I totally agree, however, regarding to the voice part, USEF gives no one but their board a voice. There’s no term limits, we don’t really have any say as members. I do feel the collective trainers and clients that are members of USEF and attending the shows should be able to have a huge influence at the end of the day - but it’s going to require either A) banning together and boycotting the shows for a month (in one month that would hit their profits massively) demanding change or B) a group starts to organize a new association separate from the Olympic governing side of the sport (which is 99% of the membership) and breaks off in an AHSA type format like when there was USET (Olympic governing side) and AHSA. Personally talking to friends in Europe, they think the latter just like they have in Europe would be better - there’s multiple associations/governing bodies of horse shows. I as a paying client would be more than happy to pay an increased training fee to cover my trainer’s costs during the downtime if that needed to happen for a month. In many ways it’s not any different than the Target boycott. Just some thoughts but there’s obviously some big changes that need to happen for this sport to have a future.
I can say that I have seen him at shows and I wouldn’t send my worst enemy to ride with him. Let alone a horse. That statement makes me want to puke.
I am all for protecting all of the horses at every level.
Some of those lower level horses are being prepped to death to not bat an ear and seem wild to their passenger. And while they are not exerting themselves over big jumps, they are often turned into dead eyed zombies by not so kind methods.
A groom for a well known trainer followed the directions on the daily horse show board that the horse was to be either LTD o LTQ. Usually, the former.
I think a cap is a start. It won’t be a ridiculously low number.
True that! No one in Texas liked him from what I’ve been told. That statement is unreal to me.
That is a weird statement. He’s saying that a fit horse can’t be overused? 
He sounds like one of the trainers that Leone says needs some education.
This is the part I’m so confused about… If USHJA approved a rule out of their very own subcommittee and sent it to USEF with their full support, what’s the rationale for believing USEF wouldn’t approve it?
I can see where USEF has a more delicate dance forcing rules down the throat of unwilling partners or dealing with a general rule across all the affiliates where it may not make sense for everyone. But how is this not the responsibility of USHJA? That’s what an affiliate does. At every point in these discussions I see USEF get nailed. Do they deserve some blame? Absolutely. But it’s ridiculous that the affiliate organization just gets ignored like it has no responsibility in this matter. This is YOUR affiliate. If it isn’t even held accountable in entirely toothless social media conversations, USEF is the smallest of your problems.
It’s a very fair statement that there are horses out there that work for a living and do more on a daily basis than 4 classes at the horse show. It’s also completely not applicable to the average show horse, unless the suggestion is that they should all be jumping 4 rounds a day, every day, to condition them for the work so that it is not beyond what is fair to ask of them. Horses are not biologically made to leap in the air and come down with all their mass on their hooves routinely and there’s risk of injury every time they do that. You can’t really condition the basic structure of an equine away.
I think that it’s honestly more of a problem for a horse to do one division 3 weeks a month and get no down time to live like a horse than ones that do 2 divisions and a couple warmups one week a month and get adequate recovery and turnout after. It seems fair to give the stewards and judges the mandate to work based off the individual horse’s tolerance because some may need to be pulled after class 1 and the crossrail pony may be able to “work” half the day entirely unbothered. Given the current state of the union, I have concerns about anyone actually doing that, but it makes sense if you are operating under the assumption that everyone is going to follow through.
That said, I think the suggestion that an organization run by people whose business models and livelihoods are directly benefitted by the amount that horses are showing would somehow issue a hard line requirement for a significant cut to their own income is pretty laughable. It’s a shame but I am surprised how many people are surprised that this is going nowhere.
Eh. Those horses are typically just walking a lot which is quite natural for a horse and we know horses can work mostly at the walk for decades and be healthy because they’ve been doing it for thousands of years and we have the records. Arguably being out and about and going places is also enrichment for the horse.
We also know horses can’t work hard for very long: we have lots of documentation of what was used as a limit for coaching horses, pony express, scouts, fox hunters in terms of daily, weekly and annual work. Many of those horses had a shorter usable worklife which is also well documented, as short as 6-7 years for coaching horses.
I’d put jumping into the more intense work category even the lower heights because it’s done at speed and because the days are so long and there are so many days per week. Even the hardiest foxhunters I know never hunted more than 3 days but modern show horses may canter and jump 5 days in a row. And unlike foxhunters modern show hunters don’t get their shoes pulled and turned out on grass for 4-6 months a year to rest.
I don’t think these workloads are comparable. The first flight foxhunters I know may go out 3 days a week for 3+ hours at a time. Those rides could be 3 hours of mostly galloping if the hounds catch a scent early, or mostly walking, but at the end of the day those horses have a rider on their back for roughly 9 hours a week over terrain (my area is very hilly).
A hunter/jumper, even if worked 5 days a week, is being ridden for less than 5 hours a week. And spending maybe 10% of that at the canter or jumping.
I’ve worked in some top hunter/jumper programs, and also worked with eventers and fox hunters. The workload of a 1.40m jumper or a top 3’6" hunter is absolutely less compared to the workload of a fox hunter going out 3 days a week or an UL event horse.
I’m not saying “other horses work harder” is a reason why we shouldn’t be concerned about overworking in the h/j discipline, but it is worth taking a step back and looking at whether the workload is overall high, or just high for our specific discipline.
Weird, lots of the buggies I see going down the road are not walking, most are trotting right along.
Fox hunters get a lot of time off and they are conditioned very well for hunting by people who know what they are doing. It’s not uncommon for a show horse to never really be very fit and to show year round these days. I’ve seen some very under muscled horses in the hunters the past few years, concerningly so.
I can only assume “coaching horses” was some arcane reference to ye olden days when horses were transportation and advances in modern medicine were decades down the road for driver and horses alike. Because modern day combined driving horses have exceptionally long careers, probably in no small part because they are kept so fit.
And then the H/J horses are stuck back in stalls 23 hours a day (at least in my area), as opposed to the event horses and fox hunters that are turned out.
There is science out there that suggests that horses do not rest in stalls at shows. If so, they are working “as in not relaxed” 24/7. It’s not just time in hand (lounging) or under saddle, it’s all the things that keep them stirred up. They are prey animals. So I disagree that a fox hunter used for a hunt 3 times a week is doing more work than a show horse locked in a stall for 7 days.
I’ve seen a lot of pictures of horses flat out in obvious horse show stalls, so I’d say it is a YMMV on horses at shows.
I second this. Clearly my horse(s) never got the memo that horses do not sleep at horse shows.
Please note that I did not say that horses do not sleep at shows. I said that there is science that suggests that they are never adjusted to the show and continue to be stressed for the entire 7 days (or weeks or whatever). You two can keep ignoring the science if you like. I prefer to listen to the scientists.
Here it is: Science. research has found that while cortisol and heart rate increase substantially (about 90%) from pre-to-post exercise at home, this jumps to 150% – 360% increase at the horse show – an increase the authors suggest is a result of the additional psychological stress of competition, since the exercise itself did not change (Munk et al., 2017; Becker-Birk et al, 2013; Peters et al.,
Yes and like the stalls at WEC with the mattresses are so bouncy that it actually makes it harder for the horses to balance. My vet told me people think their horse is laying down because it’s soft, but it’s more in what it does to their muscles and joints not being firm 
. And I agree, horses never get proper rest at shows, too much activity 24/7 including all night with the braiders who don’t follow the rules for lights off that were passed. It’s a really hard life for these horses on the road, no turnout, in a small stall, activity 24/7. Sad 
None of the pictures I’ve seen recently have been at WEC, but at QH shows. I don’t see a whole lot of WEC pictures in SM. One was at the AQHA World show showing in the yearling gelding class.
