just saw on Facebook that a sponsor dropped her
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I was just looking at some of the Badminton stuff. What about this World Horse Welfare organization? Would they get involved in something like this?
http://www.worldhorsewelfare.org/Home
I think they are more a charity for disadvantaged horses rather than political against FEI.
Iâm not sure where you are or if itâs filtered over the pond yet but in the UK Pammy Hutton and Heather Moffett have started a campaign against the FEI. Initial focus is Rollkur, but they are starting on nosebands and Iâm sure there are plenty of others too. HM needs to take a bit of a check in what she posts at times, as it has been a bit of a witch hunt which damages their cause IMO but I do think the pressure being applied might get somewhere
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Links or it didnât happen.
[edit] To have such little care about a living being is disturbing, actually. Theyâre also incredibly lucky that horseâs are saints and donât kill them.
Iâll admit Iâve gotten frustrated with a horse before, and firmness is sometimes warranted, but so is fairness.
If you are intelligent and have any clue about how a horses mind operates, you donât have to use these BS âtacticsâ
This is just another example where greed and the need to win overrides horse welfare. Choose another sport that doesnât involve animals. Choose another sport and stop tainting ours.
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Kudos to Enviroequine and Pet for dropping Marilyn as a sponsored rider! https://www.enviroequine.com/
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For those not on Facebook
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Wow, I think Iâll place an order from Enviroequine and Pet. I donât know if I really need anything, but I might just do it anyway.
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Well done Enviroequine and Pet!
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I have posted this on Facebook and will post it here. The hate is terrible. Please no hate response here.
I know Marilyn Little very well. I have ridden her horses. She has ridden mine. I have kept horses of hers. She has kept horses of mine. We share a Dressage coach, Bo JenĂ„, and Marilyn and Kitty (Scandalous) often train with Bo at my farm. I have watched Marilyn develop Kitty from the mareâs first event in this country, through her Pan Am gold medals, to this weekendâs stellar performances, and I am appalled by the outpouring of vitriol against her, her ethics, or her horsemanship.
That Marilyn is a brilliant rider â one of the greatest of her generation â is an incontrovertible truth. She was raised with horses and did it all: falling off ponies, chasing horses in the paddock, agonizing over failures big and small, and experimenting as we all did to become truly competent, committed, and courageous. Marilyn finished college (a rigorous one) with honors, despite an ambitious show schedule on all kinds of horses, and she now applies her intelligence and critical thinking to her sport. How else could someone have taken the eventing world by storm in as short a time as she has?
Marilyn became the exemplary horseman we see today â an exemplary old school horseman â through insanely hard work, sacrifice, and heart breaking losses. She designs the program of each of her horses, whether eventer or show jumper, and knows every aspect of their soundness, every quirk of their personality. Her barn is meticulous. Detailed lists of care and feed and training are noted on the board. Marilyn is thoughtful, intelligent, deeply compassionate and unutterably connected to her animals. It is a stain on sportsmanship, and a profound misunderstanding of what it takes to be a competitive rider at this level, to subject Marilyn to this kind of public censure by those who cannot do what she does. I must add that Kitty is a complicated creature, not a machine and not an idealized illustration in some textbook. Her FEI record shows a horse unable to successfully complete cross country until Marilynâs brilliance brought out hers. And Any of us who have had nervy and ambitious horses know what it means to have a top horse with a busy mouth. Who in my sport hasnât had a horse bite a lip or a cheek in the midst of a flawless dressage test. It is agony. Any horseman knows that Marilynâs commentary as to what happened Saturday before her brilliant run at Rolex is the truth. Shame on those who refuse to understand the art, the skill, the life changing dedication, the magic and, unfortunately, the luck it takes to produce a horse like Scandalous competing and consistently winning at the very top of her sport. Bravo Marilyn â or as Patrick Le Rolland my coach of many many years would have said â chapeau!
chapeau! ? doesnât that mean hat?
You really canât be serious. How do you explain all the bloody mouths? [edit]
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@pieradill with all due respect this public scrutiny wouldnât happen if she routinely didnât have horses that bleed in the mouth. She is not the best of our generation. Not by a long shot.
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Worth the price of admission alone.
Do you mean bravo?! 
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I donât event. Iâm not envious. I might want to ride as well as any number of peopleâŠnone of whom are a woman who crashes horses into fences (Demeter) and routinely causes them to bleed (thereâs a list).
you just canât be serious, boo.
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The question that keeps being raised and never being answered is; why does this continue to happen?
One time, you go ok, second you say, odd but ok, it happens. Not 5 or 6 times. When there is a repeat, you begin to question the rider, the groom, the GJ. This is what we are doing. Questioning why. Yet we still receive no answers.
You get the group that loves her, you get the group that is in hate. I donât hate her, I donât like her, I donât like that she continues to have a bloody mouthed horse. I question our sport and the welfare of the horses.
Crap happens, but not this often with one rider consistently.
Itâs known she has horses that somehow bleed on cross country very often, so now we look for it. We make the comment, âoh I wonder if her horse will bleed this timeâ and yet we are never disappointed and she always comes through with blood. Not cool.
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I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating. Sophocles
Maybe cheating is not the right word, but for those thinking it is mere jealously causing the stir, most people celebrated MJâs win last year. Perhaps that is because there is not questionable practices swirling, care issues and seems to be above reproach.
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Just the photo (that US eventing had on their front page) tells the story. Where was the bit checker,you could not even check the bit with a noseband that tight. Then the blood incident,rather a lot on one of the pics I sawâŠ
As I said elsewhere, I am glad she is not coming to Badminton this year, I would be tearing round in my wheelchair making sure she did not get away with repeating such bad horsemanship.
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:eek:
I think I just vomited in my mouth a little. :disgust:
Mâkay, letâs all remember that a win at all costs is a hollow victory, particularly at the expense of an animal that has no choice in the matter. Or at least should be to sane people. Any rider who repeatedly straps their horsesâ mouths closed as obscenely as ML does; and overbits them in the hardware that ML does; then snatches on their faces to make them repeatedly bleed, as ML does; is not a brilliant rider; is not an exemplary horseman; is not an âold school horsemanâ in any positive connotation in the least. She is an embarassment to eventing. She needs to make some serious changes to her bitting and riding practices and stop abusing her horses in the name of competition.
There are so MANY other truly brilliant riders out there who donât have these sort of issues Iâd love to emulate but certainly not ML.
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