Stop Rodeo Abuse

Myth: Shearing sheep to enable their welfare is the industry priority.

Fact: The only reason sheep require shearing is because they have been bred purposely to both retain their wool (i.e. not shed it like sheep normally would) and grow much more wool than they can physically cope with. The wool industry created and continue to encourage this bred-in dependency and use this welfare-centred marketing tactic to trick consumers into believing that exploiting this inherent abuse of genetics is justifiable.

Fact: This bred-in retention of wool and increase in skin wrinkling requires sheep to be mutilated without anaesthesia or alternatively doused in pesticides to prevent flies from laying larvae in any soiled or moist areas of wool. Instead of breeding out these genetic traits in an actual attempt to better their welfare, farmers would rather take these extreme measures and maintain maximum production of wool.

Maria Karlsson

 WHAT THE FUCK WILL IT TAKE TO STOP THIS????????????

In the secret articles of the circus master, we find that young circus workers are taught that “working with horses is much more dangerous than working with tigers”.

A special story is the circus. In brief there is all that same special equipment that there is in sports, all that same stupidity and cruelty, but it is a secret world, one that is secret and closed. It is a world in which even the air, it seems, has a fundamentally different chemical composition than everywhere else.

The circus is for the fool, for the lout, the circus knows everything about itself and knows how to defend itself against unnecessary eyes and ears.

The defence has developed over the centuries.

Only the insiders, those who make up the circus, see the circus from within.

And do you know how they get horses into the pesade?

Well, with their fingers crossed they make the horse rear.

It is very simple.

They bring the horse.

They hook her up with a long rope to the iron in the mouth. To the right or left ring of the bit, it isn’t important.

They extend the rope upwards, beneath the canopy, in the darkness, where they throw across a pulley. That pulley with which they safeguard the trapeze artist.

They draw the end of the rope, which has already has been passed through the pulley, into the arena in front of the horse or behind it.

Three to four circus workers who are somewhat huskier, all in gloves in order not to burn their hands, grab the rope.

The trainer makes a smacking sound with his lips, cracks his lunging whip and the trio in gloves yank the rope toward themselves, downwards jerking the horse across the big top’s pulley by the iron in her mouth until she has been lifted fully vertical.

From behind two more flog the horse on the back as a preventative measure in order that she not move backwards and not fall back.

The trainer thrashes her from the front so the horse does not even think of dropping down.

The horses mouth in such an undertaking usually is torn until it bleeds.

The most powerful horse lips do not survive the jerks and the blood covered eyes pop out of their sockets.

A common trainer joke afterwards (while laughing) “put her eyes back”.

And, I forgot when it all ends, they shove a carrot sliced into rings into the torn mouth of the trembling, wet horse.

The carrot, covered in blood, falls out at once and tumble around the arena.

Let this scene come to mind the next time you take your nephew to the circus!.

Falsterbo Horse Show, Grand Prix riders training.

Something is very very wrong with the sport when riders are happy to be seen heavily bracing and almost every horse in the ring is sucked back. And what’s more, it seems that the stewards did nothing, even though the original post states that not only were they heavily BTV, horses were also being hit and harshly spurred. Where have the principles of harmony and lightness gone?

Horse Racing Exposed: Abuse, Drugs & Death

But in order to get the truth across about the cruelties of ‘21st century dressage’, you sometimes have to be brutal.  I don’t mean to offend or upset, but rollkur is a form of cruelty, and is never, ever correct.  It can wreak biomechanical havoc with your horse’s body, and it is disgusting that we label it with an 'acceptable name’ (LDR) and then think it is absolutely fine.

  The above picture may seem like a bit of light-hearted dressage satire, but in reality, it makes a prudent point about the dressage judges of today’s blind view to rollkur in dressage.  The rose-tinted spectacles on the right show how judges blatantly ignore and seemingly encourage rollkur by labelling it LDR and marking it highly.  Rollkur has a massive crowd of users who claim that in the right hands, it is beneficial to the horse.

This could not be further from the truth.

Rollkur severely damages the horse and gives them a shortnened life span which will be full of pain.  The label reading 'FEI approved’ is a way of showing how the FEI, who should be concerned about the welfare of horses, turn a blind eye to rollkur and even place its users over those who actually seem to care about their horses and ride classically. 

It is strange that they kill the 'friend’ who helped them win.

Dressage is going downhill.  Only those who ride conscientiously can claw it back from the brink of horse abuse.

Please feel free to ask questions about dressage or horses in general - just click the 'ask me anything’ button.  You can ask anonymously too :) 

There are certain things in the horse world that make me outright ashamed to call myself an equestrian. Of course, the majority of us do care for our horses and wouldn’t intentionally do anything to put them in harm’s way. That being said, there are a great many riders, both famous and otherwise, that have little regard for either of those things.

Let this be an example. It’s a studded noseband, also called a “serreta cavesson.” (Yes, ‘serreta’ as in 'serrated.’) It is supposedly used to keep the horse from pulling, and I imagine it would do a pretty good job. The even harsher version, which I believe is Iberian, has actual blades on the noseband with rings for reins to be directly attached for use in conjunction with a bit. Sickening.

  How about these torture devices? From left-to-right, top to bottom we have a chain-linked mouthpiece with a massive five-ring shank (can you imagine the leverage this thing must exert, even with minimal pressure?), then an eggbutt with actual screws molded into a mouthpiece - if you look closely, you can see just how tightly and sharply twisted the metal is. Next is a loose ring with a BIKE CHAIN MOUTHPIECE, followed by a nasty bear-trap looking setup with another chain-link mouthpiece and huge shanks that are connected to a thin wire noseband. Lastly, we have the offset 1/16" twisted wire “training” bit that looks more like a device used to quickly saw a horse’s tongue off rather than a “training” tool. I’m not even going to include the Brittany Pozzi barrel racing-style combination/gag/hack bits. View at your own discretion.

Really, it saddens me to think that people actually possess the insensitivity and heartlessness to put one of these nasty contraptions on their horses’ faces.

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 My last example of equestrian shame for today is this sad, sad video I’ve found. This is “dressage” rider Patrik Kittel schooling his horse in a double bridle in Denmark. He has his horse in such a tight frame (also known as Rollkur or hyperflexion) that the poor animal’s tongue is swollen, pale blue/purple and flopping lifelessly out of the mouth. This video speaks for itself, but it was also observed that Kittel rode the horse in this fashion well into a duration of two hours, and even reached into the animal’s mouth to tuck the tongue back into place. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hIXGiV4N4k

If you ask me, this is not dressage, the graceful sport of training the horse to work in harmony using invisible, soft aids - this is the shameful act of brutality and cruelty.  

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I HATE THIS

And let me tell you why.

When you tell me that not all dressage riders use rolkur, that not all Saddlebreds are sored, that not all Western Pleasure horses are drugged, that not all racehorses are started too young, that not all Tennessee Walkers do big lick, that not all barrel racers are beaten and kicked, that not all halter horses are inbred and genetically doomed

when you tell me that

when your first reaction to a criticism of your discipline is to say “but I don’t do that!”

when your first reaction is to take the responsibility from yourself

when you ADMIT THAT IT IS A PROBLEM

It’s been two days now, since I sent my pictures from the JBK Festival to DRF (Danish Equestrian Federation) and FEI. I have had no answer so far. Maybe they are busy. Maybe they are hoping that if…

So, if you want to have nightmares, just take a look at this blog post. The “funny” thing about it is, that I drew some cartoons a while back where i tried to overdraw the sometimes absurd bit and bridle combinations in the modern equestrian sport world - and some of them got real as I saw now on the linked blog… which makes me just sad. This is the worst, in my opinion :

Rollkur is known by many names and I intend to explain a few of them.  They are mostly just euphemisms for riders, and even the FEI, who don’t allow rollkur but maintain that LDR, the same thing, is fine!

Rollkur Rollkur is the name I use the most for this cruel technique.  It stems from the old German for a stomach medecine which the patient would take and then roll around to properly coat the stomach walls.  It is when the rider forces the horse’s neck into its chest, as are all of these.

LDR LDR is the FEI’s euphemism for rollkur.  It is exactly the same thing, but is allowed by the FEI!  They define it as a deep frame ‘achieved without force’ - which of course, is wrong.  Force is always used.  It stands for 'low, deep and round’.

Deep Deep is another euphemistic term for rollkur, and is primarily used by Sjef Janssen and the Dutch team.  It is exactly the same as rollkur, but sounds pretty, so the FEI allow it. 

Variations of 'low, deep and round’, including 'round’, 'deep frame’ and 'close frame’ These are exactly the same as rollkur, and are basically less cruel sounding variations on LDR, which somehow makes them acceptable.  It is called 'laag, diep, rond’ in Dutch.