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 (
) should be brought up (in addition to everything else).