I don’t know anything about this rider except what’s publicly available. I worked for someone who exhibited similar traits right to the tight nosebands and bloody mouths (at home, but that’s what a knife edge bit will do).
For those asking how this could be done to the horses, look up personality disorders such as borderline and narcissistic. They don’t have empathy. Horsemanahip is only a concept understood by them in the context of the horses doing well enough to win or generate revenue.
Ok that video makes me want to cry. That horse is so unbelievably honest wah. She was tired before she even made it to the first half of the course. Shameful riding. 
A photo/video montage done by a person that is good at putting together that sort of thing would be a fine thing to send to sponsors, the USEF , the FEI ,and to any other PTB who have either not seen all of the riding and the and bloody mouths, or who may have forgotten about how many of them there really are.
Just the real thing, clips/photos put together. No music, no name calling and no drama. The public rides and bloody mouths speak for themselves. Perhaps then the fact that this has gone unchecked, and the outrage regarding the bloody mouths of the animals, will be understood and examined in a more objective light.
The 2014 ride showed a horse that was also tired. One would expect a more complete horse in 2016.
Guilty people usually do resort to that! What a disgrace to the sport!
As someone who lives in cowboy country I just want everyone to know, this controversy is spilling over there. We have new local clinics pop up using the headshot of the bloody doubletwisted wire setup as their opening salvo for how NOT to ride. A ride from eventing’s US national champion is being used as an example of the worst kind of horsemanship. This is the discussion they are having and this is the representation of not only Eventing specifically, but the entire English discipline as a whole.
ETA: I’m sharing this because I live in area IV, events are few and far between and we’ve lost some of our best in recent years. We are hurting more so than areas where Eventing and English riding in general have a strong historical base. Western barns, trainers and shows are readily available and affordable, we are fighting an uphill battle to compete for the human resources that are the future of this sport. When the ONLY exposure young riders might have to an entire discipline is something like this it is not a leap to guess they may be turned away from ever having any interest. That is how a sport dies, when the younger generations turn away.
Where is cowboy country?
Guessing out where there is little or no desire to ride the tiny saddle and dress funny…
In my case that would be the central Midwest, where English riders, events and barns are easily outnumbered 10 to 1 to Western riders and where working ranches still proliferate.
I don’t understand the cease and desist order(s). Why waste your time and money? Just stop being sketchy, making your horses bleed, and riding them to exhaustion. IF she turned her crazy train around and headed back to sanesville, she could potentially earn respect and there’d be less conflict. But that would mean she would have to play fair and treat the horses fairly and I don’t think she knows how to do that or what that even is from the sound of it.
OR ignore the “haters”
Cease and desist looks suspect at best. Spend the time and money on proper training.
I am jumping back in after lurking in this thread for a while. Someone upthread commented on ML’s personality/mental health. This is not meant to call out that person specifically, but to say as a general caution, while such conclusions are tempting, we should avoid them.
We’re not doctors, or at least not her treating physicians, we don’t know her except casually for a few people (including littlegrey’s daughter) and those are irresponsible accusations that lend weight to the “witch hunt” characterizations.
The hard evidence is multiple incidences of bleeding, two incidences of pushing an exhausted horse, all with lots and lots of video and photo documentation. We had some first person testimony about abusive practices before it was deleted. There’s also ML’s troubling response to all of the above.
Do we really need to make this personal? About character and personality?
With such a strong, credible horse welfare and clean sport argument, why go there?
I think contacting sponsors is absolutely fair game. I think sending any of the photo or video documentation to a sponsor and asking if this is the image with which they want to be associated is absolutely reasonable.
But let’s leave personalities and speculative diagnoses out of this, for the sake of our own credibility.
Maybe the WP folks should look in the mirror…
*Edited out a reference to earlier post because the meaning changed with the addition a highlight
And the cowboys would agree with you. There’s a pretty huge difference. Let’s not get distracted from the issue of bleeding horses in FEI sport.
On your personal compass of morality, perhaps, but legally it seems a much more complicated and muddy subject, IMO.
I am disappointed for alittlegrey that she and her daughter are being threatened with legal action, but not surprised. I don’t know what ML’s end game is here, but this seems like throwing gasoline on top of an already stoked fire, especially attempting to threaten suit against every single person that has contacted one of her sponsors (or is it just the COTH posters she’s after?).
Her facebook page is no longer public.
#RFCeaseandDesist
The cease and desist letter is toothless. It’s just an intimidation tactic.
If Bloody Marilyn wants to go to court on this, her horse training and care methods will become part of the court records. In turn, this means that she will possibly be on record for animal abuse.
That will open her up to further legal action, either by individuals who unknowingly placed horses in her care or bought horses from the RF sales business and also according to local animal welfare statutes.
(Bill Cosby was taken down this way. It took years, but the key was a mention in an earlier court action in which he said he gave Quaaludes to women. Once you’re on record, the denials get harder to force through.)
I don’t know or care if Bloody Marilyn is a nice person. She may very well be. I don’t know or care if she loves her horses. She says she does, so she very well might. What I do care about is that she doesn’t equip and ride her horses in such away that they repeatedly bleed from the mouth.
This reminded me of a ‘wonderful’ thread started by Deltawave in response to some remarks made by Mark Phillips. It may have been in response to LLRs being “smurfs” and that we should “suck it up, cupcake” (or something similar).
We are or have been intimidated by those who ride at levels above us and tend to kowtow. But that day, Deltawave came on this board to state that she was a surgeon (I believe) and, in fact, OUTRANKED ‘Captain’ Mark Phillips. In subsequent postings, people came on to say they, too, were doctors, scientists, published writers, lawyers, military and government workers, etc. These were people, who in “everyday life” had WAY MORE prestigious jobs and lives than someone who ‘rode horses and trained Olympic hopeful riders.’
As people have posted here, there are some here who have been in horses forever, as owners and/or competitors. They are not stupid nor ignorant, they love the sport of eventing, and want to see it continue, as do I. On Kentucky Derby Day, I am reminded of how much a racing horse’s death on the track can affect and influence how the public perceives horse racing.
If we do not protect our sport, by protecting the horses, we may lose it altogether. It can be in the form of sponsor-loss, lack of volunteers, and riding venues who just don’t want to deal with the ‘fallout’ of what could be perceived by the public as a ‘cruel and uncaring sport.’
Not a lawyer, and I don’t even play one on TV, but I believe the key criteria for slander or libel are 1.) malice 2.) known to be false and 3.) cause financial or reputational harm to the victim.
So if I write to ULR’s sponsors and say they’re funny looking and have bad hair, that meets 1.), but not 2.) because it’s highly subjective and not 3.) because it’s unlikely that would cause them to lose a sponsorship or backers.
If I make something up that I know to be false, like an ULR is a necrophiliac and a satanist, and email that to the sponsors, it meets 1.) and 2.) but the ULR would have to prove financial or reputational damages, that is, that they lost the sponsorship because the sponsor took those claims seriously.
But contacting an ULR’s sponsors with ONLY factual information, no armchair psychiatric diagnoses, and photo and video readily available in the public domain absolutely fails to meet 2.)
It doesn’t mean that doing so is wise or may not make you a target of a cease and desist letter, but reporting the truth, without opinion or unsupported conclusions, is a pretty good way of protecting yourself. As is being credible in maintaining that it isn’t a personal vendetta, but about horse welfare and clean sport.
Just MHO, worth exactly what you paid for it, and not to be confused with actual legal advice.
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