I don’t disagree with you.
That said, I’ve had to use strong language about whips, to stop people from nagging a horse into oblivion. I’ve had to use strong language to get my student to WHOA NOW, not in 15 steps.
I’m surprised that riders at this caliber (these are not short stirrup “kids” like some want to twist this into) need these types of talks. If my instructor says to whoa on the line, I’m going to do whatever it takes to get that done.
The way I’m reading things is that some people are saying it’s hyperbole so it’s not a big deal. I know others have agreed that it is problematic.
I brought my European lined Doberman in for schutzhund training. He was 6 months old and 75 pounds of muscle. While testing on the burlap, he refused to let it go. The trainer had to lift him off his feet by his collar, basically choking him, to get him to let it go. I wasn’t upset because that kind of behavior, not releasing on command, can be extremely dangerous in a hard dog like this. There’s no amount of “here’s a treat” that you want them responding to (this trainer also trained police dogs). And his iron jaws could not be pried open (giving him pills was not fun, I had to shove them through the gap in his teeth).
Would I advocate for that on your family cockapoo? No. But that’s a different dog for a different purpose. You can afford to be sloppy with a cockapoo. You can’t with a hard dog like a malinois or euro dobe (the American lines are squishmallows) which is why most people shouldn’t own them.
Similarly, it is no big deal if your 2’6” hunter doesn’t go forward to a fence. Sure it’s ugly. Sure it will get you out of the ribbons. But it’s rarely dangerous. But at 4+ feet? Or at large cross country fences? If the horse doesn’t have an instantaneous reaction to the stick a major fall is possible, the consequences of which could kill the horse and/or rider.
Different purposes.
I wish KMP had said the things differently. I really do, and maybe it’s my years of experience seeing the consequences of horses that have been allowed to run roughshod over their owners.
But there’s a reality here that working with these large creatures can be incredibly dangerous at times. You don’t want to be going around beating them - that will create a fearful horse and no one wants that - but, if you don’t know how to use adequate discipline when you need it, you could be dead.
100% agree. It was a bit odd.
I would have some words for a student blowing off my asks like the rider on the grey. Not what was said here necessarily but a whole lot of “are you lost? Where in God’s Great earth are you going? I said to whoa on the line!”
Maybe not the first go through but on subsequent ones I’d be wondering if we should cancel the lesson or what have you. Everyone has bad days, and if my riders can’t follow instructions, for whatever reason, it ain’t the day.
I think most people are agreeing that all of these things are true. It was hyperbole, it’s not a big deal (to knowledgable equestrians), but it IS problematic because of SLO and public perception.
You could be dead and the horse isn’t going to have a great future.
I’m worried that we may wind up painting ourselves into a corner, if it’s all weighted toward SLO awareness and there’s no proactive messaging or explanation of things that, taken in isolation, that aren’t going to pass the test. This is why I brought up the frame-by-frame thing.
When you talk about the difference between a working dog and the family cockapoo, or a 2’6" course and XC at a high level, someone at governing body level needs to talk about that, too.
I’ll try. I used to work as an Early Childhood Educator. I went to several workshops after I had obtained my diploma and was working in a preschool setting. My college professors had taught us age appropriate methods to guide young children’s behavior. They were positive and constructive.
If the presenter of the workshop had responded to my question about how to calm down a child who was throwing blocks at me (it happened!!) with “I personally would slap them upside the head” I would have left the conference and demanded my money back. The conference was supposed to provide sophisticated tools in addition to those already learned in early childhood education classes.
We’re doomed.
There’s no way we can pass the “Central Park” test. Because the public watches a young or green or frisky or rank horse grab the bit and go bucking/spinning/rearing across the arena and their first thought is to film it for submission to Fluffy’s Funniest Farm Animals, Edition 792, and we’re just gonna have to sit there in terror and pray we’re still in the saddle when it all ends.
You know what kind of horse passes the Central Park test? The robot horse. And the practices that lead to robot horses are far more in line with what I consider abuse.
As a whole, are our show horses horses dull-eyed? Fearful of people? Suspicious of quick movements? Lacking spark? Unwilling to work? Shut down?
No. They nicker when you walk in the barn. Nuzzle you for scritches. Cuddle in stalls. Perk up when you approach. Look to us for guidance. Follow us around the arena while we set the obstacles we’ll then ask them to jump. Saunter happily next to their buddies while we gab endlessly on their backs. Humor us when we put them in costumes. Make funny faces because they know it cracks us up.
Katie, the 70-year-old from another era who probably doesn’t even use the Internet and thinks viral is a term you learn in Med school, was wrong to say what she did (in regards to the horses). No ifs, ands or buts about it. USEF should be providing these clinicians, especially older ones, with some sort of guidance before letting them loose on a live-streamed international platform.
But to just throw up our hands, without any attempt to spread some education? Speaking of a much larger picture than just the KMP incident, and applying the Central Park theory to the whole of horse training… you just can’t, because the public has never sat on top of 1200lbs of muscle that has decided it’s in charge. They went on a trail ride once when they were 7 on a 30 y.o. draft cross that hasn’t trotted in 10 years. This will be the end of crops, spurs and bits, and probably pointing horses at sticks.
And then what? What do we do with all these horses? Where do they go & who foots the bill for them? Without jobs horses don’t exist. We welcome the better standards of care & more humane training practices. Add in a historical perspective, and horses are better off than they’ve ever, ever been since they were first saddled. And we did that. Us. The stewards of the horse. The ones who actually spoke to them while John Q Public just beat them all the way to the tavern.
And the current crop of non-perfect equines? The ones with holes? Dangerous tricks? Bad manners? Half the time because of wishy-washy training that never established proper boundaries? We either fix it so they can be safely handled by non-professionals or it’s off to the knackers. And sometimes fixing it is not pretty, because it’s a 1200lb herd animal with a flight trigger and a one-track mind. But “not pretty” (especially as viewed by the public) ≠ abuse.
Horses that do not have jobs are not safe. We need to lean into that while simultaneously pledging to be the world’s stewards to these magnificent creatures, preserving their history & vital importance to mankind’s own steady march towards progress, and promise that we will train them humanely & ethically.
And there was absolutely nothing inhumane in that clinic.
I wish I could like it again. Well said.
Well of course you would, that’s a human child. And if a horse turned and took a chunk out of your arm and your trainer said “pop it in the nose” (which would be terrible to do to a child)— are you going to storm out and demand your money back?
I have said this a thousand times in conversations about racing, public perception and SLO.
These aren’t cockapoos, house cats, or hamsters. They’re very large, very expensive creatures that require something entirely different in the way of care and handling.
There simply aren’t enough big backyards, and capable caretakers with big enough disposable incomes for them all.
I had a mentor who used to ask in an argument something to the effect of “say you get what you want. Take it to the end. What does that look like and what happened along the way to get there?”
@dags your post above should be the auto-reply to everything right now.
My point is the EXPECTATION at this level from an Olympic rider is to gain sophisticated tools-flatwork exercises that make the horses buttery soft and responsive before attempting a gymnastic so the horses willingly stop in a straight line because their rider has been guiding them through every exercise and they are listening.
“I personally would be flipping them” is NOT a tool and that rider needed a tool to go home with.
Did you miss this whole paragraph from Dags’ post?
“Katie, the 70-year-old from another era who probably doesn’t even use the Internet and thinks viral is a term you learn in Med school, was wrong to say what she did (in regards to the horses). No ifs, ands or buts about it. USEF should be providing these clinicians, especially older ones, with some sort of guidance before letting them loose on a live-streamed international platform.”
Albert Voorn is now responding to comments on the COTH article, if anyone wants to check that out 
.
I cannot believe we are still arguing about this. KMP wasn’t saying flip the horse. No one there, as a high level rider, would have thought she meant it. No one who is even a mildly-experienced rider is going to think: Wow, I need to flip my horse over if it won’t stop! This was a clinic that was available to be watched by lots of people, so YES! Should she have been more cognizant of that and moderated her words- yes, yes, yes, for sure. But if your takeaway from this is that people are now going to try to flip their horses (which is not easy), you are looking at your fellow riders through a very odd lens.
It’s unbelievable to me that THIS is the hill people are choosing to die on. It’s silly. My old trainer told me to give my horse “a tonsillectomy” once because he was blowing past my aids and I was being totally ineffective and just kind of putting up with it. I sat my horse down (in his very mild french link loose ring) and suddenly we had reestablished good communication. I did not think: Oh, boy, now I have to do dental surgery! Nor did I begin cruelly jabbing at his mouth. I am an advanced rider, and my trainer was telling me to stop pantsing around and get my horse back into a productive conversation before things got worse.
This is one of the dumbest debates I’ve witnessed in a while. KMP is old school, but the world isn’t, and if she is going to teach in a public forum she needs to understand this and be mindful of her words. KMP isn’t saying flip your horse over if it won’t stop. How is this even something people think is rational to believe? And, again, the context matters–if you watch the whole thing (which the vast majority of people have not) you will see a situation where nothing is changing until KMP puts it in stronger language. Context matters.
This is the part I think we’re not handling well. Though I understand very well the concepts of SLO, seeking the approval of the public, is, IMO, a no-win battle because the needle will keep moving.
The public is, on the whole, under-educated and enjoys waving pitchforks. I’ve dealt with a number of first time horse owners and the things they say about horses just boggle the mind. The non-horse owning public has an even worse case of black stallion syndrome.
It’s our responsibility to educate. But we can’t do that if a number of our very own are jumping on the same bandwagon.
I have the same sinking feeling.
Literally every time I have dealt with a ruined horse, it’s been ruined by wishy-washy permissive training. Or inconsistent abuse - e.g, the rider let it get away with something 1400 times, and time 1401 they decided to discipline the horse, making them very confused about what the rules really were.
And I’m guessing the Olympian had an expectation that riders that are currently showing 1.30m & Grand Prix would not be undone by a simple series of bounces. The entire session was called the “Gymnastics” session, not Remedial Flatwork.
And what of the others that handled the exercise fine? Do they just stand around while 1 or 2 students do 1001 transitions, circles, shoulder-ins & voltes? And what of the kid on the borrowed horse that is simply never going to flat “buttery soft”, but jumps every damn thing you point him at, occasionally with a bit more enthusiasm than necessary? Can you fix his flatwork? Possibly, but not in a 90-minute session. Which is why she specifically said (paraphrasing) “I think if you and I worked with this one for awhile we could make it better”
I agreed, in bold.
Agreed, 100%. And you can apply this quandary to basically any topic these days, controversial or not. As my husband and I like to say, we’ve been hacked as a people.
Perhaps more screening of riders is needed? I don’t know how they choose them.
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. You may also receive promotional emails from The Chronicle of the Horse. You can opt out at any time.
For Customers
Company
Terms of Use
