This is what’s so baffling to me with rated shows. $300 for 5 days of stall rental? For a month, that’s a $1,800 DRY STALL rate. That’s absolutely insane. Why is it $300 to rent a stall for 5 days??? What the heck? lol.
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Funny you should mention Paso Fino. Not USHJA related, but USEF issue.
Who in hell allows that breed to make J-tails? WAY more cruel than a tail set on a hackney or saddlebred. USEF kicked out Walking Horses, they should do the same to Paso.
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Is the Western world having the same moment of introspection, I wonder?
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Hell no. We had 671,000 people attend the National Western Stock Show and Rodeo over 16 days. That includes the incorporated horse show (h/j) over 4 days. And that was with 86 hours straight of below freezing and subzero weather.
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I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I consider my future and my horses future in the sport. I think that there is a lot of overlooked abuse at our shows and at home, and I think that that’s both a hard and inconvenient pill to swallow. Honestly, I think the use of a crop/whip could be considered abuse, even though I personally carry one at shows, and have used one at shows when my horse ran out from a jump. I would support the ban of whips/crops at home and competitions, but it’s unfathomable that USEF/USHJA would come close to banning them. That would be something forced upon us by activist groups I imagine. But even more basic than that, how many horses at show barns get their 3 F’s met (Forage, Friends, Freedom)? Forage, yes- and skinny horses would likely get called out at shows at least. Friends and freedom? I bet a lot of barns aren’t meeting those criteria quite so well. My barn isn’t, and I don’t know any HJ show barn close to me that does adequately meet those needs.
I think a lot of people are under the delusion that because we love our horses, and give them lots of treats, that they are happy and well cared for. Even me. But I’m slowly starting to educate myself about my own horse’s well being, and sadly the conclusion I’m arriving at is that we may not be long for the HJ world, though I would be ecstatic to see the right changes made to make the sport horse friendly.
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Yep. And if we love them and give them treats sometimes it justifies in folks minds drugging them, riding them if they are not sound, keeping them locked in a stall, showing them week in and week out etc not to mention outright abuse which happens far less than the above practices. “Loving” an animal in this way means seeing it as a vehicle to one’s own needs and gains without empathizing with what the animal might really need and want. Many of us come to a sort of compromise internally on this where we do the best we can for our horses while acknowledging what they do for us either in competition or psychologically or both. As long as we ONLY see them as vehicles to success or status the horse will never win. We must reconcile their needs with our own and at least try to meet them in the middle.
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I do think the focus on horse welfare is becoming more of a topic that’s discussed, and some action is being taken, but it is sporadic and aimed at certain groups of horses competing at specific levels of showing.
I will say, however, that I have personally seen lame horses booted out of halter and WP competition by the judges, both at state club shows and World shows. No one questions the decision, either.
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Not along the same line, but I was shocked that in the GP in Florida- horse pulled up lame after jump 2 (was off after jump 1), they brought screens out, manager came out, but the rider walked a clearly lame horse out of the ring. I’d have thought that they should wait for the trailer. And I am not an alarmist but WTH. At a place where a whole lot of non horse people go to watch. Crickets on SM. Not a subtle lame, either (bad enough they brought out screens, didn’t put them up). Social license seems to only apply to those we do not like or diagree with, at times…
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USHJA holding zoom meeting on SOL. https://www.ushja.org/about-us-and-news/town-hall
Anyone can join.
The French Government has come out with a list of 46 recommendations to improve horse welfare for the upcoming 2024 olympic games in Paris.. Worth a read, and many of them seem very reasonable, but I doubt we’ll see much implementation from the IOC. I’d like to believe that if these do become enforced at the olympics, it would make for an easy transition to enforce them within USEF/USHJA.
I’ll share some selected recommendations below:
Recommendation #1:
Provide relaxation areas (grazing areas, lungeing and exercise areas, galloping track, paddocks, etc.) in sufficient quantity and surface area to be accessible to horses as needed, while respecting a controlled environment that guarantees the safety and biosecurity that are essential in competition.
Recommendation #7:
Improve the controls against the excessive tightening of nosebands and curb chains: Provide a more calibrated check, preformed randomly during training sessions and systematically when entering or leaving each event, using a 1.5 cm ISES taper gauge placed on the nasal bones (which allow one adult finger to slide between the noseband strap and the hard nasal bone) and apply a penalty in the event of an infringement.
Recommendation #8:
Review the list of tack which, by its creative design or manufacture, can cause harm and discomfort to the horse, and prohibit its use in competition, in particular nosebands that increase the capacity to tighten (crank, lever, grackle, double, etc.) as well as flash nosebands in all disciplines: Create a positive list of authorized nosebands.
Recommendation # 11:
Prohibit the use of martingales in combination with an elevator (gag) bit throughout the entire Olympic Games grounds.
Recommendation #12:
Prohibit the use of running reins (draw reins) throughout the entire Olympic Games precinct.
**Recommendation #15: **
Prohibit the use of the whip more than once per event and more than twice during the warm-up. The use of a whip more than once per event and twice during warm-up will result in a sanction or even disqualification. Video surveillance used as evidence if necessary.
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Paso Finos hold their tail in a tense, different way naturally–I’ve trained some that were not even broke to ride, and they all did that when gaiting.
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I’m a white breeches wearing gal through and through.
I have also been to the top WP shows in the country (Reichart, Nationals and Worlds) and seen with my eye two eyeballs some horrific practices. Mares wear tail bags because their tails are numb, horses tied in their stalls at all hours, mosquito repellent dropped into their ears to numb their eardrums, reins tied to saddle horns and horse left for hours. People ripping on the faces of horses with shanked bits. Kicking horses in the stomach. And this is all AT the horse show. In front of people. And these are from all different, erm, trainers.
That’s just what I remember seeing and didn’t shun from my memory. H/j isn’t perfect, but it also isn’t that.
Carry on.
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The question is not “what are we doing to ourselves?” The question is “what are we doing to these horses?”
Having competed in (and left stock horses), I am tired of hearing the excuse that breeding produces a horse that tracks at an angle and moves like a crippled oil rig. The breeding produces a horse that is symmetrical and naturally moves symmetrically with cadenced gaits. It does not produce a horse which moves at an extreme angle with a choppy gait that needs hock injections, often starting as early as age 3 because of the stress of training a horse to move in such an unnatural way. It’s baffling that while horses in disciplines like jumping and dressage often peak at around ten years old, many Western Pleasure (WP) horses are forced into early retirement due to the harsh training methods imposed on them. They’re frequently entered into classes like yearling longe lines and backed as early as two years old to prepare for potentially lucrative futurity careers. The focus of these futurities is predominantly on younger horses, with little emphasis on the maturity of older ones. The entire system revolves around pushing young horses to perform, disregarding their well-being. The issue isn’t just the unnatural and awkward appearance; it’s the damaging training methods employed and the subsequent harm inflicted upon the horses. It is abusive.
After spending some time in the hunter world, I returned to a breed show and was appalled by what I saw as I realized that it had been that way FOR YEARS. Jerking and spurring. Horses longing excessively in ridiculous apparatus. A trainer jerking the chain so hard that the horse reared up and flipped over because it didn’t stop on a dime while schooling showmanship. A walk trot kid riding a horse in super tight draw reins that would make most Rollkur posts look like a simple stretch in comparison. And why is an 8 or 9 year old riding in draw reins??? I sadly came to the realization that since I had been raised in it since the age of 9, it had all been normalized, and I didn’t see how cruel and unnecessary it was until I grew up, stepped away, and changed disciplines. And this is what everyone in “tight breeches land” objects to. The unnecessary and abusive methods used to obtain the “desired” gait. It’s the same as Helgstrand and Parra objection, just to obtain the different type of gait. Except this has been ongoing since the 80’s and worsens every decade. The governing bodies have failed to address it, and judges reward it, so it continues.
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What??? This is a thing? Who would even think of this???
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Late on here but I think one statement quoted is really, really dead center on target.
“Show management sees the exhibitors as wealthy customers they must be nice to so they keep coming back”. Bingo.
Seen it in all disciplines and the breed shows. Nobody dares to challenge the Good Old Boy network. Rather they allow the barn grapevine to operate so GOBs can be informed when the testers show up, something may be enforced and make sure the GOBs are happy with the judges and stewards hired.
First entered a show ring as a young adult circa 1970. Don’t see much difference from then to now.
Theres a HCA fairy tale about an Emperor who wears no clothes but his subjects are too scared of getting decapitated or thrown into prison to question his choice. We are like those subjects, we know but nobody does anything about it for fear of offending the GOBs. Just a thought.
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Then, as in the Helgstrand & Parra cases, we need documentation of the actual abuse that produces those gaits. And we need judges to stop rewarding artificial gaits. Instead, what we have are random folks, possibly unwitting amateurs just posting video of their weekend at the show, and comments of “horse abuse” when it’s basically just tacked up horses being ridden in an arena. Since Joe Q Public doesn’t know a rack from a pace, a trot from a jog, and definitely not a tranter from a canter, it all comes off as a blanket labeling of horseback riding as abuse.
It’s reactive, which is exactly what we want to discourage as a public response when they see a rogue colt trying to eat an outrider and being properly reprimanded.
I still plead ignorance on WP. Maybe it is absolutely impossible to produce that gait without abuse, but I have no idea. And recognizing that ignorance, I’m not gonna comment “horse abuse” on random videos of people riding horses in an arena. I’m instead going to assume that you folks that are apparently aware that the entire discipline cannot exist without abuse, are doing something about it.
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I’m sorry, but I’ve seen the results of selective WP breeding with my own eyes. Other than his cadence slowing down as he figured it out, that horse loped like that from Day 1.
Same with the other two youngsters he had in to break. As soon as they struck off, you knew immediately what they were bred for.
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If you are referring to the “broken shoulder” lope where the horse pretty much drags a foreleg, from what I witnessed a couple of years ago (a warm-up ring for a Western Pleasure class), the training absolutely appeared abusive. Any horse that tried to normalize its gait was punished by repeated downward jerks on the bit - and they were not kind little tugs either. And it was pretty much every rider in that ring, which was enough evidence for me to realize that the technique is widely accepted in the WP world. It sickened me to watch it.
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I have never seen a western pleasure horse lope in a canted format in the field. Yet strangely when they get in the ring, no matter how naturally they lope in the field, they are suddenly all tracking at the lope on the most ridiculously canted angle. You can see it plain as day. They are sideways. THAT is what we are talking about. Not the way the horse was naturally bred and is capable of moving, rather, how it actually moves once man (or woman) intervenes. Loping sideways is not natural.
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