HHO news article, genital muilation from safety stirrups?

Rowreach said:
Yup, after the dragging incident my kids had cages on their stirrups, which as well as being much safer also helped put their feet in the correct place and effectively improved their riding too.

The "safety" stirrups I've always hated are the bent leg ones, because by design they make the space which your foot can actually go through to get stuck much much bigger.
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Agreed, and even worse if the boots have laces on the front! Seen a few have to rearrange their feet in bent irons -shudder-
 
TBH I'd never thought of this but then it's a possibility with any hinge mechanism I suppose. The article also says not to have the stirrup bar locked up but I assumed that it was common knowledge not to do that.
 
EventingMum said:
TBH I'd never thought of this but then it's a possibility with any hinge mechanism I suppose. The article also says not to have the stirrup bar locked up but I assumed that it was common knowledge not to do that.
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You’d be surprised, I try and go for a hack whenever I end up somewhere interesting for work or holiday, and I always check stirrups / girth / reins before I get on. Twice I’ve had RS staff present me a horse with the stirrup bars up!

I generally take my own irons and leathers because I’ve got short legs and big feet, and that way, I know I’m safe as I can be.
 
Snowfilly said:
You’d be surprised, I try and go for a hack whenever I end up somewhere interesting for work or holiday, and I always check stirrups / girth / reins before I get on. Twice I’ve had RS staff present me a horse with the stirrup bars up!

I generally take my own irons and leathers because I’ve got short legs and big feet, and that way, I know I’m safe as I can be.
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Maybe I've been lucky as my horse education from a child onwards was always from educated people, a good RS, Pony Club, BHS etc. As a coach and a former RS proprietor suitable, safe tack is non negoitiable to me.
 
Snowfilly said:
You’d be surprised, I try and go for a hack whenever I end up somewhere interesting for work or holiday, and I always check stirrups / girth / reins before I get on. Twice I’ve had RS staff present me a horse with the stirrup bars up!

I generally take my own irons and leathers because I’ve got short legs and big feet, and that way, I know I’m safe as I can be.
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Similar experiences here. After having a girth buckle strap go at a well known riding school who should have know better, I triple check everything.

There was no way the state of said girth would have passed an inspection 😏
 
Snowfilly said:
You’d be surprised, I try and go for a hack whenever I end up somewhere interesting for work or holiday, and I always check stirrups / girth / reins before I get on. Twice I’ve had RS staff present me a horse with the stirrup bars up!

I generally take my own irons and leathers because I’ve got short legs and big feet, and that way, I know I’m safe as I can be.
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I’m undecided about stirrup bars! I always understood to have stirrup bars down but then had a horse rear full height and stirrup leathers came off saddle with the force that he reared with! Had no other choice but to push myself off, I was very lucky that I was not injured and actually landed on two feet still in the stirrups!

I still keep my stirrup bars down but wonder if that would have happened had I not!
 
They clearly have a potential to get caught on things that includes the rider as they fall .
Lots of equipment that has the potential to harm during stuff going wrong the pommel and cantle of the saddle , I know someone would badly hurt a shoulder when their arm ended up through the breastplate and dislocated the shoulder, broken cheekbones from stirrups are pretty common .
I think better safety stirrups exist now a days when I was a child they where the best thing available at that time .
Cortez is right we need to train horses that fussing on is not acceptable it causes accidents, doing gates is another things where drama can be caused the horse rubbing and fussing
I saw a horse that got its canine tooth through a martingale ring that was spectacular .
I was on a horse that got its martingale ring caught on long bit one those self closing gates luckily it was a crappy cheap martingale so it just broke, I always used cheap nasty martingales after that for hunting .
Cheeked bits also cause all sorts of how did he manage that type of drama .

Being dragged is the stuff of nightmares .
 
poiuytrewq said:
My daughter got stuck to a fence going through one of those narrow spring gateways by one. The pony fired through and somehow the hook part got stuck which of course made the pony panic.

I did away with them too after that. There are much better options on the market now anyway. I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced they could cause injuries such as a degloved penis though 🤢
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That happened to me with bent leg irons, they hooked on a gate latch. Luckily my pony is a saint and just stopped and I untacked and reassembled.
 
The lawyer in the article states he has known two cases and heard of some others. Most of us have never heard of an injury of that type so I presume the rate of incidents is fairly low. In comparison it would be interesting to know how many other serious injuries are caused to riders by all the other pieces of tack and equipment used as often as this type of safety stirrup. I suspect there are more cases of serious injury from buckles or leather straps stretching or breaking, reins and martingales becoming entangled with something or metal parts (eg bits) snapping.

And serious accidents can occur even when off the horse, including those to the genitals and/or affecting fertility: there was a newspaper article a couple of weeks ago about a lady who is infertile following a nasty kick to the abdomen by a run away pony (not hers) when she was a child.

I think if something is shown to be dangerous and there are safer alternatives (in this case other designs of safety stirrups such as caged stirrups) then that design of equipment should not continue to be made, sold or used, but the article this thread is about is rather sensationalist as it doesn't put this type of accident in context with the thousands of more common types of accidents horse riders have on a regular basis.
 
SilverLinings said:
The lawyer in the article states he has known two cases and heard of some others. Most of us have never heard of an injury of that type so I presume the rate of incidents is fairly low. In comparison it would be interesting to know how many other serious injuries are caused to riders by all the other pieces of tack and equipment used as often as this type of safety stirrup. I suspect there are more cases of serious injury from buckles or leather straps stretching or breaking, reins and martingales becoming entangled with something or metal parts (eg bits) snapping.

And serious accidents can occur even when off the horse, including those to the genitals and/or affecting fertility: there was a newspaper article a couple of weeks ago about a lady who is infertile following a nasty kick to the abdomen by a run away pony (not hers) when she was a child.

I think if something is shown to be dangerous and there are safer alternatives (in this case other designs of safety stirrups such as caged stirrups) then that design of equipment should not continue to be made, sold or used, but the article this thread is about is rather sensationalist as it doesn't put this type of accident in context with the thousands of more common types of accidents horse riders have on a regular basis.
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Have a look at the links I posted this morning and some of the comments.This was raised in 2015. The H&H article is pretty poor admittedly. It's more common than I realised and the link to the stirrups shows that some makes have a pretty brutal book on them.

I do a lot of safety training in another sport and one of the most ridiculous, and worrying, comments I had from a senior coach was that we had a great safety record "because nobody has died". Well actually somebody has since he said that, and there have been plenty of very close calls because people are complacent and they don't share incidents where learning might be had to prevent similar or worse accidents happening

It's not about H&S gone mad, it's about using the information available at the time to improve safety.

I've never been a fan of Peacock irons but after today I have even more reason not to be..
 
HopOnTrot said:
That happened to me with bent leg irons, they hooked on a gate latch. Luckily my pony is a saint and just stopped and I untacked and reassembled.
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I had that once too! It wasn’t even a bloody gate, just an old gate post that my horse spooked into. We didn’t get off quite as easily as he freaked out and threw himself on the floor whilst attached by the saddle. It was terrible and snapped the saddle tree clean in half. I managed to bail out and eventually for the girth undone somehow. I hate those catches.
 
The only drag we have ever had was in Peacocks. The elastic went, but the foot was able to twist and 'lock' between top and bottom just the same. Fortunately the pony stopped dead from canter with the small one still dragging under him, and only one hoof-shaped bruise.

Bent sided for me, for preference.
 
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