. Very handy for practising no-hands jumping, since the horse can’t run out
Their logic for donating is likely attached to the act of hitching their professional wagon to the anti-SS wagon train to get potential business or involvement in future legal matters that may be of prominence in the headlines. In the legal world, you get known for winning big - not losing - and attaching your name to prominent cases or individuals or prominent individuals with prominent cases is the best way to move up in the world, so any lawyer into horses looking to make a name for themselves (or increase their standing or connectivity with the Equestrian Elite) is going to throw $5-$500 (or whatever) in that pot to get their name in the game as an ally to the cause. It’s very much a normal thing for organizations that have purposes relating to matters of potential wrongdoing and liability to attract donors and supporters who are lawyers because said lawyers can get in on the legal action - if there ever is any - down the line.
I think that what those lawyers are betting on is that there are going to be a LOT more high profile Safe Sport cases coming through the pipelines. There were something like over 300 abused athletes in gymnastics alone, and equestrian sports probably has even more. That means there are a lot of abusers out there who are going to need defending.
I’m not ignoring the abused kids and their legal needs, but abused kids and their families only rarely want to pursue criminal charges and civil penalties, so there’s likely much more money to be made defending the abusers. The abusers also tend to be much more high profile people. And it’s a great situation for a lawyer. Because the Safe Sport process is (necessarily) confidential, lawyers can say pretty much anything they want about how “unfairly” their client was treated whether it is true or not.
@poltroon responded to an earlier comment of mine questioning whether or not it was legitimate for them to have already started fundraising via GoFundMe when they haven’t yet been awarded their 501 © 6 status by the IRS. Apparently the way they are going about things is not unusual for startup nonprofits… but it can create a bit of a tax headache for everyone who donated while the 501 © 6 application was still pending.
They certainly were in a mad rush to get that GoFundMe account up and to start collecting money. The issue of protecting child molesters from investigations and professional consequences via Safe Sport was an URGENT issue in these folks’ opinion :rolleyes:
I was curious about this though, so I did a bit more reading about the potential pitfalls of using GoFundMe and soliciting for “charitable” donations via a nation wide crowd funding platform. They will need to have registered in multiple states prior to starting this solicitation activity… rules and regs for registration of an organization and when charitable solicitation is allowed to commence can differ from one state to another. It’s not necessarily as simple as merely registering in the same state the organization is incorporated in (Delaware in their case). If they are soliciting for charitable donations from folks who live in Virginia… there is a potential requirement to have registered in Virginia prior to making the solicitation and accepting funds from a Virginia resident. Or from a New York resident. Californias rules are slightly different I think.
Regardless… this can get a bit messy when trying to fundraiser and solicit for donations on a national basis… and it involves substantial paperwork. Looking at the website and the budget they threw together… I am questioning whether or not all the paperwork necessary for strict compliance with charitable solicitation requirements in many different jurisdictions is actually in compliance.
But I am a suspicious jerk with no sympathy for pedophiles and pedophile apologists. And I admittedly am the sort of person who would celebrate if they screwed up on some detail related to that, and their organization got slapped with a fine. I find the obvious rush these folks were in to throw together a website and start collecting money rather sad and pathetic.
Furthermore, I am curious about the budget they have that lists the bulk of donations going to a line item described as legal fees…
Legal fees for what exactly?
PERHAPS (just an assumption on my part), the legal fees line item refers in part to donated funds going towards paying the $5000 arbitration fee that banned people have to come up with on a 5 day timeline if they want to challenge Safe Sport’s initial ruling in front of an independent arbitrator? Utilizing the services of an independent arbitrator does cost money. And it’s interesting that a group has formed to assist people (people that have been accused of molesting kids, investigated, and determined that they more than likely did moleat kids, and then banned by Safe Sport from participating in a sport they previously had leveraged in order to have access to victims) - so that these people get a second chance to avoid even minimal accountability when it comes to abusing minors.
In the section “What kinds of abuses of power has Safe Sport committed?” , they specifically talk about that $5000 arbitration fee pedophiles have to cough up if they want to get another shot at slipping through the cracks. These brave advocates for Safe Sport equity also talk about how the accused (specifically, individuals who have already been investigated after being credibly accused of violations, and determined via a preponderance of the evidence standard to have in fact, abused and exploited minors)… they talk about how these “accused” people have to come up with money to pay for attorneys to represent them during the appeal in front of the independent arbitrator… and how they have to do so without OUTSIDE FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE!!! :eek: How horrifying. That’s OBVIOUSLY a total abuse of power on the part of Safe Sport. :rolleyes: Soooo, perhaps part of this whole vague “legal expenses” portion of the organization’s budget involves paying a retainer to attorneys representing particular folks in specific cases that are headed to arbitration? You know, because Safe Sport is abusing their power and this organization is dedicated to helping athletes like 81 year old coaches accused of raping teenage boy’s appeal their bans when it comes to coaching USEF members.
These are just my suspicions concerning the vague $200,000 budget for legal fees. I might be wrong. Maybe these folks are paying for some other legal fees they didn’t specifically mention n their website.
The organization claims to be interested in advocating for ALL Olympic sports participants that are impacted by Safe Sport legislation. So maybe they can also disclose a breakdown of how donated funds have been spent so far… by sport. Were funds spent on legal expenses pertaining to an individual who participates solely in equestrian sports? Or maybe they are giving money to pay the arbitration fees required for coaches in Gymnastics and Figure Skating who want to challenge the initial rulings that ban them following Safe Sport investigations as well?
:lol: C’mon. Give me a break.
Last but not least… wasn’t Bonnie Navin providing services to more than one person who was attempting to fight Safe Sport on a pro bono basis? Maybe as part of an organizational cost savings initiative, Athletes for Equity in Safe Sport can reduce legal expenses by just getting more in the way of free services from her. 
To be clear, there’s no tax headache for any donor because donations to a 501c6 are not tax deductible to the donor. The only way a payment to the group could be deducted is if it was for a bona fide business expense.
Whoops - you’re right. My brain is not following all the details closely in a useful way anymore. I’m going down too many “what if” rabbit holes when looking at this organization, because I am admittedly pretty cynical about it.
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