New Article on Cesar Parra Controversy

Yeah - I’m going to say your vet doesn’t know much about cut tails either. There’s no point in cutting under the tail - there’s no ligament there.

There are two ligaments that run down either side of the tail - here https://www.thehorsehub.co.uk/the-horse-s-tail

Those ligaments are the ones that are cut. They are cut there because then the tail becomes very flexible.

It is very likely that your experience is with horses that have scarring from tailsets or from rubbing. STILL TERRIBLE. But not from cutting.

Horses can still swish their tails, even when cut, to remove flies.

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A few years back, someone I know observed a groom at an ASB show barn use his pocket knife to slit the underside of a horse’s tail and then apply Crystal hot sauce to the wound. The horse was already tacked up for a sales presentation and you better believe it made that horse carry its tail up. The person who told me said she expressed her outrage to the trainer and was told to mind her own business. She had her horse out of there the next day.

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YIKES! Now that I can believe would leave a scar but that’s definitely not a common practice.

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Which does not flip a horse. She clearly said FLIP, not set him on his ass. Flipping is not setting a horse on his ass, nor pulling really hard, nor using the wall to flip. It just can’t be that easily confused. She used a word. YOU choose to ignore the very clear meaning of that word. You choose to ignore that flipping is not setting it on its ass.

It can be very hard to hear someone we respect say something that we can’t believe they would say, but in the long run, spinning what we heard into something we can live with doesn’t help anyone. It’s only a bandaid on our trust of our own judgment of character or a whitewash to cover a crack in our hero’s facade.

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Westfalian Breeding Association said, they will discuss excluding Sandbrink and Klieber. Second BA taking action!

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Now you’re definitely putting words in my mouth. I have no particular affinity for KMP. She’s not a hero of mine. I’ve just trained with enough salty trainers of that era to understand what she meant.

We’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one. It’s ok, I’m not going to convince you any more than you’re going to convince me.

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I disagree with your last paragraph, to a certain extent. I think Ceaser Parra should be punished, regardless of what’s put front and center. I also think the “stretchies” are …hmmm, I’m trying to think of a better way to say f***!ng ridiculous, but I can’t think of a better way to get the point across than those two words.

First of all, every time I hear the name it just grates on my nerves. Disguising something like that with a “cute” name to make it sound less disturbing is distasteful, in my opinion.

Secondly, the fact that so many people are just brushing off strapping a horses front legs together as something that just happens somewhere sometimes…like, really? Is that where we’re at in this sport (and others)? Lets strap the horses front legs together for the sole purpose of creating exaggerated movement to get a freaking ribbon? Cool. And I am SURE there are people that want to come at me and say it’s for ‘X, Y and Z’ reason or “it’s not really abusive” or “i’ve seen it used with no injury”. Just save it. In no universe does it make sense to take away a horses ability to use its own legs independently just so their rider can get a better dressage score (edited to add this last part of the sentence)

And yes this may come off as rude and grumpy, but I’m at the point where frankly I don’t care how it comes off. This abuse for human pleasure and ego has got to stop. I can see how it absolutely IS a slippery slope - where do we draw the line at calling something abuse? If people start crying abuse everywhere then it’ll take away the “power” of the claim, I suppose. But at the same time, people have been saying this about this individual for YEARS and it took a decade for literally anything to be done about it. So it’s not like the word abuse has carried an impactful meaning up to this point. Just look at the comments on the initial CP thread from 10 years ago and people defended what was leaked at that time.

And @MsM I know I’ve replied to your comment, but I’m not reflecting any of this on you, specifically. I’m more so providing my opinion as to the “why” the stretchies ( :nauseated_face:) should be brought up (in addition to everything else).

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I put NO words in your mouth. That’s not the sort of thing I do.

Please expand on how flip means something other than flip. It does not. She clearly said she would flip the horse. Not that she would do anything else to it. Flip. It. Flip it. Flipping involves turning something over whether it’s a pancake or a horse. It’s really not an ambiguous term no matter how you try to rectify it in your own mind.

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If you take the comment at face value that’s absolutely what it means. But people use words all the time that they don’t mean. My best friend from high school used to greet me with “Hey a&&hole”. She definitely would not have been my best friend if she meant it.

Similarly “rip his teeth out”, “sit him on his a&&” and other choice statements are not typically meant literally.

Again - you choose to take it at face value, which is your right (and I’m certainly not going to be able to convince you otherwise) and I choose to interpret it through the lens that I know, which is that people say things they don’t actually mean all the time.

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Ahh, but welcome to the internet. Where a trainer can and in fact did say “I personally would be flipping him over backwards” and yet it is still defended.

This is exhausting.

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Who is defending anything?

I said “I don’t believe what she meant but she shouldn’t have said it”.

Good gravy, we have gone mad.

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How about maybe we continue this discussion on the thread about that trainer, and keep this focused on Parra?

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Maybe we should use the following definitions instead:

Abuse - the unintentional mistreatment caused by lack of knowledge, such as a beginner rider who hits the horse in the mouth

Cruelty - the intentional mistreatment by one who knows better but still causes harm to the animal

This (CP) is flat out cruelty.

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Because someone saying they want to flip a horse and you saying that’s not what they actually meant IS defending them. You’re trying to give her an out. She certainly sounded like she meant exactly what she said in the video clip I heard.

What’s “mad” is trying to make excuses for someone saying they’d flip a horse. I didn’t think I’d see the day where I’d have to say this, yet here we are.

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CP has deleted his Instagram and web site pages. There yesterday, gone today.

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Too late

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I am surprised he left those up for so long. Oh, also his Facebook page is gone or at least I can’t find it anymore.

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Oh no. He has nothing to hide. He is beyond a despicable individual and there is no punishment too severe for him. I don’t know how those that support him ever justify his abuse of these beautiful creatures.

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WHO THE F CARES HOW IT’S DONE??? The tail is broken over. It doesn’t function naturally.

I don’t need to know the technical ins and outs of Parra’s system to know that it was ABUSIVE.

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No surprise there. He probably did it on advisement of his attorney, as if they think that this hullabaloo will go away if he just “goes dark” for a while. :roll_eyes:

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