Why? GM wrote a book and in it he bragged about all the horrible things he did to teach horses and riders a lesson. As in punishment. So why wouldn’t I believe that someone who learned from him would do that very same thing?
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I agree with you on the whip comment.
I’m sure they would take offense to taking a horse’s back teeth out however it makes more sense in the context. And wouldn’t result in a horse and rider on the ground after the horse flipped.
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I wish we could somehow index the comments here by year of birth. My hunch is that a lot of the variance here is generational.
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I don’t know how I would even begin to intentionally flip a horse over. Is this something that is ever done on purpose, particularly with a rider aboard?
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Me either. I’ve never tried and my coach has never suggested it…
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Why would you? Shoot — you could break the rider, the horse…heck, the saddle!!
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Agree, I’m thinking I’m on the wrong side of things. With people taking the “I’d rather you flip him over than let him take the turn” as meaning LITERALLY to flip the horse over… I think I’m done in this thread.
God help our equine professionals.
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Because it is far too likely to end in severe injury to the rider, if nothing else.
Hell, I’ve been known to threaten a patient that I’ll rip off their leg and beat them to death with it if they don’t cooperate, and I’ve never done that.
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“Flip your horse” “give it a good lickin” “run it into the fence” are not code words for anything but abuse.
There is a dominance theory of horse training that needs to end. Right now. Neither horses nor people learn by abuse. The trainer has to knowledgeable enough as both a trainer and a teacher to break down an exercise that a horse or rider are struggling with and acknowledge when they are overfacing, rather than pushing, the student. This is BS. I had a trainer start my young horse who flipped it and I’m in the second year of rehabbing my horse from that disaster. The “trainer” broke her thigh in the incident. She took that stuff LITERALLY. The verbal bulleying broke Safe Sport rules. Don’t bully–that is way too easy–get off your duff and TEACH.
What bothers me the most is that USEF did not stop this clinic and that they initially posted it.
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I mean… you wouldn’t. Hence the obviousness that it was hyperbole. And yet… here we are.
I’m done here!
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Seen it done.
Not pretty.
Not safe, either.
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I had an instructor that wanted me to sit more/longer over fences, so eventually he ended up asking me to get left in order to get what he was asking for.
Students who are sitting like a HJ rider in a dressage saddle, told to lean back and they barely move… So you tell them lean WAY back …and they get a little better, so you tell them to lay all the way back as if they are tipping back… back.
Lift your hand/s, open your inside hand, put your leg on/take your leg off…
Lots of requests get what the rider thinks is the right answer, but falls short to everyone watching so you ask for an exaggeration to get closer to what you want…
That’s how I took the two comments, in part because I’ve never heard a whisper of KMP being abusive.
Maybe she is and I just never heard that.
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I have heard of it being done but have never seen it.
The context was always a horse that had a chronic rearing problem - especially one that had been reinforced by scared riders bailing from the horse.
If all else had failed, one could hire a “cowboy” to come out and ride the horse in a soft arena. When the horse went up, the cowboy would intentionally lean back and pull the horse over while jumping out of the way (obviously dangerous work). Supposedly doing this once to a recalcitrant horse would many times fix the issue.
This was only done as a last resort for a horse that otherwise had no future due to the rearing issue.
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Personally that’s what I would’ve liked to have happened in that situation. My old trainer has dismissed people from lessons for not listening. She produced top eq kids (Maclay finals, USET finals, Young Riders, etc).
I signed up for, and then was unable to attend, the Richard Spooner clinic held at Wild Turkey a few years ago. So, I watched the entire thing live online.
While I know I would’ve done just fine in the clinic, he was completely unable to help a poor person whose horse was stopping. He literally just gave up. It’s not that the rider wasn’t listening, he just was not able to offer any solutions. It was pretty wild to watch.
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Actually the top programs have the skill set to properly train horses to the highest of levels. I find the lower level programs doing more torturous things as they don’t have a system.
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Verbatim quotes from the clip not everyone has seen:
1- To the assembled group of riders after they had attempted the canter grid:
“Now, I have this thing with my stick and I call it smack and back, smack and back. When a horse does a disobedience, the reason we have the stick is to use it correctly and horses need it., they need it… all this animal rights activists who know nothing about training horses - they need a good licking sometimes.”
Then to a rider who kept circling rather than pulling up at a designated line:
“Come on, come on, I don’t go in for circling,. Don’t you dare turn that corner… you crash him into that fence [the arena perimeter fence] rather than let him turn. I personally would be flipping him over backwards - he wouldn’t dare go round that corner with me…you’re a little weak, a little weak here (indicating own head.) Go do it again, I want you to stop on the line, I don’t want you to canter the turn…”
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I took it in the context of knowing, back in the 80’s, that was a method some cowboy types etc did use on horses that rear. So her words stood out me knowing the method exists/existed.
There is nothing useful in “I personally would be flipping him over backwards.” Perhaps she was exaggerating to get her point across. She is being paid for her teaching and her words matter and that “approach” should not be verbalized/suggested/hinted at/given breath because it is WRONG and the way to get an unruly horse to stop can be taught in many ways. It comes from proper flat work and a good teacher would know that.
And I could say the same thing about running him into the fence. Maybe it would work that one time BUT it is a useless method. Again, there is a hole in the horse’s education and he needs good flat work which any jumper trainer worthy of teaching would know how to implement.
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I’ve heard of this sort of thing as well… involving a REALLY skilled cowboy who dealt with problem horses, and doing this in a round pen. But… they described it as “laying a horse down” and it involved going down sideways… not flipping over backwards. If that makes sense. Essentially, throwing the horse off balance when it went to rear, and making it go down sideways while the cowboy bailed out. And eventually, the horse decided not to rear.
I’m not advocating this… just saying that was my understanding of the whole idea.
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I was more asking in the terms of a horse unwilling to stop when asked. Rearing is a different problem than what was presented at the clinic - I have heard of flipping a rearer (WAY above my paygrade), but not a horse who is saying “yeah, no” to stopping.
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Yes and other questionable practices.
