Lots of great discussion here.
I was at the 2010 WEG when dressage rider Adelinde Cornelissen was disqualified about a minute into her lovely test because there was some blood in her horseās saliva. At the time, I felt that a DQ was overkill for a freak, minor incident, where a vet could have quickly and easily examined the horse and determined whether or not the horse was fit to continue. It seemed a shame to me that they couldnāt inspect the horse and let it continue if it was truly a minor thing. IIRC, Ms. Cornelissen handled the situation gracefully, and Iām not aware that she had any history of behavior or training methods that might have been foreseen to cause the injury (or any history of her horse having a bloody mouth prior to that instance).
Now, speaking from my own experience, in decades of riding and competing on a wide variety of horses in a wide variety of bits I have only ONCE had a horse with a bloody mouth, due to an obvious pinch from a loose ring bit. Plus minus one other time where a cribber got a small cut on the gums from trying to crib on something inappropriate while being tacked up. In decades of competing, the only instance I can recall of seeing blood in the mouth or it being an issue was Ms. Cornelissen. (Oh, and a Saddlebred show where I saw two bloody mouths that no one else seemed to pay attention to.) Probably there have been a few cases that Iāve missed, but even so, I feel strongly that a bloody mouth is not just something normal that can be expected to happen. I have previously considered it in the category of āfreak thingsā or due to the use of ridiculous bitting or abusive hands.
So now, I feel taken aback by a rider who has had multiple episodes of horses with bloody mouths. Iām not āin the knowā in the eventing world, so my first reaction was along the lines of wondering if her lovely horse has some kind of an oral habit that makes it prone to biting itself. But of course, in this scenario, the rider has had the same problem with multiple horses. The bits themselves do seem to be on the more severe side, especially for XC, where riders often use a lot of contact. But, I think that how a bit is used is often more important than what bit is used. Iāve seen severe bits used with tact with no ill effects, and plenty of cringe-worthy use of snaffles. The overly tight flash noseband could be playing a part here by pressing the cheeks of the horse against the teeth when the horse tries to open its mouth. Do we need rules about how tight a noseband can be? Not sure that would solve the problem.
Going back to Adelinde, I donāt think that we need to automatically DQ horses with minor cuts and scrapes, oral or otherwiseāat least I didnāt think we did. But Iām definitely not comfortable with what is happening here, in particular the repetitive nature of the issue. Aside from the obvious horse welfare concerns, how we as a sport horse community present ourselves to the public is incredibly important. I think that a one time incident CAN reasonably be discussed and explained as a freak incident that is not a welfare concern. But now weāve got a string of incidents and this is concerning. Also, the person in question is having a lot of successāhow can we make sure other riders do not emulate these methods?
