Thank you! It’s really disheartening when the safety of your children is concerned and people only want to call you out for calling someone else out.
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He was part of the Dallas Metroplex club scene in the late 90’s and early 2000’s and owned a small club, before he (bizarrely) jumped into oil/gas drilling, so he would have been around for the drug boom and he was attached to a criminal case in the early 2000’s that could have been tied to drug trafficking or other criminal activities. The referenced drug charge is not shown in the public records of the associated county, so it might have been removed in exchange for cooperation, but I can’t say anything more without seeing what the exact charge was and when it was made.
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Yes!!! I have searched high and wide to get ahold of official criminal records and they aren’t easy to come by. I will get ahold of them eventually though and absolutely will put it on blast when I do. This is what she brings around our children!
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In regards to his being “off”, he had an “incident” a few years ago, that required him to be put on life support for some time and it seems to have damaged his brain. Whether or not it was drug-induced/drug-related, I can’t say without further information.
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I so commiserate with this difficult spot you’re in. Sounds like you’re doing the best you can for your kids’ happiness while also keeping them safe. Nothing’s ever easy, but this is a particularly tough spot.
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As someone who was around when this thread began over seven years ago, I find it both sad and perplexing that Ellen Doughty Hume is still doing her thing and sucking in the unsuspecting. Given that there aren’t laws or governing bodies (she’s an ECP Level 3 Trainer ya know) that seem to be able to take her down, why in the world in this age of social media has she not been “cancelled”? I realize the horse community in any given area is small yada yada yada, but really?
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Endless cycle of newbies. That is how.
New to riding, or to the sport, or to the region. Not plugged in to the local network.
Her group is notably separate from the crowd at those horse trials and gatherings that I attend. Her group are their own universe. Most don’t meet and/or develop connections with other eventers, until maybe they are several years in, if they last in the sport that long.
That’s probably not so unusual in this day & age of not having evening meetings where people mingle. Year-end events don’t count because groups tend to sit with each other.
I can’t imagine why people are not doing some online homework before they join a program, looking to see what comments are out there. But maybe a lot of people aren’t good at that, maybe they don’t even think of it?
Although obviously some parents have found COTH, now … good luck to them, making their decisions.
Maybe some escapees from her program can speak up in this thread and explain why they think people apparently don’t know before they get involved.
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I’ve got a kid who rides, and if there is a challenging element at the barn, I can imagine that’s stressful.
Maybe start a separate thread asking for eventing coach recommendations in your area, and maybe see if one or two other families will jump ship with you?
This trainer’s record with horsemanship failures and some volatile personal stuff is not optimal. If she’s deficient in those areas… she’s not an optimal coach for teens interested in eventing either. A good eventing coach for a teenager needs good judgement about when to push them and build more confidence… and when to take some time, and emphasize patience, because it is a sport that has safety risks. I personally wouldn’t trust this trainer’s judgement when it comes to coaching young riders.
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Yes this. Parents of young people in the program, read through the thread (the informative parts at least), I think the questionable safety issues with training horses and with lessons are in the first 12 months or so, although I don’t remember exactly. Good judgment seems to be in short supply on those grounds, in every conceivable department.
There is a lot of eventing along that I-20 area between Louisiana and Dallas. Although it can be a bit spread out, hard to say how convenient alternatives are.
Check out the North Texas Eventing Association for contacts in the area.
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Because the horse world is terrible. Don’t get me wrong, we have some salt of the earth people in the horse industry. But it’s basically the unregulated wild west when it comes to conducting business. We have soooooo many “instructors” and “trainers” who are unqualified in every way that bad behavior is completely normalized. Plus you have the co-mingling of business, recreation, friendship, and personal life that further creates blurry boundaries.
Look at all the “legends” of the sport who committed egregious bad behavior, most of it in public, and people are still defending them, complaining they were unfairly targeted, or quietly supporting them.
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Sad but true.
I think this tends to be the case with many sports. Values tend to be centered around what we personally are getting out of it, rather than more general community standards.
If we are getting results that give us some satisfaction, we are ready to overlook a lot. Or just mind our own business.
There is also limited accountability when behavior is taking place in a private place of business. Everyone may know about it, but it’s still happening in a proprietary situation.
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Yup. “Well sure the coach is awful, but look at all the success we’ve had!”
Horse sports have the unique complication of caring for a second living being. For example, a coach might have demons in their personal life that don’t affect their ability to coach per se.
But if your horse is living on the same property where the coach resides, suddenly there is new opportunity to come in contact with those problematic aspects.
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There’s also a lot of everyone in the area who’s already in the sport knowing things but no one openly talking about it.
Everyone and their mother has opinions about my last trainer, my own mother included. I had a very dramatic falling out with her when I left that program, but I didn’t share the details with a lot of people, only ones that I absolutely trusted. It’s only in the last year or two that it’s become clear just how many of us had terrible experiences with her but never shared them because she has a flair for the dramatic and none of us wanted to be in her line of fire. Unsurprisingly, none of the non-horsey lesson parents who arrived after my departure had any idea about any of this.
EDH is obviously a bit of a different case since this thread exists, but I can understand how people who aren’t already in the sport would miss these things even if seemingly everyone already knows, especially when you throw in a fancy facility and a good external picture for those not already “in the know.”
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I think part of the problem is there is no accountability, no recourse, no way to handle bad behavior, not even any clear guidance on how to assess bad behavior.
For example, I had an absolutely terrible experience at one barn. So as soon as I could, I left. IMO the place gives the horse world a bad name and I would never suggest someone go there, yet they weren’t doing anything illegal or actionable. Poor quality horse care, poor quality instruction, rude/unprofessional conduct, etc. Apart from vocalizing my negative experience to others, there is nothing I can do about the situation. So they persist. And for every person like me who agrees the place is bad news, there is someone who will defend them and their “wonderful” experience. 
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I lessoned with EDH before this thread existed.
When searching for an instructor, I started with no personal connections to the eventing world in N TX, and I trusted that an organization like USEA would only certify reputable and qualified instructors. So, that’s where I started - USEA’s Directory of ECP Certified Eventing Instructors (https://useventing.com/safety-education/eventing-coaches-program/dev-directory-of-ecp-certified-eventing-instructors). I reached out to a couple of instructors that were a reasonable distance from where I lived/worked. Ellen was the only one that got back to me. Of course I did some googling, which didn’t come up with any red flags (again, this thread didn’t exist at that time).
My involvement at the barn was pretty minimal since I just lessoned once a week on school horses, and I only did so for a few months before needing to take a step back from horses due to a variety of unexpected “life” circumstances that popped up.
It does look like Ellen has been removed from the USEA ECP Certified Instructor list, which is a very good thing, considering everything in this thread.
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Same situation here, I left a bad trainer in another area and once I did everyone I met had thoughts, stories, and comments, it felt like everyone was in on the joke except me. While not even close to the level of EDH, these trainers are everywhere and have a revolving door of parents and kids who will buy them expensive horses and can be taken advantage of by bad trainers and sending them up the levels too quickly. When you’re in these programs too it feels very isolating and like there isn’t another option. I wish there was another way to talk about these concerns on a broader level.
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There was a thread on COTH just recently about a barn like this, posted by one of the riders in the barn who was not being treated fairly, at all. And was trying to understand ‘what is happening here?’.
As you say, it is everyone for themselves, as it were.
There are other sports, workplaces, organized groups, and so on with human behavior problems that don’t really have a solution. Other than leaving.
We are all always in the position of looking out for our own best interests. And taking action to take care of ourselves. But no doubt, some people are better equipped for this than others. And experience is everything – so unfortunately, before running headfirst into one’s first bad situation, one is less prepared for it.
Social media is now providing more of a platform for spreading the word and possibly accountability for a bad rep than ever before. But, SM is a highly-flawed system, and people know that. Sorting out contradictory information means just making some personal decisions about what one considers valid, and not valid. Sometimes without much context.
Newbies to a sport tend to put a high degree of trust in their teachers/trainers. With no real way of evaluating quality. And no accredited reference material to compare.
Yep. 
Plus, as could be seen in the first year or so of this thread, some bad actors are good at finding cheerleaders to take their side on SM.
And in fact, in this case, those cheerleaders became part of the red flags! Their own experiences were – alarming. But posted in all good faith that it was all proper horsemanship. The reader reaction was: No wonder all the problems! But why did the cheerleaders think that all this was correct? Because they had all been taught by the same person that it was correct. That teaching was their only background to evaluate their own experience.
Add to the red flag list (generally speaking) – Knowledgeable people leave the situation the quickest, and people coming in with no background/experience are the ones who stay.
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The reason why nobody is willing to say anything publicly is, EDH threatens lawsuits and has carried them out. Goes after ex students and tries to intimidate parents. There is an ongoing lawsuit to do with what an ex student said on this thread. If somebody asks a lot of us will private message. But you have to wonder why people don’t use google.
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Oh wow. That is scary and sad (that she sues people).
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Is she independently wealthy? Hiring lawyers to sue means paying them.
I didn’t get the impression she was from a well funded background.
