I concur.
Over the years, I’ve seen a number of horses who will curl behind the bit or suck back as an evasion.
I suppose you could say they had been abused at some point, but certainly not necessarily by the person in the irons on any particular occasion.
7 Likes
Not always the case though. Young horses will duck behind the bit for all sorts of reasons without ever having been abused (just an example to show that it can be a weakness and/or training issue vs. a product of abuse).
I think it is crucial to define abuse and this is a great convo to have, but I think most would agree that a horse temporarily BTV does not necessarily equate to abuse. Problems in training, for sure. Can abuse cause a horse to be BTV? Also for sure.
13 Likes
I actually get where you are coming from too. But this is where the problem lies and why we have to be SO careful w/ our words and the general public and perception. Of course there is a significant difference between using force and cranking a horse into a frame and dropping behind the vertical as a training issue. However, with the uneducated but well meaning horse lovers and the instant of pictures and the internet we have to be careful. I find “behind the vertical is abusive” is too simple and way to easily misinterpreted.
One time I was in Chicago w/ a work colleague. We happened to see a carriage horse, standing quietly and contentedly, w/ a bucket of water, well conditioned w/ great looking feet. Clean, well turned out. He was so relaxed he was dozing. She started raging about how this poor carriage horse was abused and suffering and isn’t it a shame. I pointed out how well the horse was kept and how he seemed very content. I used to drive carriage occasionally; the horses loved to go to work. Perception is easy to sway with the uneducated. We must be careful to maintain or protect our social acceptance.
26 Likes
My horse has you all beat. We’re both getting cited for cruelty to her!
Mere grooming the correct (according to her) spots will cause her to put herself in rollkur. If I try to move before she’s done she will position that spot back under my curry until she is done with thumbing her nose at the FEI.
(no she has never been ridden in rollkur)
3 Likes
True.
2 Likes
Are you able to drop your reins while riding ( trotting)… if you can do this and your horse drops his neck then you are fine….
2 Likes
My gelding would rollkur himself to try to undo his blanket. 
3 Likes
My mare will also go BTV on occasion, as an evasive tendency. It’s gotten a lot better but she will still do it on occasion, usually when she doesn’t want to stop 
But I think people are getting upset to call BTV abuse and then taking it to the other extreme and sarcastically saying “guess I’m a horse abuser!”. I don’t think that’s what anyone here is saying - I actually feel quite confident saying nobody means “anybody who rides the horse BTV for even a fraction of a second is a horse abuser”. As someone else mentioned (and frankly I hope we can all agree), it is a completely different scenario for a horse to be BTV due to greenness / lack of strength versus the rider purposefully placing the horse BTV. Also, judges have GOT to stop rewarding horses that are BTV, even if it is inadvertently ridden that way.
19 Likes
This. In spades.
6 Likes
Oh, they are out there.
The thing that makes me absolutely batshizzle as a proponent of the great muscling that long, deep, and round can make is that those eejits don’t realize that the angle between face and neck changes as the horse raises or lowers the neck. A horse being ridden very deep and long (low and long in the neck) with its snout behind the vertical may, in fact, have a more open throatlatch than one that is very up in the neck and slightly in front of the vertical.
10 Likes
“Since it is a connection or correlation rather than a definitive causality, I have to wonder whether it is the training that creates the behavior (as many have accused) or whether the horses themselves are more anxious, causing the training methods to deviate in order to control the hotter, more anxious horses (as we heard with Salinero and Rembrandt). So either breeding has “gone wrong” or training has “gone wrong” or it’s a complicated mixture of both.”
What they should also have looked at were the scores. Were these behaviors exhibited by horses scoring +70% or by those getting 50%-60%? The vast number of riders are amateurs who are trying our best to be good to our horses but there’s a reason we’re amateurs and not pros. I want to see the data broken down more because if it’s that pervasive, it’s not an abuse issue, per se, to be BV, it’s something else. In line with this, I don’t think all of the things they measured are “conflict behaviors”. Such as head tilt - I find that goes away when the horse gets physically stronger; crabbing can be caused by too much outside leg. What we want to avoid is causing pain/injury or the horse getting mentally upset.
Here’s another article showing most upper level horses are happy most of the time: Application of the Ridden Horse Pain Ethogram to Elite Dressage Horses Competing in World Cup Grand Prix Competitions - PubMed (nih.gov)
3 Likes
At least one. Remember the Rev. E Allen Buck?
3 Likes
Yes indeed! 
1 Like
IIRC, it’s Edward Allen Buck.
Who tried to sue Parra for defamation.
Isn’t he in australia now?
1 Like
Didn’t he also try to sue AQHA to make them allow some sort of bitless bridle allowable in all classes, or was that Dr Cook who was tried to get the USTA to allow his rig in races?
1 Like
He sued the Kentucky Racing Commission for not allowing his tack.
He sued AQHA for supposedly allowing animal cruelty and therefore damaging his ability to make money at QH shows because he wouldn’t do the awful things that everyone else did.
4 Likes
I haven’t seen any posts from him in years but yes I believe he did go to Australia.
I only thought of him because he had an epic meltdown of a video of Steffen Peters in a warm-up in Aachen with the horse stretching but BTV.
This video. The comments are amusing
3 Likes
OMG the comments 
Armchair quarterbacking at its finest. Jeezus.
3 Likes
I am going to try to find the full text of that study, I hate that it’s behind a paywall. I love the ethogram and that’s great news! I also found a study the other day that claimed rollkur causes no permanent damage, which I will find and post. I did not examine that one in great detail because I was looking for something else in that moment - but it is prescient in this conversation.
I’m not arguing for nor against anything - just adding to the discussion. Just to be clear.
All that being said, while conflict avoidance behaviors are not all pain, I find it interesting that that study concludes that the horses are happy just because they have an absence of pain.
Let me explain my thinking for just a moment - I have a horse who rubs his nose after longing, even after free longing with no head gear. He has been extensively vetted, but what I have found with him is that he comes out tense and the nose rubbing is a way of him dealing with his anxiety about longing. This is not a horse I started, he came from a big “mill” sort of farm and he is an overachieving sort.
Is he in pain? Not that the vets have found. Is he high anxiety about human demands? Yes. Would I consider him “a happy athlete”? Not yet. Working on helping him understand that I’m never going to demand more than his physicality and mind can give me.
But I wouldn’t call him happy, just because he is pain free.
Another, less well formed thought I have is that if the vast majority of horses are never destined for the upper levels, and the pain ethogram indicates that the issues are at the lower levels with us amateurs, should those of us who are never going to ride at the elite level adapt to a different sort of riding which is less causal of pain issues. I believe that’s where the Forward Seat riding came into development as many were riding and most not well.
And then another thought I had was - is the BTV issue and pain issues at the lower levels because there are fewer trainers teaching classically, and more short cuts as trainers compete for amateur dollars?
Again - not really advocating for anything so much as musing (mostly while I was cleaning stalls this afternoon as I am not an elite rider and still have to do my own work lol)
2 Likes
