Liberty horses

Those that do the country/county show circuits.

There's plenty of overseas acts that I have really enjoyed (though plenty of them have also been complained about too) and I get that we are going to get cavalry/kings troop/mounted police on repeat regardless ?
 
I've not seen this year's but I am getting sick of seeing these liberty acts. The horses hardly ever look happy, and sometimes not very comfortable either.

They are largely all the same and there is something a bit distasteful about the way the horses are used for entertainment that I can't quite put my finger on.

I'd prefer to see more performances by the likes of the police, the household cavalry, stunt riding/driving, classical high school dressage, historical re-enactments etc. and less of this repetitive liberty stuff.
 
Kat said:
They are largely all the same and there is something a bit distasteful about the way the horses are used for entertainment that I can't quite put my finger on.
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All horses you see at a show or competition are being used for entertainment. For me, the thing about liberty though is a) asking the horse to lie down or generally be in a vulnerable position (which I can't imagine any horse being truly comfortable doing in a setting like LIHS) and b) the nonsense about everything we see is proof of a bond.

I'd prefer to see more performances by the likes of the police, the household cavalry, stunt riding/driving, classical high school dressage, historical re-enactments etc. and less of this repetitive liberty stuff.
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Same here. Also: jousting, Western disciplines (especially cutting, mounted shooting, reining), working equitation, mounted archery, tent pegging
 
stangs said:
All horses you see at a show or competition are being used for entertainment. For me, the thing about liberty though is a) asking the horse to lie down or generally be in a vulnerable position (which I can't imagine any horse being truly comfortable doing in a setting like LIHS) and b) the nonsense about everything we see is proof of a bond.


Same here. Also: jousting, Western disciplines (especially cutting, mounted shooting, reining), working equitation, mounted archery, tent pegging
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Yeah, I get that all horses at the show are being used for entertainment. I struggle to articulate (or understand) what it is that makes me uncomfortable about liberty horses but not say a stunt riding display. The bond rubbish and the guy wafting around flicking his hair in a flouncy shirt/cape/whatever really doesn't help though!
 
Kat said:
Yeah, I get that all horses at the show are being used for entertainment. I struggle to articulate (or understand) what it is that makes me uncomfortable about liberty horses but not say a stunt riding display. The bond rubbish and the guy wafting around flicking his hair in a flouncy shirt/cape/whatever really doesn't help though!
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for me its exactly that, trying to pull the wool over non-horsey eyes (even naive horsey folk get sucked in). that the horses are magically doing it of their own accord and are a-ok with having a dog jump all over them or getting flipped on their backs and "hugging" the bloke. ugh

Displays of types of equitation are up front exhibitions of training.
 
ester said:
Those that do the country/county show circuits.

There's plenty of overseas acts that I have really enjoyed (though plenty of them have also been complained about too) and I get that we are going to get cavalry/kings troop/mounted police on repeat regardless ?
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There are stacks of stunt teams here, some better than others. I'd like to see some working equitation with different breeds (guess cow penning might not work but its so fun to watch), mounted archery (you can use blunts for demos), competitive horse ball (if they want Europeans seeing as they are especially good at it), tilting, tent pegging, jousting, even a good musical dressage/drill ride-anything different than the usual stuff they keep trotting out (pun intented).
 
I have been training my Shetland with target training and she is the angriest looking pony while doing it. I don’t know if it’s the food thing as she is very, very food motivated. Anyway I found it interesting watching the liberty lot and comparing it to my Shetland as a lot of the same faces. My sporthorse who is interested in food but it’s not life or death quite so much is much happier looking on target training.
 
pistolpete said:
Or maybe this sort of show is just circus and we don’t really want that here anymore so we?
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But why is something considered circusy regarded as unnatural whereas Grand Prix dressage is OK. I didn't see the display in question but from the horses point of view, they are asked to perform movements to order like most of what we ask of them. The training and execution may be at fault and some methods are more sympathetic than others but I'm not sure the end result is inherently kinder or not.

Plus are horses worked at liberty more able to express irritation, whereas a ridden horse under closer control is more suppressed.
 
I watched it last night and tried to keep an open mind........

However, what I actually "saw" were angry horses - and there was this borderline aggression going on all the time which at times was pretty blatent. Was this horses enjoying what they were doing?? That question was foremost in my mind.

I particularly detested the whole "circus" aspect and particularly so when the horses were made to "bow" the knee to the human; and the thing with the dogs really bothered me a great deal.

I'd far rather see a true "natural horsemanship" person such as Emma Massingdale - or Monty Roberts even (tho' he was too much of a showman for my taste).
 
I need to watch the TV version but in real life it did look like the chestnut actually went for him near the end on saturday evening.

People do lots of things with horses and I really enjoy seeing different stuff from around the world. I was really surprised they had him back in 2018 when he was only there 2016.
 
I don't particularly like liberty displays, they're not my thing and they are obviously limited in what they can do. I find that most horsey people would prefer to watch horses doing something useful (i.e. being ridden), but the general public seem to like seeing horses running about and interacting with someone in a "bond-y" type way. We all know that's mostly rubbish, but it's part of the circus tradition and has a long history in entertainment.

I have trained a few horses to work at liberty (for film work), and have worked with some legendary circus trainers to learn how to do it. In order to get horses to do what you want them to do requires excellent knowledge of how to influence through body language, timing and positioning, but mostly it's about making horses move where you want them to with dominance. Understandably if you keep doing this repetitively it's going to p!ss off the less submissive members of the herd; you might observe that they make bad faces at each other as well as the trainer.

Unlike some of you I don't require the horses to "enjoy" doing a display, any more than I need to feel that horses "enjoy" running a race (you'll see a lot of unhappy, aggressive faces there too), jumping, GP dressaging, or any other of the various strange and completely unnatural things we ask them to do for our entertainment.
 
I watched it twice on the TV. I didn't enjoy it- it all looked very forced. Did I mishear or did the commentator say he hadn't performed at Olympia before? It all seemed very familiar - especially the dog. Was it the same horse in each performance that had to stand up on its back legs for quite some time? All I could think was what was that doing to its hocks? They used to have a variety of acts at this point in the performance- now it always seems to be something like this. I have to say I didn't particularly enjoy the dressage either- when did horses start having front legs that move like a spider's in trot? I enjoyed watching the jumping more as the horses moved like normal horses.
 
But horses jumping in the style they are trained for show jumping is not something they would do naturally, they would be more likely to jump fast and flat if they had to get over an obstacle.

Very little we do with horses is 'natural' and I think it's more we are so used to seeing certain activities that we don't really see them anymore.

The thing I have never liked is all the galloping around pulling cannons, not because it is natural or unnatural but because if the timing was out or a horse tripped, the accident would be horrible.
 
I believe play and aggression are very close to each other with horses and teaching horses to 'play' with humans can be done by eliciting enough aggression to motivate the horses while keeping a lid on it. Some people are more skilled than others at keeping the horses sweet and some horses definitely enjoy threatening their human just as much as the other horses. I am not sure it is unhappiness.
 
criso said:
But horses jumping in the style they are trained for show jumping is not something they would do naturally, they would be more likely to jump fast and flat if they had to get over an obstacle.

Very little we do with horses is 'natural' and I think it's more we are so used to seeing certain activities that we don't really see them anymore.

The thing I have never liked is all the galloping around pulling cannons, not because it is natural or unnatural but because if the timing was out or a horse tripped, the accident would be horrible.
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No would be about it - it happened one year, can't remember whether it was Olympia or Windsor?

That said, they practice, practice, practice, and their harness is designed to be fallen out it in case of accidents. The two HCav horses colliding last night was caused by one getting the striding wrong and tripping over the lance, split second thing type. Those four horses are technically ridden by the most experienced soldiers too.
 
I'd rather see more dog agility as its great fun, and some fly ball, which the crowd could get behindand cheer for the dogs. I'm not even a dog person but it's really exciting to watch and the dogs look like they are having a fantastic time. I'm also not into dog dancing . Perhaps have more classes of dog agility eg some of the people new to it etc.

The mounted police rides used to be exciting too, jumping through fire, taking their saddles off etc

It needs to be exciting to non horsey people too, and those things would be, anything dressage related bores me so would bore a non horsey person even more.

Perhaps show some scurry driving or mounted police, I used to enjoy the stunt riders as well. I like fast, exciting, dare I say "dangerous" entertainment. This is also more likely to appeal to non horsey people too. OH enjoyed the dogs most, the liberty and musical ride the least. he is very unhorsey. Hes also enjoyed the scurry driving at Hickstead before. All events that get the crowd excited and involved.

Perhaps if they're that keen for some "liberty" work how about horse agility?
 
i watched it last night and found it very boring and i hated the horse being made to lay on its back and have the dog jump on it. i was hoping it may have been better but thought it was a waste of time...now the dog agility was great fun and all the dogs seemed to enjoy themselves..
 
I know it's a HOYS and Windsor thing but does 'Olympia' ever do games? The mini-major's always popular so why not do similar in a games format?
 
teapot said:
I know it's a HOYS and Windsor thing but does 'Olympia' ever do games? The mini-major's always popular so why not do similar in a games format?
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Mounted games is wonderful for non-horsey spectators. They used to show the Prince Philip Cup at HOYS as part of the TV coverage. I think having that on tv again would be amazing, ordinary kids on ordinary ponies but genuinely exciting. Easy to understand the rules and concept too.
 
milliepops said:
for me its exactly that, trying to pull the wool over non-horsey eyes (even naive horsey folk get sucked in). that the horses are magically doing it of their own accord and are a-ok with having a dog jump all over them or getting flipped on their backs and "hugging" the bloke. ugh

Displays of types of equitation are up front exhibitions of training.
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Yes I think that is a big part of it, and possibly a sort of respect thing, a bit like a performing seal.


There seems to be a weird ego thing with much of this liberty work "my horse is doing this of his own free will because he loves me" rather than a stunt demo that would be more of a "my horse does this because of careful and respectful training".


As I say my thinking is a bit muddled on it but it sounds as though I'm not the only one that isn't keen!
 
Chianti said:
I watched it twice on the TV. I didn't enjoy it- it all looked very forced. Did I mishear or did the commentator say he hadn't performed at Olympia before? It all seemed very familiar - especially the dog. Was it the same horse in each performance that had to stand up on its back legs for quite some time? All I could think was what was that doing to its hocks? They used to have a variety of acts at this point in the performance- now it always seems to be something like this. I have to say I didn't particularly enjoy the dressage either- when did horses start having front legs that move like a spider's in trot? I enjoyed watching the jumping more as the horses moved like normal horses.
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He appeared in 2016 and 2018
 
teapot said:
No would be about it - it happened one year, can't remember whether it was Olympia or Windsor?

That said, they practice, practice, practice, and their harness is designed to be fallen out it in case of accidents. The two HCav horses colliding last night was caused by one getting the striding wrong and tripping over the lance, split second thing type. Those four horses are technically ridden by the most experienced soldiers too.
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I haven't caught up what happened but on saturday they pulled the lances further apart for one horse so there was a gap rather than it jumping.

Kings troop I did watch a trooper knocked down at the royal welsh- she was fine thankfully (that's definitely a better display in a bigger arena than olympia though).

CCL the mounted police still perform regularly- it was their turn 2017
 
planete said:
I believe play and aggression are very close to each other with horses and teaching horses to 'play' with humans can be done by eliciting enough aggression to motivate the horses while keeping a lid on it. Some people are more skilled than others at keeping the horses sweet and some horses definitely enjoy threatening their human just as much as the other horses. I am not sure it is unhappiness.
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It's funny you say about play and aggression one of my horses will try and bite me if I play too long hence why I keep it short! It almost does get a bit like they are playing with another horse not a human.
 
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