FEI rollkur cop-out!

[cptrayes]

The FEI have defined rollkur as being hyperflexion created with aggressive force. I can put my warmblood in rollkur with a double bridle with no visible force at all. In fact I can put my hunter in it in his pelham with a wiggle of my fingers and a firm leg too.

So what exactly have they banned? Nothing!

 

[phoebeast]

rollkur or an outline? it's hard to define a difference really. i think it's more to do with using force rather than encouragement.

 

[MarcelDufour]

The FEI says a lot, but indeed did not changed a thing. They hope that with this anouncement the public will stop protesting. I think they are wrong there, since the public is not stupid. They don't care what it is called, rollkur, hyperflexing or LDR, if still the horses are going with their noses on their chests, the protes will go on, and get stronger. The best way is to keep on taking pictures and video's and post them as often as we can. That will change them at the end.

 

[Natch]

Hello MarcelDufor and welcome to the forum, why don't you tell us a bit about yourself?

QR to OP, Isn't thee currently work being done to define the effect of Rollkur on the horse? I think the problem is that so far no negative effects have been proven...

 

[cptrayes]

Naturally,

I don't need feel that I need to wait for a researcher to tell me that if I put my horse in that outline for more that a few minutes he is either going to end up with a sore neck or put stresses somewhere else that his body won't cope with. And it takes no "aggressive force" to get him there, which is why the FEI ruling is complete nonsense.

The wastage rate of modern dressage horses is absolutely immense. A friend of mine has just had two £25,000-plus 4 year old horses fail the vet on xrays. A huge proportion of dressage horses are being kept sound with repeated hock injections. Huge numbers are also unsound by their early teens, if not before.

While the current training methods may not appear to hurt the individual horse like Totilas, we need to look behind the scenes at how many other horses are falling by the wayside without anyone taking any notice.

 

[HBII]

Yes I agree could be difficult to ... define ....

 

[MarcelDufour]

There is not so much to tell. But I will try briefly. I'm a professional showjumper from Holland, and have been showing the biggest shows all over the world. I was former Dutch Champion. Therefore I know axactly what the FEI did. They gave the public a sausage, to keep them happy, while they shoud have gave them a steak!. But visit http://www.fei.org/Media/News_Centre/News/Pages/summ.aspx?newsName=news-RoundTable-9Feb10.aspx and you'll reed for yourself that they state that 'agressive riding' is not allowed. Still riders can pull horses with the noses on their chests, and who's gonna say it was agressive or not? For sure not the steward who have to much respect foor the topriders!
The FEI did this trick for the second time. Just change the name and pray that the public will shut up.

 

[cptrayes]

Perhaps you can tell me about my horse's sire Opan?? He was supposed to have been a Dtuch Grand prix showjumper but my boy is too frightened to jump anything )) He's great at dressage, thankfully, but I have always wondered if his father was actually any good.

 

[MissMincePie&Brandy]

Reply to Naturally's Post;
I think you are mistaken. There is evidence emerging that proves excessive use of rollkur can and does cause significant problems, causing pressure on the ligaments, muscles and the vertibrae. The worst cases can be seen on x rays showing the skeletal frame. Due to the stress on the back of the skull from the overflexion, new bone grows! Imagine how much suffering the horse had been through for that to occur.

 

[Natch]

CPTrays, for the record like you I am very uncomfortable with the idea of Rollkur and certainly won't be attempting it myself. If you take a look at my signature and if you knew what I do with my time you'd know I certainly don't consider the existance of a scientific study to be the be all and end all of the existance of something.

However, for a body such as the FEI to ban something so contraversial, where there are as many advocates as there are protesters, I think they probably do need to look at the evidence - hard evidence, not theories, because based on that there is a stalemate.

I absolutely agree there are some abhorrant things go on in the dressage world, and to get some meaningful data on the wastage rate compared with other disciplines would certainly be a step forwards. That in itself probably won't be enough evidence against the specific issue of Rollkur, though. I am equally as frustrated as you when I feel that we are several years off any meaningful studies on the psychological effect of Rollkur, and many more off the physiological; as with any study on horses, its expensive, time consuming and in great danger of being ethically unsound. In the meantime, many horses will go through training with rollkur. Its far from ideal in my book, but if we ban something "just in case" where does that lead to?

To the other person who said there IS scientific evidence on the ill effects of Rollkur, I would love it if you could direct me towards them

I am aware there is a theory based on biomechanics as to the stresses and strains rollkur, but believed that it wasn't backed up by scientific study on real horses.

Some of the research so far care of google scholar:
Dressage horses have LOWER stress levels than leisure horses

This one found that horses prefered being ridden in a normal head position and that Rollkur was associated with more fear behaviour

This (unpublished I think) says Rollkur meant the horse worked harder but no raised stress levels were found

That was the first few citations, but there's enough to see that there is conflict over whether or not horses ridden in rollkur are more stressed or not, and most of these studies could be highly criticised for their methodology (then again equine behaviour is notoriously difficult to study scientifically)

I haven't found a single physiological study, and that is what I think would sway those who have the power over these decisions.

 

[chestnut cob]

[ QUOTE ]
Hello MarcelDufor and welcome to the forum, why don't you tell us a bit about yourself?

QR to OP, Isn't thee currently work being done to define the effect of Rollkur on the horse? I think the problem is that so far no negative effects have been proven...

[/ QUOTE ]

Have you read Gerd Heuschmann's (sp) book Naturally? worth a read and some interesting info about (off the top of my head) calcification of the 3rd vertebrae in rollkured horses. I'd need to go back to it, which I can't as leant it to someone, exactly what he says but he's looked at a lot of horses who have been worked this way and talks about the detrimental physical effects. Not to mention psychological

 

[chestnut cob]

At a very quick glance, the first article seems to have looked at only a handful of horses and monitors their heart rate I think? Consider that those horses studied are probably used to working in this manner, they are resigned to it. Secondly, a guy I know works as a vet for one of the university animal houses (ie, research facilities). He is responsible for monitoring the stress levels of the animals before they get to a point of repetitive and damaging behaviours. This is done by measuring levels of stress hormones regularly - I only have time to scan the abstract of that article but I don't think they looked at stress hormones? Some horses will deal with stress better than others, like people, but that doesn't make working them in rollkur right.

In reality it is going to be v difficult to study these horses - can you imagine Anky handing over Salinero for a full work up by Heuschmann or similar??

 

[Natch]

[ QUOTE ]
Have you read Gerd Heuschmann's (sp) book Naturally? worth a read and some interesting info about (off the top of my head) calcification of the 3rd vertebrae in rollkured horses.

[/ QUOTE ]

I haven't read the book, so thanks for the reference I will look it up

I think I have read articles by him and remember thinking that there were holes in his argument simply because it didn't study enough horses and there were too many other variables (same with many equine studies though). Annoyingly now I come to search, I can find references to, but not his actual work

[ QUOTE ]
At a very quick glance, the first article seems to have looked at only a handful of horses and monitors their heart rate I think? Consider that those horses studied are probably used to working in this manner, they are resigned to it. Secondly, a guy I know works as a vet for one of the university animal houses (ie, research facilities). He is responsible for monitoring the stress levels of the animals before they get to a point of repetitive and damaging behaviours. This is done by measuring levels of stress hormones regularly - I only have time to scan the abstract of that article but I don't think they looked at stress hormones? Some horses will deal with stress better than others, like people, but that doesn't make working them in rollkur right.

[/ QUOTE ]

One of the other articles measures stress hormones. My personal theory about the first is that it is likely to be learned helplessness in dressage horses - I think this is one of the problems with the production of dressage horses in general, switching off/shutting down in response to a highly regumented and highly unnatural routine. Some go the opposite way and have more obvious breakdowns. But those who just shut down and go through automatic pilot movements will perhaps not exhibit stress, but the evidence of lack of stress where there should be in a normal horse is cause for concern enough. I don't think the presence of stress hormones in the short term is a problem. To me, my own little theory, not backed up in the slightest you understand

My point in putting those links out here is that I don't feel there is much unanimous or solid evidence about rollkur at present. All of the above articles can be torn apart in terms of validity.

[ QUOTE ]
In reality it is going to be v difficult to study these horses - can you imagine Anky handing over Salinero for a full work up by Heuschmann or similar??

[/ QUOTE ]

I know.

Worse too, I feel perhaps the only way to truly understand the physical effects of rollkur is to set up a team of test horses and treat them all exactly the same, do rollkur on half of them, and euthinase them to find out the physical damage to their muscoskeletal systems. Bagsy not me

I don't have any answers. I think the FEI faces a tough decision and is hoping someone else will do the necessary research and provide conclusive evidence one way or the other.

 

[cptrayes]

Naturally I'd love to know who you are and what you do but you do not post under your real name like I do. From a post you put on another thread you seem to know Chris Armour and probably therefor know me but I have no idea who you are. Anonymity on the internet and some of the abusive behaviour it allows (not yours) is a bit of a bugbear of mine, sorry

My point was not whether it is right or wrong to use rollkur. My point is that the FEI have banned absolutely nothing and they are treating us like children in pretending that they have. Aggressive force isn't necessary to achieve rollkur, so it will not be stopped. There was no point whatsoever in their announcement other than to try to fool us into thinking that they are doing something.

I'm all for more research, but not for being treated like an idiot by the FEI

 

[Natch]

[ QUOTE ]
Naturally I'd love to know who you are and what you do but you do not post under your real name like I do. From a post you put on another thread you seem to know Chris Armour and probably therefor know me but I have no idea who you are. Anonymity on the internet and some of the abusive behaviour it allows (not yours) is a bit of a bugbear of mine, sorry

My point was not whether it is right or wrong to use rollkur. My point is that the FEI have banned absolutely nothing and they are treating us like children in pretending that they have. Aggressive force isn't necessary to achieve rollkur, so it will not be stopped. There was no point whatsoever in their announcement other than to try to fool us into thinking that they are doing something.

I'm all for more research, but not for being treated like an idiot by the FEI

[/ QUOTE ]

CPTrays, apart from suspecting you live in the same county as me, (as a result of the posts you have made about Cheshire hunt) I don't know you from adam I'm afraid - nor Chris, I just admired the photos, followed your posts about it with great interest and wish I'd seen it in person!

FWIW I had no idea what your username meant, and wouldn't have done until you replied to my PM with your full name

Before I looked into barefoot I thought it was the name of the barefoot school of thought you followed and I had simply not heard of it!

 

[cptrayes]

I have misundertood you Naturally, because you posted about the training Chris had done with his horse. I can see now that you must have read it in the article in H&H. As I haven't read it myself I thought you must have personally known what training Chris did. Apologies. We are indeed neighbours in Cheshire. Id be happy to show you my barefooters any time you want to see them.