Pinch boots, rapping and other forms of SJ torture

RunToEarth said:
There are a lot of novice owners out there who know full well their saddle is not a good fit, but aren't prepared to put up the cash to sort it out. Go down to your local unaff. Sj circuit and look at the amount of horses in ill fitting tack/boots/complete with overweight jockeys - it's not that they're all unaware, they are just choosing to be ignorant, and in my mind that is deliberate. I told a teenager last week out hunting that her saddle was too big for her horse - she knew, she was getting a new one for her birthday in May...
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You see the exact same thing at affiliated events! I don't know any professional SJ producers that have a saddle fitted for each horse, they'll have a few saddles and make adjustments with pads/thick wool numnahs etc.
 
popsdosh said:
I want to make it very clear I dont condone it but have seen it done where the horse was not even aware of what was happening it was that skillfully done.
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The fact that the horse changed its behaviour (presumably) must mean the treatment impinged at some level and I can quite imagine that it may have seemed the horse wasn't aware of what was happening - but knowing that this was the case is another matter entirely (imo)!
 
junglefairy said:
You see the exact same thing at affiliated events! I don't know any professional SJ producers that have a saddle fitted for each horse, they'll have a few saddles and make adjustments with pads/thick wool numnahs etc.
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There is a difference between an experienced horseman who knows when a saddle fits and when it doesn't making adjustments with padding from one horse to another, and an inexperienced nitwit who either doesn't know or doesn't care about the damage she could be doing. I know people with more horses than saddles, but they have the nous and experience to recognise when a saddle is causing a problem and know what to do about it. Someone like me, on the other hand, who lacks the experience or confidence in my own judgement to know whether the issue is the saddle or my riding, needs to have the saddler out every 3 months or so to make sure things are as they should be.

None of this excuses anyone employing unethical training methods, of course it doesn't, but these things aren't black and white. Most of us keep horses because we want to ride them, and if our riding and horsemanship isn't perfect, however good our intentions are, and however hard we are trying to learn and improve, that can have welfare implications for the horse. If you're vaguely ethical and responsible, which I imagine most users of this forum consider themselves to be, you try incredibly hard to minimise those impacts, and hopefully succeed most of the time.

I have always tried to do my sincere best for and with my horses, but on the occasions I have got it wrong, the horse neither knew nor cared whether it was through a well intentioned mistake or deliberate cruelty, he just knew things were not pleasing to him.
 
fburton said:
The fact that the horse changed its behaviour (presumably) must mean the treatment impinged at some level and I can quite imagine that it may have seemed the horse wasn't aware of what was happening - but knowing that this was the case is another matter entirely (imo)!
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Maybe it looks prettier to you if a horse learns the same lesson in the ring crashing its legs at a fence which we see all to often.I suppose its down to your perception of what rapping entails or whether you just assume however it is carried out its bad. Have you ever seen it done as that is the only true thing you can base your comments on! Like a lot of things done properly it is a stress free training aid (less stressful than knocking poles out) Done by the wrong person in the wrong way it is not acceptable and I would be the first person to sort them out!
 
Surely it is the difference between the jump being the jump and if the horse doesn't jump high enough or opts to stop regardless of the reason, then the horse acted based on what the jump was.
If you are rapping you are moving the goal posts for the horse, the jump isn't actually the jump. Horse assesses jump, decides which action to take (jump or stop) could quite possibly have assessed totally accurately the height to jump but bashes it because the jump has been changed.
 
Woah. If it's taking that sort of training to get a horse to 'jump correctly' maybe its time to accept that the horse is actually not a jumper and should be redirected to another discipline. Sounds horrendous!
 
ester said:
Surely it is the difference between the jump being the jump and if the horse doesn't jump high enough or opts to stop regardless of the reason, then the horse acted based on what the jump was.
If you are rapping you are moving the goal posts for the horse, the jump isn't actually the jump. Horse assesses jump, decides which action to take (jump or stop) could quite possibly have assessed totally accurately the height to jump but bashes it because the jump has been changed.
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I think you will find you have a different idea of rapping to what I have which is the point I am trying to make. As I have seen it done there is no bashing anything just a rubbing sensation for the horse no different to a dressage rider using a schooling whip to encourage a movement. As I say it does not help ungenuine horses at all and actually works best with naturally careful jumpers to help them improve their technique over a fence.
 
I'd happily substitute bashing for rubbing or any sort of word you would like to use for contact in my post, the point about changing the goalposts stands regardless of the resulting pressure detected by the horse.
 
ester said:
I'd happily substitute bashing for rubbing or any sort of word you would like to use for contact in my post, the point about changing the goalposts stands regardless of the resulting pressure detected by the horse.
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Ive never seen the height of the fence change!
 
popsdosh said:
Ive never seen the height of the fence change!
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I thought I knew what rapping was, now I think I need to ask for an explanation.

I thought it was where people held each end of the pole and raised it as the horse jumps the fence so that the horse hits it. Can't figure out how that would be done without changing the height of the fence, so I must have got it wrong?
 
The thing that stands out for me in this thread is the way that supporters of the methods of training in the thread tittle, seem to be saying that because pain can be inflicted in all sorts of ways, it makes it acceptable for pain/discomfort to be inflicted by the above methods. There also seems to be the suggestion that if "professional" producers/riders cause the pain/discomfort that too is more acceptable than if caused by "leisure" riders. That all appears a little odd to me.
 
popsdosh said:
I think you will find you have a different idea of rapping to what I have which is the point I am trying to make. As I have seen it done there is no bashing anything just a rubbing sensation for the horse no different to a dressage rider using a schooling whip to encourage a movement. As I say it does not help ungenuine horses at all and actually works best with naturally careful jumpers to help them improve their technique over a fence.
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The word is *rapping* it's not rubbing or giving it a cosy. It's done with a cane and the horses legs are hit as it goes over the jump. The definition of rap is a strike, sharp blow, smack. It doesn't mean rub, however you want to "wrap" it up.
 
FestiveG said:
The thing that stands out for me in this thread is the way that supporters of the methods of training in the thread tittle, seem to be saying that because pain can be inflicted in all sorts of ways, it makes it acceptable for pain/discomfort to be inflicted by the above methods. There also seems to be the suggestion that if "professional" producers/riders cause the pain/discomfort that too is more acceptable than if caused by "leisure" riders. That all appears a little odd to me.
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Not sure what thread your reading .
No one on here has supported these methods of training .
 
FfionWinnie said:
The word is *rapping* it's not rubbing or giving it a cosy. It's done with a cane and the horses legs are hit as it goes over the jump. The definition of rap is a strike, sharp blow, smack. It doesn't mean rub, however you want to "wrap" it up.
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Ah, so different from 'poling' where the pole is lifted at the last moment deliberately to cause the horse to hit itself?

(See, e.g. http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?221416-Poling-(not-Rapping!)-the-show-jumper)
 
popsdosh said:
I think you will find you have a different idea of rapping to what I have which is the point I am trying to make. As I have seen it done there is no bashing anything just a rubbing sensation for the horse no different to a dressage rider using a schooling whip to encourage a movement. As I say it does not help ungenuine horses at all and actually works best with naturally careful jumpers to help them improve their technique over a fence.
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I don't really think you even seen rapping it's not a rubbing senesation you can not rub the legs of a horse as it goes over a fence .
It's called rapping for a reason that is what it sounds like when I saw it done it was done with an alluminium pole .
It's not nice and it's not fair and it does not work .
 
FfionWinnie said:
The word is *rapping* it's not rubbing or giving it a cosy. It's done with a cane and the horses legs are hit .
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So do you differentiate between rapping with a cane over a jump and the work that Mandolo Mendez (amongst many others) will do with a bamboo cane and a horse in hand in order to establish straightness/forwardness or whatever or what the dressage peeps do to enhance piaffe?

Surely, it's just a matter of degree? If the hind limbs aren't elevated sufficiently in piaffe in response to the touch then the force behind the touch increases in order to stimulate a reaction.
 
FfionWinnie said:
The word is *rapping* it's not rubbing or giving it a cosy. It's done with a cane and the horses legs are hit as it goes over the jump. The definition of rap is a strike, sharp blow, smack. It doesn't mean rub, however you want to "wrap" it up.
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I guess popsdosh uses some dead sheep then??!
 
gunnergundog said:
So do you differentiate between rapping with a cane over a jump and the work that Mandolo Mendez (amongst many others) will do with a bamboo cane and a horse in hand in order to establish straightness/forwardness or whatever or what the dressage peeps do to enhance piaffe?

Surely, it's just a matter of degree? If the hind limbs aren't elevated sufficiently in piaffe in response to the touch then the force behind the touch increases in order to stimulate a reaction.
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The issue for me is that using a cane (or similar) to encourage a horse in ground work is more controlled (not that I do it) and the handler can control the level of contact. When lifting an item for a horse to strike when the horse is moving towards it at speed, with power removes a large element of control, also the horse when jumping is already trying and being penalised for not succeeding.
 
gunnergundog said:
So do you differentiate between rapping with a cane over a jump and the work that Mandolo Mendez (amongst many others) will do with a bamboo cane and a horse in hand in order to establish straightness/forwardness or whatever or what the dressage peeps do to enhance piaffe?

Surely, it's just a matter of degree? If the hind limbs aren't elevated sufficiently in piaffe in response to the touch then the force behind the touch increases in order to stimulate a reaction.
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I don't know anything about dressage so I've no idea what they get up to but I would imagine it would be much easier to genuinely touch rather than strike a horse who's on the ground compared to one that is in the air clearing large fences with extreme forward motion. Also, once the horse is committed and in the air it's completely unable to change what its doing where as in the situation you describe the horse has the opportunity to immediately do it differently and then escape the touch which is (potentially) a positive training situation where as rapping a show jumper never is in my opinion. Works well if you want to teach the horse to be scared of people standing near the fence tho!
 
gunnergundog said:
Surely, it's just a matter of degree? If the hind limbs aren't elevated sufficiently in piaffe in response to the touch then the force behind the touch increases in order to stimulate a reaction.
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I think whether it was a difference in degree or in kind would depend on whether, in the piaffe example, the tapping is administered continually until the desired reaction is obtained - in which case it would be negative reinforcement - in contrast to what is in effect a one-off (though possibly repeated) punishment for the undesired behaviour of not lifting the feet high enough. However, it is true that an aversive stimulus is used in both cases. A practical consequence of this difference was mentioned a couple of posts above by twiggy2.
 
FfionWinnie said:
I don't know anything about dressage so I've no idea what they get up to but I would imagine it would be much easier to genuinely touch rather than strike a horse who's on the ground compared to one that is in the air clearing large fences with extreme forward motion. Also, once the horse is committed and in the air it's completely unable to change what its doing where as in the situation you describe the horse has the opportunity to immediately do it differently and then escape the touch which is (potentially) a positive training situation where as rapping a show jumper never is in my opinion. Works well if you want to teach the horse to be scared of people standing near the fence tho!
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It certainly teaches them to be afraid of people in the ring .
When H arrived he would bronc if some one on the ground went near a fence it was seriously anti social it took years to gain his confidence .
It did not make him careful it made him anxious because he simply could not work out how to solve the problem because his canter was not good enough .
 
gunnergundog said:
So do you differentiate between rapping with a cane over a jump and the work that Mandolo Mendez (amongst many others) will do with a bamboo cane and a horse in hand in order to establish straightness/forwardness or whatever or what the dressage peeps do to enhance piaffe?

Surely, it's just a matter of degree? If the hind limbs aren't elevated sufficiently in piaffe in response to the touch then the force behind the touch increases in order to stimulate a reaction.
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Good analogy, and no, I wouldn't see a huge amount of difference between the two. Tapping a horse to elicit an elevation response in a commonly used technique, which has, like any other form of training, various degrees of intensity. Whacking the horses legs, whether in piaffe or over a jump, is excessive and unkind (and unlikely to achieve the perceived goal). A judicious, expertly timed tap, however is entirely different and I have seen this used with excellent results in both dressage training AND jumping - i.e. the horse calmly accepting and understanding the request to lift the legs higher/put more effort in. The difference is in the degree, and the skill of the trainer: badly done it CAN be torture; expertly done it is a beneficial tool. As has been the theme of this thread all along, it all depends on the education and the tact of the rider/trainer.
 
FestiveG said:
The thing that stands out for me in this thread is the way that supporters of the methods of training in the thread tittle, seem to be saying that because pain can be inflicted in all sorts of ways, it makes it acceptable for pain/discomfort to be inflicted by the above methods. There also seems to be the suggestion that if "professional" producers/riders cause the pain/discomfort that too is more acceptable than if caused by "leisure" riders. That all appears a little odd to me.
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It is!
 
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