Not to excuse horses being competed lame, but I can see several reasons why a judge might either miss this, or else decide to err on the side of doing nothing.
First, it is true that the angle you view the horse from affects how well you can see the lameness. If you are watching the horse from the side you see things you can’t if you are watching the horse head on from the judge’s booth (other posters have said this too).
Second, the patterns move really fast (as people note in the thread on new scoring system) and you might think you saw something but not be able to concentrate on it.
I’m thinking about diagnosing a horse that is subtly “off,” how we trot it up and down, consult our coaches and experienced friends, poke and prod; we’d probably spend far longer than the length of one dressage test observing, before we’d call the vet in.
Third, if the judge was overly pro-active and rang out every horse that seemed off in some way, and some of them were fine, there would be a big uproar.
Fourth, many horses do have a hitch in their gait in some way, or are being ridden in a way that makes them seem lame.
And, fifth, not everybody, rider or judge or trainer, can see the more subtle forms of lameness, or the transient ones, or indeed sometimes the more obvious ones.
I don’t have a perfect eye by any means, but I’ve spent some time hanging out with my coach/farrier who has a good eye, and I’ve had the advantage of being able to watch horses that are going perfectly sound, enough to know what it looks like when all four legs are moving correctly for that horse. And I’ve been able to watch other horses that looked NQR to me a few years back, develop progressive injuries or diseases that, in hindsight, justified what I thought I saw back then. On the other hand, I still miss some subtle signs, or am not sure that I’m seeing what I think I am, and absolutely would never IRL volunteer the opinion that a horse was off, if I wasn’t asked point blank for it (I’m braver on-line :)).
Anyhow, I have a semi-informed eye, and so it is interesting to see how many people notice less than I do. I have seen people miss head-bobbing lame (transient, in competition; confirmed, in pleasure riding), not just crocked stifles or hocks, which can be so common as to seem normal.
And the thing is, if the person you are talking to can’t see what you see, then you come off as imagining things. I have a good friend who shares my riding philosophy, but she is totally fixated on the head and neck. She will criticize horses being “behind the vertical,” or praise them for having a more open pole, but she never, ever looks at the hind end. When I say that a particular horse was btv, but was moving correctly overall, or a horse had an open pole, but was still going short behnd and on the forehand, she hasn’t seen this, can’t see this, and doesn’t believe me. It’s like trying to describe colours to a colour-blind man. Or talking about the colours of someone’s aura.
In my ideal world, horses wouldn’t compete lame or even “off,” and they also wouldn’t be schooled lame or off, and everyone would be primed to see the least constriction of gait, and ready to be pro-active to solve it. So I’m not trying to excuse horses being competed lame, just to say that it may be harder to catch, and harder to feel justified in ringing out a rider, for the judge.
