Live Stream of Wellington Young Rider Clinic January 4-7

[Sarah616]

You know what’s great about horse trainers? There’s one million and one of them. Don’t like the style of the trainer you’re with? Find a different one. This isn’t like grade school where you’re assigned a teacher for the year and if you don’t like that teacher’s style of teaching, tough luck. Want a tough trainer? Find one. Want a cheerleader? Plenty of those too.

If the riders in the clinic took nothing else away from this clinic (which I highly doubt) they can make their own decisions about whether they liked the teaching style or method. And if they thought it was productive, great! They can ride with Katie some more or with another trainer like her. If they thought it just stressed them out, that’s fine too. Now they know that Katie isn’t one they’ll ask for help in the future.

I wish everyone would stop the ABUSE storyline here. There was nothing abusive, physically/emotionally/mentally about this clinic. And even those cherry picked quotes… If you listen to the whole thing, Katie often elaborated and DID give an exercise or a method to fix it. I just feel like most people who are still stuck on the horrors they felt they saw in the 2.5 minute clip aren’t ever going to bother to watch in context.

[dags]

@OntheFnce

Wow. And so that makes it ok for this type of misconduct to continue? To go ahead and excuse her method of instruction?

These kids are being used — by adults — to perpetuate a viewpoint that we don’t even know they agree with. How is that even remotely ok?

[endlessclimb]

Agreed. “The rest doesn’t matter” is just doubling down on their stupid. CONTEXT MATTERS.

[OntheFnce]

@Inimitable

@OntheFnce

Wow. And so that makes it ok for this type of misconduct to continue? To go ahead and excuse her method of instruction?

Yes? Because it wasn’t misconduct? And some people find this ‘firm, but fair’ style of instruction helpful?

Maybe review Safe Sport training. There are 6 types of misconduct. Bullying, harassment, and emotional are 3 that fall under misconduct.
And while some may not consider name calling to be bullying. Name calling on a national level while be live streamed and in front of spectators including Robert Ridland and other notables can be argued as bullying. And as mentioned before, these athletes don’t want to jeopardize their chances to be selected for teams by speaking out.

[Inimitable]

@OntheFnce

Maybe review Safe Sport training. There are 6 types of misconduct. Bullying, harassment, and emotional are 3 that fall under misconduct.
And while some may not consider name calling to be bullying. Name calling on a national level while be live streamed and in front of spectators including Robert Ridland and other notables can be argued as bullying. And as mentioned before, these athletes don’t want to jeopardize their chances to be selected for teams by speaking out.

I’m up-to-date on SafeSport training, thanks. “Can be argued as bullying” - cool, so you’re admitting there’s an argument that can me made against it is as bullying? “And as mentioned, these athletes don’t want to jeopardize their chances to be selected for teams by speaking out.” How do you know this? Have they personally said this to you? And, as mentioned, if this is in fact the case, there’s a mechanism for them to discreetly speak out about it. Ironically, it’s called SafeSport.

[dags]

@OntheFnce

Maybe review Safe Sport training. There are 6 types of misconduct. Bullying, harassment, and emotional are 3 that fall under misconduct.
And while some may not consider name calling to be bullying. Name calling on a national level while be live streamed and in front of spectators including Robert Ridland and other notables can be argued as bullying. And as mentioned before, these athletes don’t want to jeopardize their chances to be selected for teams by speaking out.

Selected for the teams? They struggled to halt straight after a line of bounces. I’m guessing that’s going to do far more to jeopardize their chances.

SafeSport already has so many people working against it, why you would give them any more ammunition by perpetuating witch hunts over perceived slights is beyond me. They have actual abuse cases from every sport all over the country to deal with & very limited funding. I simply cannot imagine going in front of a congressionally sponsored body and pointing to “birdbrained” as actionable abuse with any sort of straight face.

It is okay if these kids were not offended. They are not required to respond exactly as you would respond. They are allowed to let this roll off their back like water on a duck and take or leave whatever they want from Katie’s clinic. It is not yours, mine, or the internet’s place to tell them how to feel.

[Inimitable]

@HipNo34

There was a Tamarack Hill FB post that touched on this.

So, story time. Upthread I mentioned that I’ve ridden in clinics with a couple of BNTs (“Gods of the sport”) in the past few years, who happen to be men and who happen to call people out for being “dumb” on the regular. One of them was Denny. I was in the first session of the day, on my brand new OTTB who had never been off-property before. It was pouring rain, we were in a new, spooky indoor, and it was my first time riding in a ‘real’ clinic in decades. Denny is an excellent clinician, so he likes to include theory in his clinics, not just exercises and instruction. He asked us, as a group, about the dressage training scale. Now, I know this stuff, but I don’t know it cold - my discipline of choice is H/J. I was also on a fresh, reactive OTTB, so I decided to pick my battle and focus on her instead of offering an answer to his question. Unfortunately, everyone else made the same decision and stayed quiet. lol. HE REAMED US OUT. I don’t remember his exact words, but the implication was that we were all dumb and wasting his time. I mean, he wasn’t wrong in the moment? It kind of woke everyone up and we all went on to have an excellent session. You know what I took away from that clinic? It wasn’t that Denny got frustrated and called us his version of “bird brains.” My biggest take away was that he really liked my mare, gave me some excellent suggestions for getting her going in her new career, and complimented me as a “lovely, tactful rider.”

Now, I’m not going to make the mistake of presuming or guessing what some of these young riders took away from the KP clinic. But I would hope that Carlee, for example, isn’t dwelling on the fact that Katie told her to “look at me when I’m talking to you” but instead is remembering that Katie told her she “has a beautiful feel.”

[MHM]

@HipNo34

Literally just turned on CMH in time to miss Amira Kettenah and Nashville Hero in the FEI BrainJuice U25 Grand Prix at WEF – didn’t someone say that was her mount during this clinic.

Yes, someone did say that upthread. I think I had her mixed up with one of the other kids when I watched the video clip from the clinic.

From the live scoring, it looks like she just had one time fault in the first round today. And that was a lot of course out there on that grass field, too.

[HipNo34]

@Inimitable

But I would hope that Carlee, for example, isn’t dwelling on the fact that Katie told her to “look at me when I’m talking to you” but instead is remembering that Katie told her she “has a beautiful feel.”

Not speaking for Carlee when I say, I know a compliment like this would’ve flushed everything else straight out my head. To the point I would’ve needed the video-on-demand for review later. But that is just me, like the other ammys up thread who get distracted by things going right (my trainer is learning to be careful about deploying the word “good” )

[Inimitable]

Oh, you better believe I isolated the clip of Denny calling me a “lovely, tactful rider” and have been known to bust it out on particularly tough days.

[TwiSedai]

I flipped through all the posts, there are a lot so I’m sorry if I missed one that says the same thing. But I watched the clips early on, and a bit of the rest of the clinic.

My impressions weren’t so much JUST the belittling comments towards riders, or even the comments about flipping. I ride with a trainer that can be pretty critical once he knows you well enough.

What really gets to me is a combination of that, along with the horses themselves. As people have discovered more and more about how horses learn, how they see the world and process things, training techniques have adapted to incorporate that knowledge. Obviously a high adrenaline sport like jumping is going to have some tension just due to its nature. But some of the horses I saw, the ones she was wanting harsh treatment of to get obedience, were pretty clearly frantic and confused. Not a great state to learn or listen in. The thing that bothered me the most is that instead of teaching the riders how to take a step back and help make things clear to help the horse, she used the dominance-based training. Sure, it might get the horse through that one exercise, but the horse learns nothing and the rider just learns to beat a horse into listening. This is not good training.

That’s where my judgement comes from. She clearly has good knowledge of a lot of things that should be passed down. But I don’t like her training style. And it has nothing to do with being soft or weak or anything. The trainer I ride with has called me out plenty, one time he told me I was being so ineffective on my horse that day I might as well have been an abcess on her back. I just laughed and said, okay, got it, how do I do better? And he broke everything down, for myself and my horse, helped us tune a few aids up, and we went on to make great progress that day. The key being, he helped me help my horse. He didn’t just yell at me to listen, tell me to keep doing the same thing over and over and to get harsh if my horse didn’t do it right.

I’m sure those kids learned a ton. I think they could have potentially learned a lot more about good horsemanship and training, though, especially those on less than compliant horses. Dominating, punishment based training needs to go.

[dags]

@TwiSedai, that is a completely fair, logical and measured assessment. I only wish the rest of the internet had responded in the same practical & productive way.

[Knights_Mom]

@dags

@TwiSedai, that is a completely fair, logical and measured assessment. I only wish the rest of the internet had responded in the same practical & productive way.

I said this in one of my posts. Explained about the lack of settling the issue by working exercises and seeing the problem as opposed to taking it out in the horse.

[Inimitable]

@TwiSedai

The key being, he helped me help my horse. He didn’t just yell at me to listen, tell me to keep doing the same thing over and over and to get harsh if my horse didn’t do it right.

I can get on board with this reasonable take. The only thing I’ll push back on is if you watched more than ‘a bit’ of the rest of the clinic you’d see that Katie DID modify the exercises to try and help the horses out. She lowered jumps, used placing poles to slow them down and back them off, and used human ‘wings’ to guide one horse over the plank, among other techniques. At least once she told a rider she was being too rough with her hands. So it wasn’t all ‘beat ‘em over and sit ‘em down.’ Not even close.

Look, no one is arguing that Katie isn’t old school and could stand to evolve in her training and teaching styles. And if there’s a unity horse in this thread, it’s that she was a bird brain for using the ‘flipping and licking’ language. But to jump to outright abuse of horse and rider like so many are doing is willful ignorance, plain and simple.

[MHM]

@MHM

The person who is showing the horses for Plain Bay now and winning all over the place went to work for them as a groom in early 2019. Within two years, she was starting to win Grand Prix classes by 2021. And last year she won almost half a million Euros in FEI ranked classes and ended up around the top 50 on the list of winning riders for 2023.

Replying to myself to say that Cathleen Driscoll, the rider in question, just went clear in the first round of the $140,000 3* Grand Prix today in Wellington on the big grass derby field. The horse looked a little impressed with the surroundings, but his rider helped him out and got it done.

[dags]

None of your responses have been measured, your repetitive one-liners are unreasonable & mocking, and you haven’t even allowed for a breath of alternative viewpoints. It’s like arguing with a 4th grader and a waste of time. Why you think that’s an effective approach when trying to sway opinions is beyond me.

[Knights_Mom]

@dags

None of your responses have been measured, your repetitive one-liners are unreasonable & mocking, and you haven’t even allowed for a breath of alternative viewpoints. It’s like arguing with a 4th grader and a waste of time. Why you think that’s an effective approach when trying to sway opinions is beyond me.

People have different ways of handling situations. Different ways of saying things. I’ve stood my ground. I did not belittle anyone or insult them. I simply did not agree.

Now my style of disagreeing is disagreeable. OK then.

[Inimitable]

Do you really not see the irony here? You’ve effectively been doing what so many, yourself included, have accused Katie of doing, which is doubling down and not modifying your language and communication style to help the rest of us understand your point of view.

[Alterrain]

@HipNo34

Literally just turned on CMH in time to miss Amira Kettenah and Nashville Hero in the FEI BrainJuice U25 Grand Prix at WEF – didn’t someone say that was her mount during this clinic.

Yes- and she was brilliant! Just a time fault. Mia also jumped her horse from the clinic in the U25 welcome yesterday (I just learned he is 19!) Today she switched to her horse from the 3* last Saturday night.

[MHM]

@MHM

Replying to myself to say that Cathleen Driscoll, the rider in question, just went clear in the first round of the $140,000 3* Grand Prix today in Wellington on the big grass derby field. The horse looked a little impressed with the surroundings, but his rider helped him out and got it done.

Replying to myself again to say that she was clear in the jump off and finished third in the class, which was great.

That was a very competitive class with nine in the jump off. Good for her.