Interesting, thanks!!
(please note, sarcasm here!) How else do you quickly get 350 young horses submissive enough to look trained so you can to turn around and sell to people with big checkbooks?
This is nothing but a big assembly line. Sad.
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Sadly I think a lot of people in the 80s trained like this. But when you know better, you do better. I do believe the vast majority of trainers in North America at least (I can’t speak to other continents) have learned in the past 40 years and are much less harsh in their methods.
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Friend saw the same, back in the Arabian horse heyday.
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I believe Lars and Melissa run the Wellington operation and as far as I know they have a very good reputation. Aside from being Charlotte Jorst’s winter home base, I think the main purpose of the Wellington farm is to sell extremely expensive horses to extremely rich amateur ladies. Will be interesting how much blowback there is on the US operation.
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Wasn’t this one of the brothers? I do believe they were penalized in some way. And the halter showing rules changed dramatically for the better as a result. e
Maybe some good will come out of this, too.
I don’t know who it was (the name wouldn’t have meant anything to me, as I was never involved with Arabians, and it’s been years), but she told me about this episode when she got home.
She quit her job working in the industry as a result of seeing this, among other things.
I don’t disagree…
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Yes. He got a five year suspension for having “cribbing surgery” done to remove tissue and make necks and throatlatches look cleaner/smaller/hookier. There were other issues as well. Silicone injections to level out croups, standing horses in puddles of water and using a cattle prod so the horse would fear the whip, thinking they’d get shocked and tighten their bodies…I recall hearing a pair of halter trainers who didn’t know I was there talking to each other about what a great job they had…“get 'em out of the stall and smack 'em around in the morning, then hit the golf course by afternoon”… I was showing that circuit at the time and I absolutely hated the halter classes. Lots of out behind the barn crap, late at night, and lots of feeding treats and petting when the owners showed up. Protests did no good because shows were afraid to lose the entries. Fortunately the halter classes have gotten so small and aren’t at the forefront anymore, with the exception of the big Scottsdale show in February, because they run the halter part of their show outside of USEF/AHA so they can let handlers do it the cruel way.
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Not sure how old you are, but my personal observations and memories(might have been wrong because I was young and naive) indicated that there was this old generation of trainers which did think more about the welfare of horses and less about money) and then slowly there came a new generation of trainers who thought more about money and less about the horse….
I started to learn with one of the older Generation and then he moved away and this younger trainer continued the work in this barn. And he really shocked me because I had seen it differently before,I still believe he was one of the first rollkur riders in Germany although at that time I didn’t even know what Roll Kur was.
So IMO it started at that time and for sure continued for a long time.
Maybe in the US trainer knew better, that I don’t know, but for sure in Europe horses were trained to be successful 
.
And you mentioned Lars Petersen. He was working at Blue Horse before Helgstrand. I loved how he rode Blue Hors Cavan and he also trained Don Schufro to GP…. And then he left and Helgstrand was hired by Blue Hors.
to me he was exactly like this trainer I experienced and I felt really sorry for Don Schufro .
It’s truly horrible how long it took that people started to understand how bad this training system is….so no, I don’t believe that it stopped in the 80s. it started in the 80s….
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What is amazing is that the Danish did something about it right away…unfortunately in the US it takes a LOT to even get horses that are being starved to death away from the owners. Look at the Friesian breeder in Vermont, starving horses removed and he still has over 100.
So I think whatever happens in FL will be mostly people distancing themselves from him.
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Helgstrand’s disingenuous “oh, the help didn’t follow our rules” excuse is disgusting. I’m surprised he thinks anyone is so stupid that they would believe he didn’t know, and condone, what was happening.
What an all around jerk of the worst kind. Abusive, dishonest and blames the people who work for him for the systemic culture of abuse at his organization. Yuck.
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What would be really good is if other BNT came out and said how despicable these training methods are. Stand up for the horses for a change. Helgstrand’s statement that they train 350 horses a day says all you need to know. It is not a training facility but an assembly line where they turnout as many horses as they can and don’t give a crap about how the horses are treated. I seriously hope this is the beginning of the end for Helgstrand Dressage.
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My friend saw this, too. She told me she couldn’t stand to see horses she’d helped raise treated this way.
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A large scale shady operation coming up with the very same ‘hired-help’ excuse as the small scale shady operation of Ms. Shearer of the DHH threads.
Exposure of abuse at all levels and in any discipline/activity that is horse (animal) related should bring these money-grubbing assh*ts to their knees - I hope.
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