Yeah, that’s different. I don’t generally worry about quick release anything, because I’m on the blocker ring.
I admit that I do leave horses tied unsupervised quite a bit though, if they’re even somewhat decent about it. Maybe not for an hour, but if I am doing other things, 20-30 minutes at a time. Yes, something can happen in that time frame. So can something happen in turnout where it won’t be noticed for 5+ hours. To me it’s an acceptable risk.
Your horses are clearly trained to stand calmly while tied, so I can see a low risk in leaving them unattended. Most Western-trained horses are as wellI leave my girls unattended in the crossties for 10–15 minutes sometimes, but one of them paws if she’s alone and bored, so it’s less irritating for all of us if I only step away for a few minutes. She also likes to toss her head and make all the metal parts of the crossties jangle when alone, but she’s 22 now and I’ve accepted that those behaviors are here to stay. 
But this guy is starting babies, so probably not trained yet.
The trainer that tied him ( causing his death) posted this??
Yeah back when he died. I did a search of Cobain + Hat Trick on FB and found it, I used the farm posting in a nod to discretion 
but she shared it to her personal page as well and got lots of sympathies.
Strange isn’t it? Shows no responsibility for what happened but treats it like an unfortunate accident…
I have not read all of the above posts and had not heard about this before. I live in the Aiken area and have trained, competed and hunted here for about 40 years. I asked my farrier about this today. Summary (admittedly hearsay) the horse was tied to rail high up in stall to prevent him stepping over the tie rope. He was left unattended. When the horse was discovered lifeless the trainer reported that he had become cast in the stall. Then later she said that he had colicked. And information regarding the disposal of and location of the body was kept from the owner. Trainer screwed up, tried to cover up, and then went silent and defensive is my interpretation of what I just heard.
And, I wonder, if they pull back or otherwise aren’t patient and get injured?
Now the horse is scared and injured
Violence begins where knowledge ends.
I ran into a bear on the trail and my rock star of an Appy pony promptly and calmly went up the most difficult trail on the mountain to avoid him. She was justifiably proud of herself, and I of her, when she reached the top. It was pretty much Cougar Rock for nearly a quarter mile. I’m very glad that she wasn’t oblivious to the bear.
This “trainer” should be banned from having any animals ever again.
My mare wasn’t quite that good in our bear encounter. Luckily the bear was running away from us. Mare went up., came back down to earth and stood still while I dismounted, and then proceeded to herd me, DH, and a friend (who were following on foot) back towards the barn. I had a hold of the reins but she was doing circles around me and moving us along. When we finally got close to the barn, she stopped in a driveway and just shook for bit, poor thing.
She is not one I’d ever leave hard tied with no supervision. Blocker tie rings are a blessing!
I found a bear in the field next to the barn while I was riding down the driveway bareback. Stupidly, I stopped and yelled for my student who was in the barn to come out and look because it was the biggest bear I had ever seen. Horse was standing there snorting while we oohed and ahed over the bear… until horse decided we were idiots and took off down the driveway with me clinging to the mane. I would definitively have deserved a Darwin Award if things went fully south.
She’s got a legit-looking set of contacts and accomplishments in H/J world. To wit: http://www.hattricksporthorses.com/about.html
To me, this is proof-positive that all those BNTs who were writing those hand-wringing articles about how the “kids of today” won’t be able to train horses tomorrow (while also taking their parents’ money and not teaching them to train so much as to ride and show) were right.
How can anyone who got that far in H/J world AND hung out a shingle demonstrate such poor horsemanship?
BTW, I have read the Complaint (which is publicly available info). I did not look at the pictures, but they have been described to me. The way the horse was tied was “beyond normal limits” snubbed up high.
Some of what I think got this owner riled up enough to file suit involved things done afterward to hide the cause of the horse’s death. This wasn’t just an angry owner, some obviously bad horse training and bad luck.
I have seen my share of “rough and ready,” and sometimes could understand why someone would introduce a horse to Jesus. But the part that rocks my world is snubbing a horse up like this and leaving him unsupervised. I mean, the intention was to put psychological pressure on him. That’s not a moment at which you just leave.
He was tied with his head very high and tied very short. This was not an example of tying a horse to keep him in one place while you do something else and forgetting about him.
I’m not going to keep repeating myself but we are primarily relying on a version of events from a person who wasn’t there and didn’t witness firsthand what happened.
And actually someone along the way posted a secondhand account from her farrier who made it sound somewhat different.
@mvp this post has a different account that makes it sound like the horse was not tied high as punishment but was tied so he couldn’t step on the lead. None of us were there (neither was the owner) and we don’t know what actually happened.
Yes, but you would have made that pro’s point about how English riders don’t create broke horses.
There are a couple of things to consider:
Waiting while tied is not a hard job for a horse, in the grand scheme of things. Of course, they don’t arrive knowing how to just chill when tied.
Most Western trainers will start horses very young with being tied, usually along with a whole bunch of other colts. So if you bring an older horse to him who has not had this background and is impatient or co-dependent while tied (or worse), that pro is going to have to go back in fill in the hole left in that horse’s education. That means the tying lesson will seem like a bigger deal than it would have otherwise.
Sooner or later, every horse is going to have to be tied somewhere that’s a tad unsafe and/or left alone with out a pair of eyes on it. This unfortunate fact is the reason that horses should be taught to tie. You may need their help some day.
The same goes for loading: Some day, a horse will be asked to get into a trailer that scares him. You need him to rise to the occasion and do it anyway. One thing that is weird about this case is that the horse was with the pro for 6 years, they were loading up to go to a horse show and he won’t load? I mean, really.won’t.load and for a professional who knows him?
This is why you don’t leave a big hole in a horse’s education.
The point is that no one was there and saw how the horse died. At least that’s how the Complaint makes it sound. So I don’t think there’s the possibility of waiting until the eye-witness to the horse killing himself testifies.
I didn’t see the pictures, but the person who did said the horse was snubbed tight and high… enough that the front feet looked like they were just lightly on the ground.
Now people who haven’t seen photos are commenting based on those photos. That kind of proves my point. We don’t know what happened and we weren’t there.
Cross apply the spur rub thread for evidence that 100 people can see the same photos and interpret then 3000 different ways.
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