I’m pretty knew to dressage. I switched from hunters. Hunters normally ride behind the vertical and don’t really care to much about it. Dressage people seem to really hate it and call it abuse. But if it’s abuse, then how did Edward Gal just win the Dutch Masters with a horse looking pretty light?..
Behind the vertical and Rollkur is not the same!!
13 Likes
What is said and what is done are two different things. In every horse discipline, including hunters.
As I understand it, rolkur is something you can do in warmup or behind the scenes, and then you ride differently in the actual test.
The equivalent might be the hunter trainer riding the horse in warmup in 3 sets of gadget reins for an hour but sending the kiddie rider into the class in a plain snaffle.
11 Likes
Behind the vertical and rollkur are different. Behind the vertical can occur in any way of going with any type of connection (BTV while upright, BTV with a more modest/level balance, BTV and deep). Rollkur is specifically looking at low and deep - chin to chest.
Once someone has an eye educated enough to ascertain the difference the discussion can migrate to is there a benefit to low (always/sometimes/never), deep (always/sometimes/never) or low and deep together (always/sometimes/never). The horse, rider, and equipment all factor in.
My personal issue with specific riders is that all their horses look schooled, warmed up, and shown in the same way of going - it isn’t a response to a moment or overcoming a particular goal, but their perpetual “territory” to live in (as opposed to a horse being brought deep in response to an electric atmosphere to keep everything contained in a hopping warmup arena).
Do you mean the Dutch Dressage Championships in Ermelo which took place May 24 -26? Historically, the Dutch have favored deep riding as a training method, not just Edward Gal. Since all of the riders were Dutch, Gal was not competing against an international field of riders with varied riding styles…
4 Likes
For posterity.
I would add that those who decry rolkur do so in a world where other riders still use it as a training technique, and it does seem effective for some riders in producing horses that win in top competition.
Some dressage people think it is biomechanically destructive and a bad short cut that leads to incorrect movement. Some dressage people think it works great, and world champions in the pasy decade have used it. And some dressage people use it but have renamed it things like “deep round and low.”
In other words, there is disagreement across the dressage world on this.
So you can’t say “dressage people” in general are anti Rolkur the way you could say all right minded horse people would be against doping a horse or starving a horse, etc. It is true that there are lots of anti-Rolkur memes circulatung online these days. But they wouldn’t be circulating with that speed if this was something everyone agreed on.
In other words it is a live debate.
6 Likes
Exactly. Obviously the OP wants to generalize that all dressage people are anti-rollkur. To be honest, I would rather see a horse ridden on contact but a bit deep as opposed to some of the awful contraptions frequenting the jumper ring these days. Frankly, if you want to decry rollkur as animal cruelty, you should consider that there are far worse things that happen in plain sight, every single day.
5 Likes
Troll-kur, maybe?
“knew” to spelling and grammar also?
Also knew to Hunters, maybe … most Hunters I see with their nose poked forward, and no where near btv or rollkur.
TrotNPastme doesn’t get out much?
17 Likes
Yup. Don’t see hunters BTV at all. Jumpers perhaps but not hunters.
OP sounds “knew” to both Hunters and Dressage.
8 Likes
“Eddie” Gal. Heh.
11 Likes
S’like calling Catherine Haddad Cath, or Cathy…
Assumed familiarity… but so knew to Dressage… Or is he?
Dun dun duuuuuuuunnnnn
Our knew poster seems, oh so familiar somehow.
11 Likes
…and is upset about riders and trainers “renting” horses to obtain their USDF medals.:lol:
7 Likes
I thought he sounded familiar when he posted sneering comments about trainers who ride schoolmasters. He thinks its easy to ride a schoolmaster.
8 Likes
For posterity
5 Likes
Ha-ha. Well spotted. I didn’t make the connection between several rather odd recent posts. I just assumed this was a lesson kid somewhere that had seen memes on FB.
Searched this posters posts, and yeah. They all seemed strange. Including being a friend of “Nick.”
8 Likes
And Houseguests. Who demand the administrator delete them and haven’t read the rules, and use the same spelling mistakes as he does, as Nick has creating how many times. .
4 Likes
Actually the OP demanded that the “account administrator” be “deleted”.
That type of thing just isn’t done in civilized society. 
6 Likes
OMG his comment under that pic of his horse rearing…!!!
Good luck with that!
5 Likes
It’s a whole knew level of delusional.
14 Likes
