To think dressage is cruel and also ludicrous?

[itstheendoftheworldasweknowitnow]

Prompted by Charlotte DuJardin’s suspension today. What a ridiculous sport dressage is - and how cruel to the poor horse who doesn’t want to mince around anyway. They always look so uncomfortable doing it. At least jumping and racing seem like something a horse would enjoy or do naturally.

No different to parading animals around in the circus ring but the majority of enlightened people don't support this kind of cruelty these days.

No. Treating animals with cruetly is what's abhorrent, not the sport itself.

Absolutely... rollkur etc.

Carl and Charlotte were supposedly amongst the few who achieved the highest levels without resorting to cruelty. My mentor Heather Moffett visited them at their yard, approved of how they were training Valegro - based on what she saw during her visit, of course. Heather is very much classical dressage, not FEI.

FEI is annoying to say the least, because although they supposedly banned rollkur, they did nothing when the practice was seen in their warm-up arenas, and, as you say Bella, rewarded performances which could only have been the result of hours and hours of overbending.

@hepsitemiz I am so upset by it all to be honest. I used to see Carl and Charlotte as the beacons of hope for improving horse welfare in dressage.

What makes it worse is seeing people who I follow, who I thought shared similar values, minimising it all. These are people who don't even have anything to loss by speaking out - they don't make their living from competing etc.

Will this lead to real change though? Not if the FEI have anything to do with it.

Oh, and I love Heather Moffett!

100%, Bella.

"I find it extraordinary that many within the equestrian community are rushing to defend her. "

Are they? Most people have disapproved quite strongly I think.

I think you’re on pretty safe ground with cat ownership. They take you for all you’ve got and treat you with complete disdain, but you love them anyway!

You obviously know little about horses. Dressage, when done without beating, isn’t cruel at all.
You can have someone beating something or someone in any industry and it would become ‘cruel’.

Same…
The consensus I see is:

• Disappointment in Dujardin and sometimes a level of concern for her mental wellbeing
• Dissapointment in whoever had this footage and sat on it for this length of time - obviously it was only leaked to sabotage team GB in the Olympics and not because of animal welfare or it would have been released long ago
• Sadness at what this will do to our prospects at the Olympics
• Sadness that the distressed horse went through that

I’m yet to see any ‘defence’

Athletes and gymnasts are essentially abusing their bodies, but it is their choice.

That is the difference. No horse asks to do this.

Before the video was released there were tonnes of comments along the lines of "it's a conspiracy to ruin GB chances at the Olympics"....despite it being very clear in Charlotte's statement and that of the FEI there was evidence relating to horse welfare / abuse.

Now the video has been shared I've seen people say "yes it was bad but we all make mistakes" etc. There is still minimising and the view that this was an isolated incident of "poor judgement".

You're forgetting cats. Cats have trained us to do as they tell us....

Bit like for the female contestants in Strictly!

Maybe whipping it??

@Sunshineandpool I mean yes - I'm not saying what she did was right at all but not all dressage is cruel and not all whips are evil
It's just capturing a movement a horse does in the wild and teaching it on command
Effectively like teaching a dog to sit or give a paw or roll over

If I had whipped her she would have just ditched me. I did carry a whip and also wore ball spurs for various reasons but never to hurt and never used in anger

The way we treat animals generally is vile.

Hope Charlotte D meets the same fate, would make my day.

It's horrible. My neighbours used to do it. The poor horses spent all day in a stable then would be out in the manège for an hour doing boring, overly controlled exercises, then trawled around in a horse box all over the place at weekends. It made me so sad to watch them. We need to rethink our relationship with animals. Dressage, horse racing etc are all quite horrible. No better than circus animals.

@spikeandbuffy if you didn't use the Whip, why did you carry it?

The problem is that it isn't just the use of whips, it is rollkur, bleeding mouths (which CDJ has also had), bleeding sides from spurs, use of draw reins and gadgets to get a false outline.
Done correctly and classically, dressage is grateful and harmonious, the issue is that the majority of horses aren't trained that way

I do use it but not to whip
I tap with it or press it if I'm using it as an aid
Also used to brush off flies, open gates, pick up a dropped glove, stick out sideways to slow cars down....

This

This

Classical dressage is all about training the horse's body to support their fitness over time, something like pilates does for humans. Classical dressage moves are all things you might see a fit athletic and happy horse do spontaneously by themselves at play, just refined. And refined is the word, the training methods for classical dressage are all about supporting the horse and refining their movement in incremental stages over a long period of time as their fitness develops.

It still broadly serves this purpose and proves the all round trainability and versatility of a horse and the skill of their rider in the 3 day eventing (which has just been on this weekend).

The competition of pure dressage (yet to come in this olympics and is the sport that C. DJ has just been banned from) is a bit of a far cry from classical dressage and I do think has lost it's way.

What CDJ was filmed doing is wholly unacceptable and is not necessary for the sport. It wasn't even productive, as effectiveness as a training method goes it is also just pointless - it just made a horse scared and sore, it didn't improve their movement.

There are good and bad in any sport, and equestrian rightly comes under scrutiny as it involves animals. CDJ was famous in the horse world for being one of the good ones for horse welfare, which is why this revelation is even more shocking and disappointing to us.

From a horse welfare point of view jumping has it's unique problems and racing has more obvious ones, and it's are WAY more endemic and it churns through a much higher vote of horses.

*volume

Some dressage is essential for any horse. It SHOULD be about good communication between horse and rider. Of course, you make anything high stakes, and things get warped.