Never written one before, my first attempt …
His lips move, and so
a lie is forthcoming, no?
The world is so cruel.
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Oh for goodness sakes. Trump couldn’t even handle an umbrella.
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While it’s fine to discuss books and public statements/actions made/done by others in the industry, please avoid the profanity and gratuitous name-calling.
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Horse show rent-a-cop
Threatening to murder kids
And their families
Or …
Time to train piaffe!
Watch me as I bump ‘n’ grind.
Please review my book!
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Glock is looking for riders…. Just sayin’ Nick, here’s ya big chance.
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From 2017 Nick Peronace joins in at post #464
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From the linked 2017 thread, someone copied & pasted one of Nick’s posts (from his blog? FB? Don’t know). Sounds familiar. I did edit it slightly to put in paragraph breaks to make it visually less taxing to read. The content is out of touch, of course.
DRESSAGE POLITICS AND HOW THEY EFFECT YOU Standard
Carpathia (the 16.3h 10yr old Thoroughbred Mare I’ve been working with) competed up to 4th Level Dressage this summer. In our first test together we were at home and performed a musical freestyle to The Star Spangled Banner. It was a beautiful test, complete with a military representative holding The American flag. We scored in the 70’s and I was excited to compete her off the property at a recognized show.While at the show held at a local horse park, Carpathia was an absolute angel. That is until we entered the competition arena. During the warm up she was great. She was focused and calm. During the test she felt like she was ready to jump right in the judges box! She was clearly distracted and had no idea why these people were in a tiny hut at C. She didn’t understand the sound of the sand being kicked up against the plastic arena. To make things worse, they put a gazebo full of photographers at B. People with kids running around didn’t help either.
As wild and explosive as the ride was, I felt we had some nice moments. Obviously I knew it wasn’t our best ride so I was expecting a low score, probably around 52-50%. Nope I was wrong, we scored a 43. But how could this be? A 43% is awful! Carpathia gave me beautiful Canter Half Pass, Extensions and I thought her Half Pass in trot going to the left was quite exceptional. Having a look at the test sheet, I could tell right away who the main culprit was: politics.
My marks were ridiculously unfairly low. I received a 2 because my last halt was not square. I was scored a 3 because she came above the bit looking outside the ring during a Half Pass. The judge marked me down as a 2 because she changed late behind in a flying change. This is politics in the show ring. The next test we rode at 3rd Level, was more of the same rubbish judging.
Keeping my head up, I courageously went back out into the show ring the very next month. We competed at 3rd Level (a level Carpathia can do blindfolded) and had a nice calm test. She was on point and I was extremely proud. Somewhere between 60-70% I was assuming the score would be. My jaw was on the floor for quite some time when I surprisingly received my score of a 46%. Get %#!* real! How could this be? Again I looked at the score sheet and again I saw unfair low marks, only this time the judge not only marked us down, but made up things that never happened! She wrote that I received a 2 in my Shoulder-In because my horse was throwing her head around. This is a complete lie and I have the video to prove it! She did not in anyway throw her head around. She was round and light the entire test.
Furiously I posted my test ride on Facebook and openly asked my friends what they thought of it. I got nothing but kind remarks and people assumed I received a high score. They were shocked to hear about the unfair treatment I had received. Then later the next morning I received a text message from a friend. She informed me that the judge had been corrupted beforehand. What had happened was that a handful of idiots solicited the judge with all kinds of hateful lies said about me online(read We Need To Talk Part 2 on my blog). I can only speculate that the same thing was done to the first judge a month earlier in our first show. I mean you’ve got to admit, receiving a 2 for not having a square Halt is a bit excessive don’t you think?
That’s politics for you! Next summer we will be competing at the FEI level so there will be more than one judge, though I’m not expecting that much of a political difference and I’ll explain why. Judges have a predetermined concept in their mind of what they are expecting to see in the show ring. They are not judging you personally, they are judging you compared to what else they have seen that day. This is why sometimes you’ll hear about a horse receiving a 70% at one show and an 85% at the next. It has nothing to do with performance but it has everything to do with a predetermined idea.
The judge not only is comparing you too other riders, but “who” those other riders are. If a big name or someone with a big name coach is competing against you the unknown, guess who’s going to win the gold? I’ve actually seen this with my own eyes, where the big name goes into the arena and the horse has the worst ride of his career. In fact he almost bucked off his rider during the one Tempi Changes, yet they still had the top score.
The judge is also going to be looking at the color of your horse and what breed you are on. If you do not have an expensive warmblood or an extremely expressive mover, you can expect to not receive a mark higher than a 5. Of course other breeds and horses of color have received some pretty high marks in the show ring. Yes occasionally this does happen, but how many Palomino Quarter Horses have you seen on an Olympic dressage team? How many Pinto’s or Thoroughbreds have represented the United States during the World Equestrian Games or have won the World Cup? You are probably going to argue that both Lendon and Hilda Gurney both rode off breeds to success. This is true, but really stop and see how rare that is. Also understand the politics. These were riders trained under German trainers, and at a time the German trainers were vastly improving American dressage. So even if an American had a bad ride, the judge didn’t mark them down because this would have reflected negatively on the Germans, who are predominantly the gold medalist in dressage.
Carol Lavell rode the amazing 17.3h Hanoverian gelding Gifted, to a team Bronze at the 1992 Olympics. It was their score that gave the American team the push, though they did not win in the individual. Gifted was a horse way before his time. If he was competing today he would be scoring in the 80’s for sure. A look at his large expressive movements, yet moderately low scores, clearly shows how the judges predetermined concept has changed over the years. Furthermore, if it was a German or a Dutch rider instead of an American riding Gifted, they most likely would have won an individual medal and gone on to even bigger things.
Along those same lines, take a look at Nicole Uphoff and Rembrandt. His movement would not even place today, yet in his time he was the dressage king.
Politics hurts talented dressage pairs. It also hurts the dressage community as a whole because it effects what breeders are breeding. Unfortunately it also discourages the working class hobbyist competing the off breed.
Until something is done about these politics, things will only get worse. Personally I’m going to continue to compete, and I’m not going to allow some idiotic judge’s opinion affect my riding or training. It shall not shake me one iota. I know better and I take whatever score given with a grain of salt. I hope you do not allow the showroom politics to discourage you either! Make your time in the ring about you! Make it about that bucket list! Make it about having fun and enjoying time with your horse. Forget who’s watching, because chances are the judge isn’t watching either.
[h=1]WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT IT (PART2)[/h] Standard
The Chronicle Of The Horse recently published an article about drug abuse titled “We Need To Talk About It”. In the article they mentioned how people need to seek help and we should be open to discussions. I couldn’t agree more! I have unfortunately seen first-hand what drugs do to a family. I have members within my extended family who are struggling with addiction. While I appreciate the sentiment of the article, I find the sympathetic tone laughable at best! The Chronicle of the Horse is not a compassionate publication. Not by any stretch of the imagination!The Chronicle of the Horse host a message board right on their web page. They claim that it’s moderated but this is a fallacy. It’s only moderated to the moderator’s opinion, and not governed by right or wrong or a set of rules. The message board is a bottom of the barrel internet troll paradise. Anything and everything goes, and the more you hate on someone, the more the publication loves it!
In 2013, Dressage At Devon worked with me in honoring a horse I trained. His name was Chevy and he was an Appaloosa Quarter Horse that was able to perform all the required Grand Prix movements, plus some of the airs above ground. I trained him but never competed because I had a judge say some really mean things to me at a schooling show. I was just a kid (17), so I was impressionable and easily discouraged. Perhaps if I had more support, Chevy could have really went on to be something big. I felt that a prestigious show like Devon honoring him each year was correcting an injustice.
The trophy was called “Chevy’s Cup.” It was awarded to the highest scoring non warmblood each year. It was an honor to work with Devon, but most importantly it was a terrific way to honor my friend. It was a Memorial that I sponsored each year. My heart was in the right place. I had no idea of the evil that was lurking just around the corner.
When the lonely internet trolls that haunt that forum discovered Chevy’s Cup, they didn’t contact me with their questions. No instead they talked about me amongst themselves, and came up with their own accusations and ridiculous slanderous remarks. I did make an attempt to log on and answer their questions as best I could (when a friend notified me about the thread), but as soon as I logged off they started cyberbullying once again. I had a small group of clients who were very angry about the things being said about me. They logged on to defend me which only made things worse.
Page after page, lie after lie, the thread grew larger and larger. I tried several times calling The Chronicle Of The Horse begging them to remove the page, but they refused each and every time! I had no choice but to take them to court and sue them for defamation. They would rather pay an attorney then remove a hateful topic thread that was harassing me.
How many people take a gun into the work place because of cyberbullying? How many kids are committing suicide? So let’s understand this and what The Chronicle Of The Horse is really trying to say. They are saying that it’s okay to kill yourself over cyberbullying, but if you overdose on heroin, that’s when The Chronicle of the Horse will support you? That’s when people should “speak up”? That’s when “we need to talk”? How incredibly awful and hypocritical this trashy disgusting publication really is!
When we got to court the judge had to rule in their favor. He condemned The Chronicle and questioned their business model and logic. He said that unfortunately he cannot rule based on emotions, but that he must rule on the law, and the law gives websites immunity. It allows people to say whatever they want online without being held civilly or criminally liable. So remember that when you hear about a 10 year old kid who hangs himself because some loser somewhere Cyber Bullied them! Clearly the laws need to change, and websites like The Chronicle Of The Horse need to be held accountable!
Vile websites like The Chronicle Of The Horse, pound their chest calling it free speech. They don’t delete threads and they provide very little moderation. But free speech does not allow you a warrant to harass and stalk an individual. I remember a day where you had to get an editors approval before you published something that might be considered hurtful, but now today everyone is their own editor, without any regard how it might effect a person’s job, career, or family.
At the very instant someone feels harassed, the thread should be removed. Period! That is the normal human decent thing to do. And I’m not the only victim of The Chronicle. No no. Far from it. Someone selling a horse gets berated with claims of fraud, or accused of trying to sell a lame horse. A trainer seeking new students gets harassed about their experience and inabilities. No matter what the topic is, these internet trolls latch on with wolf pack mentality and have one Mission: Seek and destroy!
When The Chronicle Of The Horse would not delete the cyberbullying thread about me, it’s spilled over onto other pages. It became larger and larger, and the lies being spewed about me (no matter how much I tried to debunk them) remained.
My teenage daughter would go to school and get made fun of because of it. Her grades slipped. She didn’t want to go to school. My wife and I watched her become a recluse preferring the solitude of her bedroom. Again I contacted The Chronicle begging them to remove the thread, which they laughed at me and refused. So again, where is their so called compassion that they seem to have so much of?
We had to get our daughter therapy and slowly she got over her depression. These are scars that my family will always have because of The Chronicle Of The Horse, it’s Forum members, and its editors and moderators who failed to act. If something tragic would have happened to my daughter, that blood would be on their hands. Then what? What would “we need to be talking about” then?
Over the years other topic threads were opened about me. I inadvertently have created a stalker-ish fan club. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing. If they find out that I’m giving a clinic, training a horse, or teaching a student, they will actually contact those whom it may concern, and share The Chronicle links, and share the lies. They try to disrupt any and every opportunity I might have. These are a psychotic group created by the forum members of The Chronicle. They are convinced that they are somehow doing a good thing. If they contact a thousand people and only get one to see me as the devil and believe the hate campaign, then they are successful. This is how they operate.
It’s not fair what happened to me. This is a brand on me that follows everywhere I go. So when I hear The Chronicle expressing fake compassion for drug abuse victims, they really need to look inward and extend that compassion to victims of cyberbullying also – victims they help create.
I hope I opened your eyes in who The Chronicle Of The Horse really is. They are firm in their stance and they believe that harassing me and my family is the right thing to do. They believe in the witch hunt conducted on their pages, and feel entitled to do so. This is what “We Need To Talk About”. Cyber bullying can be lethal and The Chronicle Of The Horse doesn’t care.
They-do-not-care.
I’m fully aware that not everyone is going to like everyone in life. Not everyone is going to think I’m a good trainer. I can live with that. I can even live with the armchair dressage masters critiquing expert advice from behind their computer screen. But spreading lies, slandering a reputation, name-calling, and conducting a witch hunt, is not an okay thing. That is where the line gets crossed, and when someone feels backed into a corner because they’re being snowballed by a group of internet trolls, that is when the moderator should remove the topic thread, especially at the victim’s continuous request!
So if any editor from The Chronicle Of The Horse some how reads this, I want to once again ask you to remove any, and all topic threads said about me on your page. It’s harassing and damaging to my family! Show the world that compassion you so elegantly expressed in your drug abuse article, and show that you care about cyberbullying just as much. Show the world how compassionate you truly are. Show your professionalism. Prove you’re not a hypocrite, and you really do care about all people.
To everyone else reading this, I hope you pay close attention, and remember this when you want to spend your advertising or subscription dollars with this horrific publication!
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You mean just like you’ve done?
If the judges are idiotic, why compete? Oh that’s right, you don’t.
I received a 7.5 with the comment “Not quite square,” because, clearly, I bribed the judge.
Yes, I’m sure COTH was the talk of middle school. Fall dance? Who cares. Homecoming? Pffft. Upcoming trip to Washington D.C.? Borrrriiinnnng. Bathrobe ladies on COTH? The lunchroom was positively buzzing about it.
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And I’m gonna have HITS honor me next year to correct the injustice I faced when I only got third in the medal.
Wait! What? No sympathetic comments from the judge about a bunch of lonely, bathrobe-clad women sitting around in their mom’s basement?
Trust me, Nick, reading your book was hurtful in ways you cannot imagine. And I believe you had not one but three “editor’s”.
So we’re a pack of wolves? Dang it! Here I was, just getting used to being a dagger-wielding hornet. Now I’m going to need to embrace a whole different animal kingdom persona. 
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I wonder if one of his difficulties is with interpreting the comments on dressage tests because he never competed under the tutelage of a dressage coach. Without anyone to explain to him that the scribe doesn’t have time to mark down comments about absolutely everything wrong with a particular movement, maybe he truly believes that the 2 was only because of an unsquare halt rather than a combination of that and everything else that went wrong with the movement.
Again, being coached can be a very helpful thing to help one grow as a rider.
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I think that really could be the issue. He really doesn’t understand the movements and that they are what he’s being judged for.
In one of the halt photos not only was the horse not square, she had a hind leg cocked. There was no connection from the riders hands to the mare’s mouth and she was being allowed to gaze around at her surroundings while he was bowing his head to the judge.
I think you are right. It seems that he doesn’t realize that the halt is a movement in itself, not just “stopping” at the end of the test.
In any case this guy is not fit to instruct anyone or to train any horse in the Dressage discipline. A “self taught Grand Prix rider and trainer” is going to have serious deficiencies in riding and training, which he obviously has.
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Which yes would be solved by a coach reviewing the test,… Or lessons.
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I shouldn’t waste my time but I can’t help it.
Maestro: Then later the next morning I received a text message from a friend. She informed me that the judge had been corrupted beforehand. What had happened was that a handful of idiots solicited the judge with all kinds of hateful lies said about me online(read We Need To Talk Part 2 on my blog). I can only speculate that the same thing was done to the first judge a month earlier in our first show.
So a S Judge can throw be so easily corrupted by a handful of strangers? I don’t think Nick knows what it takes to become an S judge. Geez, we seem to be so powerful here and somehow know which shows he’ll attend and who the judge will be. Can I get a handful of strangers here to corrupt a judge into scoring me a 93% at my next show? Oh, you can see pictures of his rides at Paws and Rewind. Type in Carpathia. Does that look like a fourth or third level horse or rider to you?
Maestro: Yes occasionally this does happen, but how many Palomino Quarter Horses have you seen on an Olympic dressage team? How many Pinto’s or Thoroughbreds have represented the United States during the World Equestrian Games or have won the World Cup?
I may WANT my Westfalen to be a champion cutting horse. How many Dark Bay Westfalens have you seen at the NRCHA finals? None. Are there a bunch of cowboys that corrupt the judges and make some pick crazy steer for me? Or could it be a Westfalen isn’t bred for the job and I can’t ride a cutting horse? Hmmmmmm. Oh, I’ve done cow-clinics with my Westfalen and he knows how to cut steer. If the steer runs away does he chase it? “Meh” he says. I can’t train him to chase cows like cow-bred QHs.
Maestro: In 2013, Dressage At Devon worked with me in honoring a horse I trained. His name was Chevy and he was an Appaloosa Quarter Horse that was able to perform all the required Grand Prix movements, plus some of the airs above ground. I trained him but never competed because I had a judge say some really mean things to me at a schooling show. I was just a kid (17), so I was impressionable and easily discouraged. Perhaps if I had more support, Chevy could have really went on to be something big.
First, no, you did not train him to Grand Prix. You pretended to ride piaffe and passage. Your 43% at third and fourth tells me you can’t ride flying changes or 4 tempis. There is no way I believe you rode or trained two and one tempis on any horse. Always the “victim”, I’m sure the judge didn’t say “mean things” to you at a schooling show. The judge probably told you were very out of your and Chevy’s league at GP and maybe try Training level. Your book negates the idea that you were easily discouraged. It supports the idea that even at 17, you thought people were incredibly jealous of your skillz and all tried to drum you out of horses so they didn’t have to compete with you. You do know that most people watched you ride Chevy and there is no way in hell that you were anywhere NEAR FEI, much less GP, with that horse.
Maestro: It was a Memorial that I sponsored each year.
No, you actually posted the letter from Devon that said they stopped it because you only paid for one year. That was your fault.
Maestro: When The Chronicle Of The Horse would not delete the cyberbullying thread about me, it’s spilled over onto other pages. It became larger and larger, and the lies being spewed about me (no matter how much I tried to debunk them) remained.
No, you never debunked them. Ever. You just told people to email you. When people didn’t agree with you, you blocked them from your facebook and “Dressage Supporters” page. Who needs a Dressage Supporters page except a person with a complete lack of confidence? You promoted a FB group that shamed overweight people who rode dressage and copied pictures from their Facebook pages. WHO is the cyber bully? You have video of you calling people at 11pm to harass them. You describe how you show up at peoples’ doors with “large men” to intimidate them in your book. Bullying is all you have going for you because you can’t ride well and can’t likely train a horse past Training level on your own. Your huge ego overcompensates for your tiny self-esteem.
We know you read this thread, hence your lawnmower diatribe.
To everyone else, the above quoted thread is exactly like reading his book. His lack of success is everyone else’s fault. He believes he trained an Appaloosa to GP when he was 17, taking no formal dressage lessons at that point. And taking no formal dressage lessons or clinics since. Because he’s freakishly so gifted. He reads books and that’s all he thinks he needs to do. He offers to teach you (on your dime) but doesn’t allow video taping. He hates COTH because people have called him out on so many threads, he’s shown no knowledge of dressage on any thread, and refuses to post videos of a rider claiming to ride/train to GP riding ANY movement or in ANY frame above Training level that he has made so many people take notice of him and his houseguests. We have always said “Just post a video of you riding an actual upper level horse” and he can’t. It is easier to call us “haters” and make up conspiracy theories than to provide proof that he can actually ride or train above Training level.
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Bolding mine. This exactly. You can’t “self teach” your way to Grand Prix. Neither can you “self teach” your way to 3rd or 4th level, which he so aptly demonstrates. To progress in any discipline, (but especially Dressage) instruction is a must.
He does claim on that old thread to have had a “clinic” and a lesson with great instructors in 2017, but fails to mention their names.
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I just can’t even. He doesn’t even know how to ride bend through a corner properly; how can he think any half-pass he ever rode (if it even remotely approximated one) could possibly be correct?
Hint: if your horse is coming above the bit in a Third Level test, it’s wrong.
Another hint: every Intro-level rider in the world knows the value of a square, immobile halt. Your horse may not be a flashy mover, but he can be correct.
I had no idea of the evil that was lurking just around the corner.
Ah, yes. Who knows what evil lurks around the corner? The Maestro knows!
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All of this reinforces the Nick doesn’t know how to ride third or fourth level. From this score, I bet he flubbed his flying changes and couldn’t produce 4 tempis at fourth.
Yeah, horse doesn’t come above the bit to look at the outside at that level. And, of course, I suspect he’s neglecting to mention that there is no bend in the body of a horse nervous enough to look outside of the ring due to tension. He’s never shown that he CAN ride half-pass because he’s never shown it and had abysmal scores at third and fourth. Sure, it is evil that he can’t ride and people notice. On that note, why isn’t God clearing the evil so he can ride well at ANY show and showing COTH just what he can do? Last I remember, God hasn’t come down to me to say the Nick P is good and COTH is evil. Has anyone else gotten such a message?
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He is pretty much washed up. I can’t imagine that he could ever afford horse ownership himself, and no one wants to hire him as a trainer or instructor. He won’t even volunteer at a dressage show and learn something.
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Yes… the halt could have been off the center line, heavy on the fore, not at X, slightly crooked, horse not on the bit or responsive and engaged… a myriad of other issues.
A halt (as well as every other movement) at 3rd and 4th is also judged much more critically and technically than a halt at lower levels.
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