And I know a lot of people who left hunters and moved to dressage because they couldn’t stand all the drugging and lungeing to death in hunterland. I assume there’s a dark underbelly in all disciplines; it’s just more visible in some than others.
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This:
Re: the Eurodressage article
“As long as judges reward tense and mechanically moving marionette horses at top sport level, dressage can not improve from the top down”.
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I read an article a while back, that discussed the biggest risk factor to starting horses young was the typical practice of shoeing and stabling young horses. The lack of freedom of movement is linked to poor development of joints and hooves. This may be why there isn’t a direct link between age a horse is started and long term soundness - there may be additional factors.
Think about how normalized stabling horses and/or not letting them socialize has become. Once we stop respecting a horse as a sentient, emotional being in little ways, I don’t think it is that big a leap to become ok with ridden abuse and dominating.
Further, think about how pictures, statues and paintings tend to portray horses with tightly arched necks, perked ears, and often open mouths - we are conditioned to admire that posture. Judges reward it, viewers love it, and buyers pay for it. Calm, relaxed horses don’t garner that same excitement by the viewer. horses don’t show that “flash” without tension. Yes, they might do it in nature, but only when in an excited/tense state.
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From November 2009:
https://camera-obscura-billie.blogspot.com/2009/11/andreas-helgstrand-take-look-at-his.html
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Freedom of the press is about the government not censoring or controlling the press. It doesn’t mean a private company has to allow a publication it owns to publish something negative about that company.
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Yeah, so did I. But around here the stock horse disciplines dominate. Then H/J (which isn’t for me), then tucked away in the far flung corners are the dressage people. They’re hard to find, don’t advertise, and most of them are actually eventers doing dressage on the side.
Eventually you just run out of disciplines to turn to. If this doesn’t work out for me I’m going to have to get into minis or something 
Western Dressage.
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True, but those instructors are even harder to find!
Thank you for the link to the Horse Nation article.
Does anyone know who is being described in it?
“ As another disturbing example of shady training and riding practices, a very well-known FEI rider on the east coast routinely rides roughly in the warm up — so much so that TDs know to watch him. I was announcing a show this summer and witnessed him using rollkur and aggressively spurring his horse, then running him across the warmup. At one point he dismounted, whip in hand, and ‘worked’ the horse down the warmup rail. He took it just to the edge of awkward discomfort for those watching — where they weren’t quite sure if they should say something — and then backed off. It didn’t help his test though. The horse was clearly terrified of him and had to be backed into the arena by two grooms from the ground. Once in the ring, the horse bolted all the way around the outside and back out towards the warmup. The grooms could not get him back in before the time allotted and he was eliminated.
What happened, you may be wondering? Well, a formal complaint was filed with USEF (by another rider there), and I submitted a statement and the video I took as support, and then I never heard. I can only assume that nothing was done and that seems like a problem. Despite numerous similar accounts of this sort of thing, a lawsuit around a dead horse, and possible SafeSport issues, this person is still showing and routinely teaching, clinicking, and training. People are still giving him their money and perpetuating his harassment of horses.”
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Based on this comment, it’s probably Dr. Cesar Parra.
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I wet to watch him ride at a show when I was trainer hunting.
Very quickly I eliminated him from my list.
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As a teenager, our riding instructor, a retired cavalry officer, taught us that “horses tell on you”.
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That reminds me of a big city newspaper that ran an article featuring a local FEI trainer who was being talked about as a potential contender for an Olympic team coming up the next year. At the time, he was training a horse that did end up going to the Olympics, albeit with a different rider. The article ran on the front page of the Local section in the Sunday newspaper. It was the headline article, and the photo the editor chose to run - a large color photograph - was of the trainer riding a horse at a walk and the horse was flipping its head in the air. I don’t know if the editor was “making a statement” about said trainer or if s/he was just ignorant about dressage and horses and thought that photo showed the animal’s “spirit” and would attract more reader interest. 
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Yet the intent is the same: to suppress information coming from a free press.
Speaking of Cesar Parra. I belong to a local FB group in Florida where some 15yr old girl posted some creepy very inappropriate screenshots from him last week trying to meet up. He’s trash 
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Gross. I hope SafeSport gets notified. And those who have video and photos of any riders mistreating horses should share them far and wide. If filing a formal report gets nowhere, it’s time to expose them. All of them. Not to deflect from Helgstrand but because there are many more just like him.
And I’m not taking about the DressageHub type of “exposing” where she takes one unflattering frame from a video where a horse is resisting or spooking for a split second and claims the rider is a serial abuser. I’m talking about the trainers who have a long and documented history of unethical behaviour, the ones that “everyone knows about it” but nothing ever seems to be done about it.
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First, I ride Forward Seat/Fort Riley US Cavalry seat.
A few years ago one of the ladies I ride with drove out West. She stopped to see a re-enactment group of the US Horse Artillery.
She said that the people who rode horses in that group rode just like me. Man I felt so proud, I ride like the US Cavalry! Why don’t you see if there are horse cavalry/artillery re-enactors you can join?
Forward Seat Riding-Control and Schooling are remarkably in tune with how the horses move naturally. “Common Sense Horsemanship” by Vladimir Littauer is our “bible”.
Since I have MS I am now relegated to working elderly horses lightly. I still go for impulse, connection, good contact with a relaxed lower jaw and tongue, conversations between my fingers and the horse’s tongue. Forward Seat horses are allowed to be CALM the vast majority of the time. Our horses are calm because we do not do much collection at all (if the horse voluntarily collects it is fine.)
My first horse really impressed some people near the top of the local dressage scene many decades ago. They tried out my horse for a lease as a confidence builder. My horse had never had dressage lessons/training, just good old Forward Seat training.
Three people, exclaiming “you just ask him to do something AND HE DOES IT” as if that was a rarity in their world. Light in hand, responsive to light leg aids, they loved riding him.
Welcome to the dark side where horses are allowed to move naturally and both the horse and the rider can have FUN.
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I think 24-hr live stream cameras covering the indoor arena and tack stalls at Helgstrand Dressage might go a long way in the PR department to show off the new culture declared in the press release. Wouldn’t cover everything but it would go farther than the vet review every 14 days.
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Intent is irrelevant. It is 100% legal for a private company to not publish things or repress information it feels are not in its best interests. It is not legal for the government to do so. The concept of “free press” ONLY refers to that situation (the government repressing the press) and nothing else.
Businesses repress (or try to repress) information constantly. That is 100% legal unless they are doing so with illegal means, such as intimidation or violence (which also happens quite a lot) against those doing the reporting.
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At first I was surprised to read this about Klimke, then not so much – I’d watch videos of him riding and I always felt the horse wasn’t “right” or really happy or relaxed…this explains it. I think much more of this kind of thing happens than anyone wants to admit – on the local level as well.
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