I hear you.
Personally, I don’t think it’s actually great to rip a horse’s face to make the horse halt on that line in that situation. Break the exercise down more… maybe go for a trot transition first, or take down part of the grid. Something. Break it down some, and then once there is some success, put the full exercise back together. 
Like my childhood trainer who threatened to cut our fingers off if we ever took scissors to a mane.
My current trainer, a millennial, has teasingly threatened to put a tack on my saddle to cure me of slamming down on to horse’s back. She’s not going to do this but she was making a point (no pun intended). Even the teens in the group got that. Have I known some truly literal-minded people? Sure. Do I think critical thinking skills are imperiled? Sure to that, too.
However, in the broadest sense, I would think people should be insulted to be considered so dim or lacking in reason as to be unable to parse language that isn’t micromanaged to ‘just so’ in the flow of an active lesson.
That’s not to say you can’t point out a better way to express a concept. But good lord, disingenuous or obtuse is a bad look, too.
Also, @Angela_Freda talks about the use of exaggeration to get a desired effect. I have heard trainers and instructors talk openly about that tactic for years. And I’ve absolutely been on the receiving end of it for years. It works!
I think some of the top riders have some very nefarious ways of getting the horses to do what they want…
What’s that saying… Never meet your heros…
cautiously stepping a toe in here…
I watched the Voorn posted video. Clearly some things on the video should never have been said. Flipping and giving a licking.
Having been given the info about some of the riders riding borrowed horses - I felt really bad for the rider on the gray. Just imagine - age 16-21, in front of big names, riding for an old school big name trainer. Your ?borrowed? horse is literally giving you the finger - for whatever reason - and giving you the “I will buck your ss off moves.” I would have been bird brained too - especially if the clinician was just berating you and not giving you the tools to de-escalate the issues w/ the horse but instead telling you to escalate the confrontation.
I don’t think the clinician was helpful - she should helped the rider defuse the nappiness of the horse - like go forward, get him moving off the leg, then transitions first somewhere else - rather than call her a birdbrain. How about tools to get the horse “unstuck” and listening?
And yes, I very well know “who” the clinician is. I am a child of the 80’s. I decided to ignore her - and certainly not treat her as “a god” after her ?2017? beratement of adult amateurs as talentless cowards destroying the sport (my synopsis). I don’t need that. We don’t need that, regardless of how well she used to ride a horse down to a fence.
This is all I need to know about Katie Prudent:
April 15, 2020
I’M WRITING this open letter because I want everyone to realize what a colossal loss it is for all of us to not have George Morris at the horse shows, to not have George Morris giving us his words of wisdom, and to not have George Morris teaching his clinics worldwide. It is so wrong for George’s name to be removed from arenas, events, and walls of fame. I want future generations to know who George is and what a giant he will always be in our sport. Still today every equitation student, through their trainer, is influenced by the George Morris system of riding.
What has happened in America over the last few years makes me very, very sad and also very angry. I want to ask some questions: First, what has SafeSport done to make our sport safer?
• Is our sport safer because Jimmy Williams’ name was taken off the Hall of Fame after he had been dead for more than 20 years?
• Is our sport safer because Rob Gage killed himself?
• Is our sport safer because George Morris is banned?
• Do his accusers feel better about themselves now?Next, I’d like to talk about George Morris’s two accusers. I was at Hunterdon, George’s barn in Pittstown, New Jersey, when they were there. I’ve known them both for more than 40 years. The first accuser was always strange. He even went by another name during the Hunterdon days. I remember very well seeing him out at night, especially at horse shows. He was very druggy. Years later, he was arrested for and convicted of having child pornography on his computer. He is now and forever a registered sex offender in the state of Florida.
This man was banned from our sport by SafeSport. But guess what? The day after he testified against George, SafeSport reinstated him. He is now allowed to teach children at horse shows and at private farms. Does that sound safe to you?
The second accuser was a tall, strong young man. I remember that during our Hunterdon days, he was very friendly with a couple of the other young men at the barn. This individual’s story was that during a clinic George was giving, he was a demonstrator. During the night, George allegedly came into his room, held him down, and raped him all night long. He said he cried out for help, but no one came to save him. Again, guess what? A good friend of mine was also a demonstrator at that clinic. He had breakfast every day with the accuser and never heard, saw, or sensed anything unusual.
In addition, if you’ve ever done a clinic with George, then you know that he doesn’t even like to have dinner with the organizer. He goes back to his room with his notes and his books in order to be able to give every day and every student 150% of his energy. Personally, I don’t believe George’s accusers.
My third question is this:
• Who is behind these accusers?
• Who pushed them to tell their tales?
• Is there a person, or a family, who blames George for their own failures in life? Thinking it was George’s fault that they didn’t become as great as they thought they should be?
• Is there a high-up authority somewhere who thought it would be good for our sport to take down a high-profile figure?In my opinion, Safe Sport has damaged our sport.
For me, George Morris is the greatest person any young rider could have grown up with. I think of the thousands of people George has helped over the years. So many of his students, including me, have gone on to become professionals with students of their own. It is fair to say that over the course of the last half century, George’s philosophy and teaching methods have been handed down through generations. Directly or indirectly, George has helped hundreds of thousands of riders around the world!
How can SafeSport be allowed to end the career of a great man whose life has been dedicated to helping people?
How can SafeSport be allowed to accept unproven accusations made by two men with questionable motives?
There is something VERY fishy and VERY dishonest in all of this. Who is behind it?
Furthermore, SafeSport acted illegally when they banned George Morris. In America, a person is innocent until PROVEN guilty. Not only was George Morris not proven guilty, his accusers are not even believable!George Morris should be un-banned and immediately reinstated.
KATIE MONAHAN, INC.
Plain Bay Farm
P.O. Box 1214
Middleburg, VA 20118
Letter to the Editor: From Katie Prudent (googleusercontent.com)
I’ve not heard of it used except on a confimed rearer.
(And no, I’m not advocating it in either circumstance.)
Respectfully, it’s entirely possible to be both critical of Katie Prudent’s defense of GM while recognizing Voorn’s video is a distortion of her performance during this particular clinic, which created its own set of problems.
I am inferring that, character-wise, her selection as a clinician for young riders is problematic for you for that reason. Fair point.
However it doesn’t justify ginning up a controversy with a questionably-sourced and creatively edited video. That’s not a precedent anyone wants set.
The big point is that its incredibly damaging to the whole of Equestrian sport to have top level trainers indulging in abusive hyperbole on an open platform.
Two reasons. One big one is the “license to operate thing.” We all need to be hyper aware of this.
The second one is that many people in the horse world actually do watch these things for instruction. Now they are out there thinking the hyperbole is gospel. That their “god” literally said to do this so it the right thing to do. And don’t tell me that people aren’t that stupid. Because yes, they demonstrably are.
I coincidentally just read a news article about how the corporate world is avoiding hiring Gen Z employees because instead of structuring their personal lives around their jobs and careers, they want to structure their jobs around their personal lives. IOW, according to the article, the younger generation resists a “9-5” job culture and places more value on personal freedom than on “traditional” values such as building a career, getting married, starting a family, and owning a home. This leads many of them to want to take only gig jobs or to stay in a position for only 2-3 years and then leave to pursue other interests. The employers feel it is hard to develop talent for promotion to higher positions because of the constant shuffling of employees in and out the door, and the pool of prospects for future leadership roles is becoming narrower and narrower.
I know this is tangential to the topic of this thread but I thought it was an interesting segue to the above comments.
Well I watched the video and I listened to the instructor. Coming from the dressage world I have my personal opinion about this……. ( and I do board my horse in a jumper barn so I see them practicing all the time).
My opinion and you are welcome to kill me for it…
I think there was nothing unreasonable about the trainer to ask from the rider and the horse. I mean a rider should be able to stop a horse during a jumping course. it shows that the horse is supple and listens to the rider. I have seen it personally during lessons in my barn.
In this video the problem was that the rider was not able to do it…. So what do you all expect the trainer to do. tell the kid to go home and work on the basics?? I bet that would have caused a good deal of criticism as well…. The trainer needed a solution which would work fast and reliable…. I don’t think she picked the right solution, but I don’t think this was an easy decision for her… she could only loose and mainly because the kid did not know the basics….
maybe she should have explained collection and half halts to the kids? maybe in the next clinic there should be a lesson for that before the clinic starts???
So for me all this critique from everyone is not really addressing the true problem……
I remember this. And when I saw that Prudent was a clinician at a USEF sponsored event I thought how odd, considering how recently she and USEF were openly in such disagreement.
Well riding shouldn’t be about top dollars but about knowing the basics…. I believe it’s very unpolite towards an accomplished clinician to show up at a clinic on this level without knowing the basics……
I am going to separate Katie as a person versus Katie as a trainer in this specific clinic. I think Voorn’s video is unfair as it only picks out the bad parts of the lesson. Additionally, there were countless trainers and spectators watching - I know they picked out Missy Clark a bunch of times. You would think (or hope) that if they saw anything horrific going down they would put a stop to it.
Admittedly, Katie’s day was my least favorite. I didn’t understand why she asked the riders to look at her when she was talking and not demonstrating anything as they were working. I felt that sometimes there was a lack of direction - this is why the second group looked better than the first. But you could see how riders grew throughout the clinic - I am thinking specifically of Emme on the big bay horse. I don’t think she could have jumped that horse around as successfully on Beezie’s day without training with Katie first.
I don’t know if this is just because of the time I learned to ride and who I trained with, but I did not hear anything egregious. It was embarrassing, for sure, to be called a “bird brain” or weak mentally in front of a live streamed clinic, and I thought she could have chosen her words better especially regarding her lesson with the stick, but that was far from the worst I have ever heard. I actually find that a lot of riders DON’T know how to use their stick when it would benefit them to get out of a sticky situation or a horse that is stopping. These riders need some of this knowledge in their back pockets. Would I have stuck it out for a whole lesson with her? Probably not. But then again, I don’t have aspirations of riding for my country.
I’m not sure I get your point. The rider did the exercise perfectly. What would you prefer her to say?
I have worked and led in the corporate world for over two decades now. For context, I’m a millennial and have worked with and led fantastic Boomers, Millenials and Gen Z’ers. The standards for leadership in corporate settings have changed dramatically - in some ways for the better, but the expectation of performance and commensurate rewards for that high performance has been substantially eroded. The quality of output has gone down considerably and this trend has been rapid - think 2018 forward with Covid accelerating the process. You don’t have to be in corporate America to see this, if you’ve purchased products or services in the last few years, you’ve likely experienced the degradation personally.
With that said, there are serious and persistent problems within corporate settings that cannot be blamed on workers and I think Gen Z’s focus on a more balanced and meaningful life in the context of that environment is admirable. Now, I recommend self-employment or multiple income streams for many of the talented and very ambitious young women I mentor instead of a corporate path. Corporate is too frustrating and no longer competitive in terms of upward mobility.
Yeah, but that has to work both ways–back in the early boomer era, you went to work for a company, and if you were a decent employee, you stayed there your whole career and got a gold watch and a pension when you retired.
Now you bust your ass for 5 years and get a pink slip because a venture capitalist bought out the company to strip it of its assets.
I’m not sure if my posts would indicate support for KMP. In fact, I don’t know her at all but I both took her language as hyperbole AND have been riding for decades without beating horses or flipping them over. Have also ridden with and seen upwards of thousands of professionals in multiple USET disciplines and I’ve never seen someone intentionally flip a horse. I’ve seen some practices that I thought were unfair and I have not engaged in those practices or supported those barns/trainers.
I have been on a bolting horse and big, strong young horses where I’ve used fences and walls to help me stop when I had no brakes and the one-rein stop wasn’t going to happen. Never had an injury. So no, don’t agree at all with beating or flipping a horse.
As to your second question - you’d have to ask the rider in question if the language was effective, or watch the video in its entirety to see if the rider and grey improved. I’ve heard similar language used before with timid riders and have never seen someone confuse it and say - right. I’m going to flip this horse right over when I can’t even manage a halt.
But again - if this is commonplace practice in h/j world (I’m a dressage rider) and KMP is known to routinely flip horses, then I guess its totally possible I’m wrong here. Seems far fetched to me. From a PR and organizational standpoint, I think the clinician should be held to the highest professional standards and her language likely did not always align with that.
Thank you. This is all very well said.
This person was clearly projecting based on their own lived experience and it’s sad that this is the experience they had and therefore felt the need to level unbased accusations at a stranger because of it.
A bit oversimplified Ghazzu - the pension glory days were the 20’s through the 40’s - roughly 60%+ of the working population had them, but these were ‘Great Generation’ folks, not Boomers. Only about 6% of late-wave Boomers have pensions and were subject to multiple financial crashes, inflationary periods, etc. Agree with your point though about the lack of true upward mobility in corporate.
Of course, I thought your response was really classy. Since buying my farm and working for myself, I don’t see people as routinely as I used to and I really miss thoughtful, respectful dialogue. This has me (regrettably) on social media more than I’d like to be, but when I am on, I try to encourage civility.
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