CDJ withdrawn from paris

PurpleSpots

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So are the owners at fault here forcing him to carry on doing something he hates. Makes you wonder how much they forced the training to be rushed as well

Do they even recognise that they are forcing the horse though?

This sort of thing has been normalised for so long I'm not sure how much people involved in this 'elite' world can actually see any more?

I mean look at The Big Lick in the USA - people on the inside would still argue it's normal and good for a horse to move like that. Look at something for long enough and it becomes 'normal' doesn't it.

I don't think one person can be singled out, it's a whole overhaul that's needed isn't it?
 

Burnttoast

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He is experiencing stress. Animals cannot learn to be confident or resilient without expressing some level of stress. It’s biologically necessary and healthy. You have to take them out of their emotional comfort zone at times.

Yes, ideally you don’t want them experiencing this level of stress. Yes, there are considerably better ways of introducing stress to an animal and helping them learn to cope with it than at a competition where they’re more likely to go over threshold. No, horses don’t need to compete. Yes, the horse in this video may well be in a state of distress and therefore unable to learn. Yes, that should always be avoided - but sometimes these things happen. Surely we’ve all been on hacks where our horses have gone over threshold due to triggers we could not have planned for or predicted, and it’s all we can do to just sit tight, get home, and figure out how to address the issue another day?

Regardless, my point was just that you cannot make claims about his training - specifically “That these horses are so tense and clearly expressing negativity surely speaks volumes about how they are trained” - because you’re looking at an animal that can become very tense and reach their stress threshold far faster than the average horse. Another horse getting too close in the warm up, someone opening up an umbrella as he was passing: that’s all it might take.

Also worth keeping in mind that you’re looking at a horse that expresses stress in a way which looks really bad to us because it’s biologically abnormal - but, crucially, biologically abnormal doesn’t mean intrinsically indicative of more stress than say that experienced by a horse planting.
Tbh I'm sick of all this. We breed them to be physically and mentally unfit for the things we plan to do with them, and then do them anyway and express disappointment when they don't measure up to our exacting standards when they'd rather be anywhere but here. Why must we take them out of their emotional comfort zone? Why does it benefit them to experience stress from which they cannot escape? That's the definition of unhealthy stress. If we were allowing them to manage their own stress response that would involve letting them run away from the stressor to a distance at which they felt safe. Bit difficult when the stressor is on your back though.
 

Caol Ila

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As the owner of a horse who can go over threshold very, very fast and leave you pretty much dealing with a situation, I feel like @stangs has met Fin, and I have some sympathy for Jessica.

Sometimes, there are only bad choices. Do you bail quickly, but now the horse has associated the arena/car/kayak on the loch/quad bike/umbrella/car headlights with 'getting out of dodge' because you agreed with the premise of getting out of dodge (even though the thing that was concerning you was the horse blowing a gasket)? Or do you try to hang in there and see if the horse settles and works out that the scary thing isn't as scary as it thought? I don't know. I have had successes and failures with both approaches. Outwith a few times where I have had no choice but to try to get the horse to man up (out on the trail, and you need to get from Point A to Point B), I never know the right answer. But I've had some messy rides.

And yes, in a perfect world, you would react and diffuse a situation before the horse lost its sh1t, and do so much flawless training to get a horse to a point where it will never lose its sh1t, which isn't that hard to do on a horse like my PRE mare, but I want to to see *anyone* do that on a horse like my gelding. He can go from fine to not fine before you can take a breath. Failures to achieve that with him include one of the better NH trainers in this country.
 

LadyGascoyne

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It’s not the stress on its own that I think is the issue. Horses do stress. They are prey animals, it’s a biological imperative.

For me, it’s the fact that it looks like the horse is not equipped with the tools to perform the job he is being asked to do. He wobbles, stumbles, loses balance and then is asked to do an even more advanced move than the previous. It’s the cause of the stress, and the inescapability of that that makes me sad.

Watching Gareth and Rebecca Hughes work with Flamboyant, you can see that is a mare who is naturally quite tense. But her foundations are strong. When she gets tense, there is somewhere to go where she feels confident and secure, and she can get it right.

Jessica talks about continuing the test so that she could end it on a positive but she couldn’t find that moment. That speaks volumes to me. I can absolutely see what she means, there wasn’t anywhere in that test that I thought the horse looked balanced and happy, even in the ‘easy’ marks.

What I probably would do, and do with Mim on a much smaller scale, is rather than continue the test for experience, stop the test when it falls apart and do one or two exercises in the space that the horse knows well and does easily. Mim really likes lateral work, so if I want to ‘end on a high’ when I’ve started new work that she might be struggling to understand, then we can pop a couple of half passes in and she absolutely smashes them and get a huge pat. Obviously, they are good to Mim standard, not to FEI standard 🤣 but as a principle, if there was something that Gatsby understands well, has the balance established and can execute confidently, then it would have been nicer to see her retire from the test, ask for that instead, give him a fuss and leave happier.

The fact that she wasn’t finding that anywhere in the test though, would meant to me that the horse is out of its depth. There should be some things in there that are comfort zone things.
 

sbloom

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Of course, we don’t want them going over threshold, and yes that’s a training issue in part, but you can’t make claims based on their behaviour without considering the genetics.

But we should work WITH genetics, not against them. These horses are reactive because they are dysfunctional, in huge part. Genetics AND training. We take unstable horses, stuck in fight or flight, and make them even less stable. It shows in the work, in HOW they melt down, as well as the fact they do melt down.

Also worth keeping in mind that you’re looking at a horse that expresses stress in a way which looks really bad to us because it’s biologically abnormal - but, crucially, biologically abnormal doesn’t mean intrinsically indicative of more stress than say that experienced by a horse planting.

No but it does indicate harm to the horse, moving in that way is harmful, and perpetuates the fight or flight reactions in the brain. Nothing we've seen has shown us a horse being helped, or remotely improved, but instead made worse. Being made worse by being taken out when not ready, and being worked in dysfunction, the classic "work through it" which most modern horse centred training has shown is not productive and actually makes them worse.

Or is it that the training in this 'elite' world CAUSES horses to be tense and stressed, and because the problem is so widespread it's blamed on the breeding???

Both, we have absolutely bred horses that are less stable in their bodies which makes them more reactive, unless made LESS dysfunctional. Modern training (to an extent at all levels, as the lower levels copy and learn from the higher levels, find me more than 5% of trainers who don't train in compression...) doesn't seem to improve posture or movement patterns - I DO see some of the trainers whose work I respect acknowledge that many of these are amazing horses and they'd love to have their hands on them, but half of my brain says we just shouldn't be breeding them, especially when we see what the dissectionists are finding.
 

eahotson

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But we should work WITH genetics, not against them. These horses are reactive because they are dysfunctional, in huge part. Genetics AND training. We take unstable horses, stuck in fight or flight, and make them even less stable. It shows in the work, in HOW they melt down, as well as the fact they do melt down.



No but it does indicate harm to the horse, moving in that way is harmful, and perpetuates the fight or flight reactions in the brain. Nothing we've seen has shown us a horse being helped, or remotely improved, but instead made worse. Being made worse by being taken out when not ready, and being worked in dysfunction, the classic "work through it" which most modern horse centred training has shown is not productive and actually makes them worse.



Both, we have absolutely bred horses that are less stable in their bodies which makes them more reactive, unless made LESS dysfunctional. Modern training (to an extent at all levels, as the lower levels copy and learn from the higher levels, find me more than 5% of trainers who don't train in compression...) doesn't seem to improve posture or movement patterns - I DO see some of the trainers whose work I respect acknowledge that many of these are amazing horses and they'd love to have their hands on them, but half of my brain says we just shouldn't be breeding them, especially when we see what the dissectionists are finding.
To me modern high level dressage is circus and the riders circus trainers except that circus trainers are probably better.
 

ester

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So 9 days after he has a complete meltdown competing with one rider, who says that she will do her best to make sure he has the best possible life, he's back on the circuit. That poor poor horse. :mad:
And was retired from the first test so presume issues, last in the 2nd so doesn’t sound like it was too productive.
 

meleeka

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It’s not the stress on its own that I think is the issue. Horses do stress. They are prey animals, it’s a biological imperative.

For me, it’s the fact that it looks like the horse is not equipped with the tools to perform the job he is being asked to do. He wobbles, stumbles, loses balance and then is asked to do an even more advanced move than the previous. It’s the cause of the stress, and the inescapability of that that makes me sad.

Watching Gareth and Rebecca Hughes work with Flamboyant, you can see that is a mare who is naturally quite tense. But her foundations are strong. When she gets tense, there is somewhere to go where she feels confident and secure, and she can get it right.

Jessica talks about continuing the test so that she could end it on a positive but she couldn’t find that moment. That speaks volumes to me. I can absolutely see what she means, there wasn’t anywhere in that test that I thought the horse looked balanced and happy, even in the ‘easy’ marks.

What I probably would do, and do with Mim on a much smaller scale, is rather than continue the test for experience, stop the test when it falls apart and do one or two exercises in the space that the horse knows well and does easily. Mim really likes lateral work, so if I want to ‘end on a high’ when I’ve started new work that she might be struggling to understand, then we can pop a couple of half passes in and she absolutely smashes them and get a huge pat. Obviously, they are good to Mim standard, not to FEI standard 🤣 but as a principle, if there was something that Gatsby understands well, has the balance established and can execute confidently, then it would have been nicer to see her retire from the test, ask for that instead, give him a fuss and leave happier.

The fact that she wasn’t finding that anywhere in the test though, would meant to me that the horse is out of its depth. There should be some things in there that are comfort zone things.

The horse doesn't know it's done the movement incorrectly and think "damn, that wasn't right, now I'm getting stressed". It's what happens to them at home when they are learning something new and don't understand that leads to the stress. Repetition, praising the good work and trying again when not so good, isn't going to make a horse stressed imo.
 

Burnttoast

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The horse doesn't know it's done the movement incorrectly and think "damn, that wasn't right, now I'm getting stressed". It's what happens to them at home when they are learning something new and don't understand that leads to the stress. Repetition, praising the good work and trying again when not so good, isn't going to make a horse stressed imo.
And being dsyfunctional in their movement patterns and therefore feeling extremely vulnerable, as any of us who have been in the same position know. The tiger in the undergrowth is always there for horses.
 

Burnttoast

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As the owner of a horse who can go over threshold very, very fast and leave you pretty much dealing with a situation, I feel like @stangs has met Fin, and I have some sympathy for Jessica.

Sometimes, there are only bad choices. Do you bail quickly, but now the horse has associated the arena/car/kayak on the loch/quad bike/umbrella/car headlights with 'getting out of dodge' because you agreed with the premise of getting out of dodge (even though the thing that was concerning you was the horse blowing a gasket)? Or do you try to hang in there and see if the horse settles and works out that the scary thing isn't as scary as it thought? I don't know. I have had successes and failures with both approaches. Outwith a few times where I have had no choice but to try to get the horse to man up (out on the trail, and you need to get from Point A to Point B), I never know the right answer. But I've had some messy rides.

And yes, in a perfect world, you would react and diffuse a situation before the horse lost its sh1t, and do so much flawless training to get a horse to a point where it will never lose its sh1t, which isn't that hard to do on a horse like my PRE mare, but I want to to see *anyone* do that on a horse like my gelding. He can go from fine to not fine before you can take a breath. Failures to achieve that with him include one of the better NH trainers in this country.
Would you put Fin's rapid threshold crossing down to his early life? As an example he differs greatly in that respect from any modern dressage horse, which will be familiar with the world of humans and often experience situations like the one in the video from early on in their life. It would surely be obvious if they were finding these things difficult to cope with quite early on, and therefore people are making a choice to persist regardless. Given they should have access to all the knowledge we currently have about how to habituate horses to these more atmospheric scenarios either they're not making use of it, they are training that side of things badly, or that's not actually the issue - it's something else pushing them over the threshold, such as their ridden training and their physical weaknesses. It is important that we know why these horses are having these meltdowns and not just sympathise with the riders of stressed horses because 'some horses are just stressy'.
 

PurpleSpots

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One other consideration is that horses with significant soft tissue discomfort can be much more reactive than those with comfortable bodies - especially if they are uncomfortable around their head/jaw/neck/anywhere that feeds into a headache.

Being pushed physically so the body constanttly harbours discomfort can make a horse feel unable to cope with life (same for people or any living being) as they are coping with too much (pain) already and can only really cope with things being predictable and 'perfect' before they are overwhelmed.

There's so much more to it than anyone but the horse can tell us - which is why horse-led training sessions, and them living in a natural environment which is species-appropriate should be the only way every horse is kept - especially for those with 'elite' demands placed onto them, IMO.
 

LadyGascoyne

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The horse doesn't know it's done the movement incorrectly and think "damn, that wasn't right, now I'm getting stressed". It's what happens to them at home when they are learning something new and don't understand that leads to the stress. Repetition, praising the good work and trying again when not so good, isn't going to make a horse stressed imo.

Yes, I agree.
 

honetpot

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Animals cannot learn to be confident or resilient without expressing some level of stress. It’s biologically necessary and healthy
It depends what you class as stress.
In a natural enviroment like our 'wild' ponies they can escape from stress. They can choose to increase their stress/ hightened awareness and perhaps learn if the objective is to either get to their herd companions, or need food or water .
Over the years I have seen enough frightened young animals and an old dealers trick is once you have rounded them up, it once took ten adults to get one out a field and in a large loose box, is to feed and water it just at the door, so it eventually associates humans with food. The most humane way to it is to have an older equine companion who reduces the impact stressor and within a couple of weeks it becomes habituated, and then the handler has the chance to introduce other stressors in a controled way. The idea is to introduce to new things so the stress bucket never over flows.
As soon as you remove the option for the animal to get away from something that causes stress, for some just being put in a loose box, or a paddock on its own is enough to start the spiral, depending on who is managing it, its classed as naughty, when all it is doing is reacting in a normal way.

The most experience I have had with 'sports' horses is with the management of TB's, who manage to cope with a very unnatural enviroment most of the time from 'yearlings' because of the herd effect, they are excerised and worked most of the time in groups. A lot are stressed in stables, but some yards are a lot better than others at creating a herd enviroment indoors, and they are habituated to a routine. When they are sold out of racing as a general riding horse the buyer often has no idea how big a part of its training is done in a herd, and when they are removed from that herd enviroment then the problems start.
My experience with sport horses is when they are managed as young horses they may get group turn out, but once in training they are isolated both in and out of their box, and there is no chance for them to have herd support and no escape, either physically or mentally.
Some do not even get a few hours at grass with others, I always think of in human terms as sticking a young child in a box room, feed it but allow no interaction with other people, and then send its to school on its own, with someone who they can not communicate with, who dictates everything they do and you have guess what they want. Express worry or get the guess wrong and you get punished. I do not like comparing horses to humans. but its perhaps the most realatable way to discribe what humans see as normal horse management can cause stress to a horse.

I am not a very good rider, I am a good horsewoman, so I have managed to train animals above my riding abilty because I can not make 500kg animal do anything, so I have to make what I want them to do easy, and know when remove what they see as a stressor, and move on.The whole purpose is to make it 'easy' for the horse, so its a trusting partnership, with out any gagets or the need to strong arm them.
I find it very sad when I look at riders that as atheletes I should admire, but as riders their technical skill actually enables them to force horses to do things, hold them together literally, and when the horse is 'difficult' phyically abuse it or bung on yet another gadget, to further box its natural instinct to move away from stress/fear in.
Having seen and heard how several pro riders work, I would never buy on from one.

The only way to assese the horse stress acurately is the heart rate, a study on horses travelling showed that horses that appeared calm externally often had higher heart rates, so were more stressed than the ones that reacted more externally.
 
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Teaselmeg

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I see equestrians, it's time to act page has shut itself down. Interesting that they have chosen to do this, they say as too much arguing but it is odd as towards the end they went very towards maintaining the dressage status quo.
I unfollowed the other day, the page owner didn't want any discussion.
 

shortstuff99

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I don't want to necessarily put words in their mouths but I kind of get the impression they thought bad dressage/riding practices was something everyone outside of the UK did and we were all great in the UK. Now people are being caught out here and some of the riding they support is not so great they seem to have got very defensive about it.

Lots of the riders they support and champion have been known to be not so great behind the scenes which makes a slight mockery of the page.
 

suestowford

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I genuinely believed that CJD was one of the 'good guys' until all of this blew up, it's one of the reasons why I felt so let down by her actions. I had thought she was better than that.
I think what's most frustrating about the situation is that I don't think the FEI is aware, or would care if they did know, of the level of disgust at grass roots. Who among us, for instance, would be interested in riding like that? If that's what's required at top level, who would aspire to it? That could be what kills the sport in the end.
 

ester

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I see equestrians, it's time to act page has shut itself down. Interesting that they have chosen to do this, they say as too much arguing but it is odd as towards the end they went very towards maintaining the dressage status quo.
I was waiting for that, I was very disappointed in them saying we need to give the FEI time to sort it all given the original premise.
 

PoppyAnderson

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It won't stop. I feel such despair at what is seen day in and day out. There's a well known and pretty notorious Cheshire based dressage rider currently advertising a horse for sale. DL for those that know (most people in Cheshire tbh.....her reputation goes before her). The poor, poor horse is desperately unhappy at best and being forced into an outline. She couldn't give a monkeys. She'll just keep on making horses mouths bleed and no one seems willing or able to stop her. I hope she's reading this and recognises herself and knows how we all feel about her. She's a cruel and abusive bully and shouldn't be anywhere near horses.
 

Rowreach

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It won't stop because the higher echelons of the dressage world don't want it to, and there are still far too many lower down the pecking order who believe that the elite know what they're doing and anyone else isn't entitled to an opinion.

I'm in despair at the number of people I know who think all is well in the world of dressage.
 
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