As I understand the FEI position, they are deeply concerned about doing things that might affect the human athlete prior to competition. Intrusive things like, say bit or noseband checks, are done after the athlete and horse have completed their test for that reason. It seems counterproductive if prevention of horse abuse is the goal of the checks, but that’s how the FEI explained it to me.
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Too bad. We often do boot checks before and after. If it is universal it impacts everyone equally. You can do it when people come into the paddock. If you leave and come back you get checked again. There are usually several stewards in the paddock so not hard to see if someone is switching a bit or similar in the warmup.
eta it is also very common for riders to get off during warm up to adjust tack, to add or remove boots or additional equipment. therefore any argument that stewards checking additional tack beforehand would be onerous to the riders is really just something they’re telling to people they hope are unfamiliar with what goes on prior to a rider being in the ring or on course ie bollocks.
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Oh yes, it must be the lower levels’ problem. It always is. Just like rotational falls.
The problem is that when 4* riders get slaphappy with the whip or equip and ride their horse in such a way to make the mouth bleed, the existing rules for horse abuse aren’t applied. Excuses are made, toothless ‘warnings’ are given. Repeatedly.
Eric Winter, don’t put this on the LLs and don’t put this on the fence judges. Don’t divert attention away from exactly who is at fault here: (1) entitled, abusive riders like ML and OT and (2) spineless FEI officials.
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What?? How would someone even do that? How would you bridle/unbridled?
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I had no idea that was even a “thing” :eek:
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Me, neither. The tails I knew about from QHs and WP lore.
Don’t know for sure, heard it third hand, but one method was to drill holes in the teeth and use piano wire or something similar. Ghastly and unspeakably cruel, but the horse can’t open its mouth.
Second article down on the page they talk about wiring mouths shut and even using wire to make the ears stay forward http://www.reiningtrainers.com/tag/horse-abuse/ WTF. Then again I remember years back that a big saddlebred barn did surgery in the barn to make a horse keep his ears forward as he wouldn’t “wear his ears well” and that horse was never right after. They had to put him down as he would thrash in his stall smh
There’s a reason why aqha is not under the USEF umbrella…one thing I would like to say…rules are for the horse who has NO choice in his riders’ decisions. Zero tolerance for blood at any level speaks for him whether he bit his tongue or not. Wherever equipment is on his body no blood ever. No matter WHO you are. Without him there is no sport, no competition. Don’t we owe him the best of everything?
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Yes, we do owe them everything. The horse’s welfare and well being should come FIRST. Sadly not everyone feels that way apparently…
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That trainer was discussing things he did to horses in the 70s and 80s and is suspended by AQHA and NRHA. Wiring horses’ mouths shut is not something that is done now.
This man was the worst of the worse when it comes to abuse. Do not paint the entire sport of reining because of his actions 30-40 years ago.
Furthermore - AQHA, NRHA, and USEF have reciprocity. If a trainer is suspended with one organization, the others can do that same.
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sounds like nonsense to me. And I’ve spent a lot of time with reiners and cutters, including a year and a half or so dating one of the idiot bb gun guy’s assistant trainers. Wiring the mouth shut seems self evidently ridiculous because as mentioned above, how would you get the bit/bridle on?
you know what else I never saw ever from working cow horse people?
bloody mouths.
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It’s so crazy how difficult it is to effect positive change because everyone is seemingly so much more interested in pointing out their neighbor’s flaws while adamantly refusing to address their own. It’s mind boggling really.
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I always heard it was floss they used to tie the ears forward. You take it off at shows.
i knew someone who numbed the tail but it actually paralyzed the rectum. The horse died. It is a well known side effect.
tying the mouth shut isn’t so much a thing because the pressure is intermittent. Most are more of a jerk and release instead of constant contact so gaping is less effective. What the often use is very stiff Bosals and bumper-type bits. (That is a curb of stiff wire.) bosals are anything but kind…I have never had a former WP horse without white on the bridge of its nose from bosal overuse.
watch a working cowhorse or Reiner bolt backwards like they do now and tell
me that comes kindly…
there is a lot wrong with eventing which is why I am not interested in upper levels. Same with SJ…see the pinch boot horse at the WC. I have seen lots of horse abuse across all sports. Maybe more at the beginner levels than anywhere but it isn’t exactly a competition.
i don’t think the last bit lip is worse than the pinch boots myself. And like you pointed out, everyone uses those. At least the bit lip was an accident. The pinch boots are expected to pinch!
Wasn’t trying to just point out other’s flaws. Someone posted about wiring mouths shut and so I found the link. Honestly as a lifelong eventer and show jumper I find so many things in the eventing, hj, and dressage world to be so wrong I don’t even know where I stand some days.
precisely, you didn’t bring up your third hand account of those other “baddies”, which has happened at least three times on this thread, as if someone else doing something sheisty makes your own sheisty behaviour ie beating a young horse around a cross country course or chronically ending up with a bloody mouthed horse a-ok. no. Those deflections super don’t help horses or horse sport.
Under current FEI rules, eventing has its own unique set of abuses that must be specifically addressed.
Just FYI…with a Western horse where there’s no noseband. you run something from the corner of the mouthpiece up under the upper lip to the other side of the mouthpiece like a lip chain, snip off any loose ends, it’s done after the horse is bridled. If it’s string, they won’t bleed, if it’s thin wire or fishing line, they might. IME Working Horse folks don’t do it. It’s the mistake and out style classes that fall into it. Dropping bridles is a deterrent and you see them checked more in the working classes, it’s done at the out gate immediately following the run before anyone else takes the horse.
English disciplines have a noseband and all sorts of sins can occur underneath it. Tacks, chains, thin wire, soring the nose.
MOST DO NOT DO THESE THINGS. But it’s naive not to be aware of what can go on and assume anything. It’s why I’d like to see more bridles dropped in the English disciplines. All of them in a class to avoid random selections by those afraid to pick the wrong horse and lose future employment opportunities.
These things really aren’t that hard to initiate and take a minute or less. I don’t get why the aversion to simply checking. Just running a finger inside the sidepieces or rings at the mouthpiece , under the noseband, the crownpiece, sidepieces and any curb chains, straps or gimmicks under the chin would suffice if dropping the bridle is deemed simply too difficult for Event horses and riders.
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He drills the holes in the molars, not the front teeth. 
Who? Maybe a) start a new thread b) report to “his” organization.
we are to my mind discussing necessary rule changes to FEI eventing in this thread.
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Have I missed anything as far as a rule or public statement from the PTB about a blood rule? I do fear that the next thing we hear at all will be the announcement that the rider with all the infractions has been selected to represent this country at WEG.
Again, not picking on anyone, but this is looking at ridiculous in the rear view mirror. We are a month on after the latest infraction and nothing, essentially has been done to address this issued nor this ONE individual with repeated offenses of having horses bleeding from the damn mouth when she competes?
Sorry to shout, just frustrated, and getting the feeling that the PTB are still hoping this all “blows over”. All it does is tick me off even more.
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