The llama drama runs deep with this one
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I read somewhere it’s a therapy dog to deal with her PTSD from the attack.
The attack articles are odd. There is a lot of alleged and scare quotes, as if the story was her YouTube video rather than the attack which the police could not link to the men in question.
There is also a rant about some other telemarketing gig she was apparently running from a disgruntled ex employee, on a complaints site.
Every. Single. Thing. Is odd.
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I read somewhere it’s a therapy dog to deal with her PTSD from the attack.
The attack articles are odd. There is a lot of alleged and scare quotes, as if the story was her YouTube video rather than the attack which the police could not link to the men in question.
There is also a rant about some other telemarketing gig she was apparently running from a disgruntled ex employee, on a complaints site.
Every. Single. Thing. Is odd.
The attack happened during a targeted home invasion of a house of a young man where she was staying, two men barged in looking for drugs and guns which apparently didn’t exist.
Also wierd. She has this other vlog FB stream going as Live Awesomeness which is all about her amazing social media skills she will share with you. No horse contact. Upscale and fake aspirational. No content really. Highlight was apparently her video about being home invaded. Mixed in with travel and party crap. There must be family money here as none of this is remotely monetizable. Also presumably being home invaded is aspirational because well, gangsta and \or Kim Kardashian. All very odd.
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Sigh. I’ve watched the drama and craziness unfold with her for a long time.
Things I do know, she is very creative with her editing on Dressage Hub, and don’t be mistaken, DH isn’t a group of people running a page, it’s solely her. Her editing is so creative she’s managed to delete, erase and obliterate anyone from that page who even hints at questioning what is being claimed, suggested or eluded to. This in turn has created a culture of sheeple who believe everything that’s posted there because the angle there is so obviously one sided. I have had my posts removed and have been blocked from posting because I dared question the validity of some of her claims.
I also know that with a ‘following’ of 33,000 that seldom does any one post receive more than 40-50 likes and/or comments. Some posts receive maybe 10 likes and that’s it - people are following but not engaging? I wonder why?
Of course we mustn’t forget that controversial posts making unfounded claims to stir the pot get quite the audience. Drama works for this llama.
I do know she has targeted someone (other than SJ) deliberately just out of spite.
I do know she has been banned from a show grounds in Florida because of her behavior.
This person, with her videoing of warm up pens and classes and editing these videos to show just the difficult parts has caused quite a bit of stress and difficulty for many riders, and let’s not forget the taking of sales videos (which apparently was taken in the show grounds she was banned from - hence why she didn’t get a video of her own lol!) and using them to continue in with her vendetta.
This individual has proven to be quite dangerous to the careers and reputations of many riders in her area - but don’t mistake that for her actually exposing real abuse and cruelty, heaven forbid she actually gets some real footage of REAL abuse and does something positive with it.
She is NOT a judge, steward, high level competitor, equine veterinarian, coach or even a poop scooper - shes an individual on a mission to slam upper level Dressage riders who has attained a ‘press’ card and believes she’s entitled to report FAKE NEWS without consequence.
I’m glad this has come to the forefront and people are taking notice. I’d be interested to know if she really did relabel FEI footage as her own.
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Lol, turns out that actually happens sometimes on COTH. Found that out the hard way! (eyeroll)
[edit]
Glad people are calling it out though instead of buying it.
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You’re right, your riding ability doesn’t mean anything I agree. But I do wonder how educated her eye is, how much does she truly know. Right now, her eye looks more like she’s just vindictive. You can’t post a video in slo mo and judge it. You need to see it in regular time frames. Anyone can look awful in slow motion, anyone!
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There’s a youtube channel called “ankywanab” that shows someone riding a horse that was at one time owned by SW.
Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuyRuxn0mkFl53M6WvGC8Xw
Proof of sale of Welmingh to SW: http://www.majesticgaits.com/welmingh.htm
SW shows the video’s under her screen name in BarnMice site: http://www.barnmice.com/video/video/listForContributor?screenName=0cniu77v8scd5
But whether it is SW riding or not, I have no idea. Could be anyone.
Video’s are old (2012).
If they are her’s, then you better quick go look or they’ll all be set to private in 2.7 seconds. haha
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmbwhc5Z1jM
This video has an ad on the front of it for me, which means monetized. If you don’t monetize your videos no ads will appear, so she can make money off of this video. Then she puts her intro on it before going into the footage. Note the bottom right corner of the video where there is mostly cropped off the current/leader scoreboard. This is just zoomed in and slowed down.
Original video from FEI here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X4aCmiZ35Q
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It matters in her case, because she announced her initial move to Florida from Canada, to train there, with a lot of flair.
She shared all the praise and encouragement she was getting in Cananda for the quality of her horse and her riding and training. She shared that she was told by BNTs she needed to be in Wellington for these reasons. Her horse was too good not to be there and her potential was too great to waste away elsewhere. Basically. I’m paraphrasing but that’s the gist of it. (Southern California was also under consideration, and she started numerous threads about the logistics of moving to either). So she went to Wellington to establish herself as a talent on the rise.
Then, pretty much as soon as she got there, she began to pursue this video channel self marketing sort of “career” instead. And also with a lot of online input and query (What would you pay for this type of online visual information? How often would you use a free service like this, if ads paid for it to be on youtube? What riders would you like to see? What situations ridden? Clinics? Show tests? Warmups?) Many online threads about this. All of the discussions merely thinly veiled attempts at marketing, because really, the answer is “just do it, and we will find it and see if we like it”.
But she brought the video channel up and asked about the logistics of it over and over, because, it got people talking about it before it happened. It wasn’t actually a “question” that needed answering, any more than “should I move to Wellington?” was a question that needed answering. In both cases it was determined marketing, it was creating buzz.
And the magnificent horse and the magnificent potential went very quickly by the wayside, explained away by some vague soundness issues that prevented her planned path to the podium. And turned her instead into a chronicler of others’ successes and failures, as well as of the Wellington social “scene” (it was the society there that she seemed primarily obsessed with, in the first place).
She was now Media with a capital M, and she had Media Credentials. Because of youtube and the ability to edit footage. Shot from the same place in the stands or on the sidelines that you or I could do, with our own devices.
But she aligned/ingratiated herself with SJ and then with some other serious people there, and began her manipulations and began the path of self aggrandizement and then the destruction of others’ efforts, via free video notoriety, being discussed in this thread.
Her dressage experience and ability matters, because she established her expertise in such a fraudulent way from the start.
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I wasn’t going to say anything, because I don’t want to be on the receiving end [edit]. But, I have first hand experience in her downloading a video that I filmed, edited and uploaded onto youtube and then re-wrapping it with her Dressage Hub intro/outro. And for those that don’t know, there are programs that you can use to pull down high res videos off of YouTube and have a file that you can then dump into whatever editing software you are using.
When I brought it to her attention, she claimed that she had permission to share the video. Sure, share it - that’s why it was on YouTube, but not to pass it off as her own, which is what she did. I chose not to pursue it because it just wasn’t worth the resulting [edit] behavior.
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@Silverbridge oh yeah. Remember all the ‘test marketing’ she did on the UDBB: How is this music? Do you like this format? How much would you pay to subscribe? etc etc etc
She did have some interesting footage, but now I wonder if most of it was just jacked from someone else (like Reddfox!).
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An individuals competition results came be checked online with EC…
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The first 2 videos are a very petite rider. The June lesson video is SW I’m pretty sure. The coach looks like SJ, she calls the rider Susan, and it looks like SW.
I don’t love her riding and she doesn’t get nearly as much out of the horse as skinny girl does. She can’t get a clean half pass or puroette. I’d say she looks to me like someone who is trying hard but doesn’t have a lot of finesse or feel or, dare I say, natural talent. Someone who can afford a horse above her riding level. Nothing I would want to comment on if it was just an anonymous ammie blopping around on a nice horse. Something i would probably try not to have to watch if it was in my barn. But ironic in the situation.
Also how can someone adopt the web name ankywannab then speak out against harsh riding?
How can anyone put up an anti bullying website then chortle on her FB page that she is getting back at someone by bullying them?
As far as eye, it is possible to have an eye developed beyond your own riding ability, just like those of us who don’t sing still know when someone else is off key. There are railside bettors at the track that can pick winners but have never sat on a horse.
So eye needs to be evaluated separately.
She hasn’t shown any so far.
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I don’t get an ad when I play that video just the DH logo. Perhaps YouTube rations ads by an algorithm? And oh my ears that awful music, tone deaf.
And so you can.
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This is all starting to make sense now.
I couldn’t honestly see why [she] had any traction at all, why anyone would be caring what she said or watching her stolen videos with ghastly music added.
It makes sense that she worked her way in via other media and IRL and made herself a hanger on fixture before revealing her [edit].
The only missing piece for me is what she lives on. I’m assuming family money, and making a big guess that those that hold the purse strings are happy to see her be herself in a foreign country not on their doorstep.
One last question: does anyone else run a blog on the Florida scene, or was she the first one and therefore offering people more exposure than they could otherwise have? That would increase her relative importance to folks involved.
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So I went to that site posted that lets you see riders scores and her name (if we are all spelling it correctly) doesn’t come up. Is that meaningful?
It comes up. Maybe doesn’t work in certain browsers or mobile? It’s a bit of a wonky website.
