I agree. I came to this thread to learn about the fallout from the videos and it’s a pain to have to scroll through all the replies that aren’t relevant to that.
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^^^^^This
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I’m the OP…could someone please start a slaughter thread? (Not something I ever thought I’d say…)
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The slaughter conversation is done.
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No, that is not consent. Animal behavior training that is science based does include consent, as it should. Luring with food is different. Surprised you don’t know this. Training with food is valid. Not making an animal do something it can’t do (for whatever reason) is simply ethical. Find out what the issue is (lack of understanding, physical inability, pain, etc.) and deal with the cause of the “no.” Last thing I want to do is get on a horse that doesn’t want to be ridden. When my horse started to say no to being mounted, my “trainer” at the time wanted to force him to do it anyway. I said no I want to know what the problem is and see if I can fix it for him. She said some BS about “alpha mares” which is a big red flag that the person doesn’t know what they’re talking about, and I fired her. Turned out it was saddle fit as he’d grown and his old saddle no longer fit. Got a new saddle that fit, trained him myself to stand at the block for mounting and return for dismount, and never looked back. And yes I did it with FOOD.
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I took lessons a while ago from a good young dressage trainer, who had impressively brought an off breed from unstarted to FEI in 3-4 years. he looked light and pleasant. But…in our lesson she kept saying “you want the horse to treat the bit like an electric fence, and he should stay behind it”. I kept asking her what she actually wanted me to DO, but she kept up with imagery…I think she wanted me to jerk on the reins so the bit caused pain, but was unwilling to actually SAY that.
Another coach asked to take my reins, and then jerked down on them.
There were a few more bad impressions…I then switched to western dressage.
I am guessing there are some good, kind trainers, but when you watch modern dressage with leg goers, and classical dressage with loose reins…I think both had hidden brutality. The sport needs to be rewritten.
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I didn’t say anything about saddle fit. That’s just common sense and good training. If a horse reacts at the block of course you figure out the problem.
I think some of you have had some really unfortunate experiences with trainers.
Its a shame. But it is unfair to characterize all trainers this way. I’m fortunate to work with a very dedicated group of trainers and riders who truly care about the welfare of their own horses and those of their clients. They are also very successful competitors at a local, regional and national levels.
I think as riders it behooves us to seek out these kinds of people to work with and not tolerate the mediocre and brutal because it is convenient or whatever other excuses people use. It is our fault if these people prevail.
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I find some of these descriptions of “good” trainers so disheartening.
I am older and from an area that, when I was young, had very limited access to well educated trainers. The kick and pull method of dressage was very much the way things were done.
Fast forward [cough] years, I now have a couple of incredibly talented coaches and… well, still not the best rider but let’s just say the light bulb has gone off and I understand better what things can be like.
I don’t think dressage itself needs to be rewritten - we just need a whole lot more education and then money and big business to be removed… yeah… and that ain’t going to happen because the right way is the slow way. And i’m not saying the competition horses by the big guns aren’t trained the right way but the sale ones???
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When my horse started not wanting to stand at the mounting block, I spent a few weeks watching him with other people mounting him. He did the same thing with them that he did with me - as he approached the mounting block, he would swing his hindquarters away it so he was facing the backside of it instead of standing alongside it. I also noticed he would peer intently at the backside of the mounting block, and it finally dawned on me that he was worried about the opening in the back. So instead of getting after him for not standing correctly, I would let him take an extra minute or two to realize there was nothing under the mounting block. I would then quietly ask him to move his hindquarters over and stand next to it so I could mount - it made for a much more relaxed horse when I got on.
I realized that this is how he perceived mounting blocks: 
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I tend to be someone who second guesses a lot… and will do it with trainers/coaches. But reading this is making me realize I’ve landed on one of the good ones.
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I love that you really took time to figure out why. There’s always a reason and it’s never “my horse is an @sshat / trying to get one over on me etc.
We might not understand or appreciate that reason, but it matters enough to them so its our duty and our job to listen, because - yup, as you said it made all the difference to your horse 
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Western dressage as practiced and taught by our neighbors (with a lot of clients) is not immune to such things in any way. Maybe it is the constant picking and nagging at the bit that annoys me - a la some western pleasure classes. Not so much during the actual test - but right up until Enter at A. Maybe it is the endless loping in circles to “warm up”.
Maybe it is the tense, worried way some of those horses throw themselves into a rein back (avoiding that electric fence in front?) - more like reining done badly than anything close to dressage.
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Well I am sure that many clients of Helgstrand would say the same thing about him😊
I know that there are nicer trainers but even if I work together with a trainer all the time, I still would not trust them 100%…
I believe that is safer for your horse…… and you can still have an awesome relationship to your trainer!!!
I believe people need to get rid of this 100% trust thing….
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I dont 100% trust myself, so i don’t know where you’d get the idea that I’d 100% trust someone else. You can think someone is good at their job without thinking they are perfect.
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Perfect! Then I apologize! And I am sure that you can work with nearly any trainer if you give him clear guidelines….
I think there are two separate conversations that probably need to be had.
One is whether the industry of competition at the international level incentivizes/rewards this kind of behavior, and if so, what can be done about that. IMHO, the emphasis on brilliance of the gaits does reward this behavior. Can anything be done? I don’t know. I feel like I largely gave up on competitive dressage 20 years ago during the rollkur fights.
The other conversation is about how we can access kind, fair, quality training ourselves, with pros who are aligned with our values regarding minimization of force in horse training. It’s an easy thing to say, and frankly a much harder thing to actually do. IMHO (again), there’s a massive difference between trainers who may take a “rough” action (more on this in a moment*) with purpose and intent, but who trains from a philosophy that discourages force**, vs. those who train from the “make them do it” POV or with habitual brutality (Helgestrand, apparently).
*I think we have probably all been in or been exposed to situations where, for example, for safety reasons a jerk of a chain shank has been an appropriate tool. So sometimes, there’s a justifiable use of force. Another example might be “resensitizing” a horse to the leg that has been deadened by bad riding. Similarly, I jump in a rope gag: The trade-off there is that he has a stronger bit, but I “use it” less often and for shorter durations than I was using a plain snaffle. Is that force or not force? We try to minimize the harm of low level students hanging on their horses’ mouths for long periods of time, but it is a very normal sight in local dressage scenes, sorry to say. It’s not Helgestrand brutality, but it makes it very difficult to have these conversations honestly because it’s challenging to define the line sometimes between X being justified/normalized/acceptable and Y being unjustifiable. I’ve been reading a little bit about psychology in human relationships lately, and supposedly, no fewer than 5 positive interactions to every one negative interaction is the ratio that preserves relationship quality - it’s understood that some negative interactions (e.g. reprimanding your kid for something) are inevitable. With my horse and my dogs, they let me do all kinds of medical things they hate without fuss because I take this kind of approach. Like, I touch their paws basically every day (with treats and/or play involved), so clipping nails is NBD.
** Classical training has a bad rap in this forum, and I get it there are a lot of wackos who don’t know what they’re talking about, and I’ve seen some unfortunate force from some, but as a rule, properly trained classical people have been closest to both talking and walking the “force-free” talk/walk. Are they effective/successful in the show ring? Unfortunately, not to my knowledge. I would love to be able to tell from what I see in competition who is doing “correct” training that is kind and fair and in the horse’s best interest. Ingrid Klimke has open trainings at her facility and does a lot of educational work. Not sure who else to trust. I’m sorry to hear the stories about Reiner Klimke.
Maybe a good use of this thread would be to start a list of trustworthy pros “at the top” who we know are good actors? Maybe our role can be to promote and amplify their voices through fandom somehow?
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This is not uncommon. The mare in my profile picture has a short neck and no throatlatch room. She has to be really, REALLY relaxed to keep face on vertical and breathe. Fortunately, I like to ride that way and I leave her noseband loose and uberstreichen a lot and have a very long warmup.
An olympic rider I cliniced with chastised me for the loose noseband and stabilizing tighter curb chain. He tightened the noseband as far as a man’s hands can, and loosened the curb and my mare could not breathe or go forward. An FEI 5* judge that I cliniced with advised me to get a 9 inch shank curb to get her on vertical. From this, she learned to open her mouth…I was horrified when she started opening her mouth to relieve pressure and went back to a snaffle and what I was doing to relax her. This stuff is all too common–the US loves their front to back riding. So now (sarcasm entering the crime scene), you need to spend $500k on a horse that moves for 10 so you can ride it backwards and get 7s. For me, this is the most compelling reason to diminish the importance of the gaits score.
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I tried out a horse at a former olympian’s barn and questioned the very tight noseband and flash. I was told that it was better to have it tight than to have it loose and need it.
I didn’t buy the horse, though not for that reason.
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I had a big falling out with a very popular trainer. We were working on walk/canter transitions on a very small circle in preparations for pirouettes. I was sure my horse was not strong enough or ready for this when he exploded. The trainer screamed at me stating that we had a discipline problem. I had owned this horse since he was a weanling. I had backed him and had done all the training to this point.and I knew this was totally out of character for him.
Trainer and I ended up in a yelling match, he stormed out and I never worked with him again. Turned out the horse had a stifle problem,
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