Stamping out whip abuse in unaff competitions

wellsat

wellsat

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I went to groom for friends yesterday at an Arena Eventing Competition and was really sickened to see what I felt to be whip abuse by a number of competitors. I don't have an easy horse, I never have had but I don't feel that it is acceptable to smack your horse on numerous occassions in the course of completing a round. A number of competitors were presenting their horses very poorly to the jumps, not "riding" them at the jump in the slightest and then smacking the poor horse repeatedly when it refused. One other competitor smacked her horse round the entire course.:(

I have emailed the organisers of the event to express my concerns but I don't blame them in the slightest, it was a very well run show and not their fault if some competitors rode very agressively.

I'd be interested to know what people think about excessive whip use? Is this something we could get organisers to make a stand on if enough of us spoke out against it?
 
All affiliated discplines have rules about acceptable use of the whip, as do RC's and PC's. Most unaff comps usually say they are following the rules for one of the abpive, so it should be quite clear what is acceptable and what is not.

If you feel strongly you should complain at the time - you may need to put a deposit down, rather than leave it until after. Its vey difficult to deal with this kind of problem after the event.

As an organisers of RC shows, it is something I have had to deal with on occasion, but it is nigh on impossible to do it days later, as others who may have witnessed it are no longer immediately available to speak to.
 
Trouble is, this is not something that is confined to unaff, or even the lower levels of affiliated competition. I have seen many people hit them horse when I would deem it unfair. My favourite is seeing drop the contact at a fence, horse stops and gets a smack - lesson well taught then :rolleyes:

I am by no means a bunny hugger, and have in the past given horses a good smack when needed, but I think FAR too many people go for the whip/spurs before they even think of anything else. In fact I think spurs are worse, as they are less notcieable :mad:
 
It is something that really annoys me, as a SJ judge I do quite a bit of unaff judging and always apply the BS rules. 3 smacks with the hand removed from the rein during the course of a round otherwise you get called into the box. I have also called in those who smack their pony down the shoulder over every jump.

Also competitors who have been eliminated will often be watched as they leave the arena to make sure they don't go in the collecting ring to have a 'discussion'. Again I'm not afraid of calling them back up to the judges box.

The other thing is taking out a temper on their ponies mouth, a definite no no in my book.

I am not alone in this area and most of my fellow judges are of the same opinion.
 
susie, re taking it out on ponies mouths, I saw one which made me see red at an unaff event once. Pony tried hard enough, but rider continually dropped the pony in front of every fence, and leant forward, way in front of the movement. This in itself wasn't so bad, she has to start somewhere (she was, however, far too big for the poor mite) Eventually pony stopped for the 2nd/3rd time and she ended up on her a*se. Stood up, with the reins in one hand and her whip in the other, faced the pony (stood square in front of it) and started yelling at it, while hitting it on the neck with the whip and yanking repeatedly on its mouth at the same time.

The stewards, judges and organisers all saw and did nothing. It's beggar's belief really. :(

Poor pony.

J&C
 
Eland lodge perchance? Hope it wasnt me you saw, one of mine had a smacked bum when he tried to decant me into the water ;)
Someone said to my mum they had seen some rubbish riding yesterday, lots of flapping. I saw a fair number of falls and refusals all things considered, but then i was nearly one of them :D
Sadly isnt confined to unaffilliated competition at all.
 
Definitely not confined to unaffiliated.

I fence judged (not the smallest sections) at a BE event a little while ago and one competitor was seen smacking seven bells out of her horse as she walked back across the course after being eliminated at a tricky combination...............
 
lauraandjack said:
Definitely not confined to unaffiliated.

I fence judged (not the smallest sections) at a BE event a little while ago and one competitor was seen smacking seven bells out of her horse as she walked back across the course after being eliminated at a tricky combination...............
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Hopefully that would have been seen and she would have been spoken to by one of the BE officials.

Affiliated, both BS and BE there is a channel to report these riders and in extreme cases disciplinary action will be taken.

Unfortunatly at unaff there is no such system and if the organisers won't back you as a judge there's not a lot you can do. I have been told on numerous occassion that "I don't know thew rules". and one recent one "what the **** has it got to do with you, it's not your horse". That girl has in fact been told her entries will no longer be accepted at the show centre, which being the biggest for a long way will limit her competitions.
 
I judged a x/c fence for our RC recently having not done any local stuff for years and pulled up 2 people. The first had a fall......Managed to catch her horse and as she came to get him she was saying exactly what she was going to do to him..... I kept quiet thinking it was just words but no she snatched the reins and gave him a belt with her whip. It was at this point that I told her off and also made a note on my sheet for the secretary.

The second I heard coming from quite a way off shouting obsenities like you wouldnt believe!! She must have sworn some dozen times before I shouted "LANGUAGE" at which point she shut up. It beggars belief as she was only a teenage doing the pairs and her parents were following them so must have heard it all!! In fact I think the first F.O was aimed at them!!!!!! The only good thing was all this swearing wasn't aimed at her pony but at her pairs partner ;)

This behaviour really needs to be stamped on otherwise it will just escalate.
 
I'm no soft touch on mine- he will get a smack if he is naughty or a tap on his shoulder approaching a particularly tricky jump but I do think that there is a lot of whip abuse about :(

I know of one 4 yr old who is regularly beaten- beaten for stopping (at a jump that the horse really shouldn't be presented at as it was too difficult for his stage in his training) and whipped on every stride till it jumped it sticky. Said horse is also whipped if the rider falls off (they get up then wallop it) and threatened to be whipped over the head if it gets excitable in the warm up. None of these sorts of incidents ever seem to be pulled up around here.

I think it should be the organisers responsibility to control it but as someone had mentioned in a previous thread- these people come to the events time and time again and provide money. A lot of the time, these people are probably too ignorant to realise that their riding is hampering the pony and the stops are their fault and that they should really be investing in lessons instead of resorting to the whip. I think the only way this could happen is by show organisers highlighting whip abuse and putting a stop to it.
 
I was once teaching a very well renowned SJ's youngest child at PC camp. The child was about 6 at the time, gung-ho as anyone and had a temper like you would not believe.

We were doing a very small cross pole to warm up and the child's pony was napping so stopped at the jump and spun (slowly I would add - nothing nasty). The child was quite small but fierce as hell with the little pony and no sooner than I had said to turn him back around to try again, the child had actually turned his stick UPSIDE DOWN AND HIT THE PONY OVER THE HEAD WITH IT.

I was simply astounded and obviously took the stick away immeadiately and got the kid off the pony.

When I asked why the child had done that they replied:

"Its what Mummy and Daddy do at home all the time."

And to think I was actually considering going to this SJ for lessons...
 
Don't get me started on spurring, we were at a BS show, local well known SJer had a stop, looked rather like rider error, but what do i know. He spurred that horse something rotten, for some reason he gets away with it.
 
I often wonder about this as I do sometimes give reminders going into fences but I actually only ever hit my own boot not the horse and its sufficient to remind him. I've never been pulled up about it but wonder if I would be believed if I was?
 
There's a big difference between giving a horse one slap down the shoulder as a reminder and beating seven bells out of it imo!

And what, exactly, is the point of beating a horse once you catch it after falling off? Teach it not to be caught next time, because it's likely to get a beating! Muppets.

Animals cannot reason like humans do, they only associate actions at the time. So if you're going to use punishment (or negative reinforcement as the behaviour bods prefer to call it.....) it needs to be immediate so that the animal associates an unpleasant consequence to the undesired behaviour.
 
lauraandjack said:
Definitely not confined to unaffiliated.

I fence judged (not the smallest sections) at a BE event a little while ago and one competitor was seen smacking seven bells out of her horse as she walked back across the course after being eliminated at a tricky combination...............
Click to expand...

If you saw this did you do anything about it ?
 
We were at a local, but large, show a couple of years ago & an instructor was taking a very young horse to it's first SJ. Aside from taking it in too many classes IMO (at least x clear round + 3 competitive classes), in the last class (2'9") it refused at the 2nd part of a double. The poor thing was probably exhausted but she hit it several times. In the end she was eliminated & repeatedly hit it afterwards. OH walked up to her & told her he was disgusted & would make sure everybody we knew was told. What sickens me is that there were people watching who still have their kids taught by her.
 
Some people use the whip too much and inappropriately, has it not always been so? Racing has brought in rules all the affiliated organisations have rules, if no-one abused the whip they wouldn't be needed, but they do so they do!

From experience of working at BE events they take it very seriously and will take suitable action and use disciplinary measures if necessary, unaffliated events I work at to, as they are run on BE or RC rules will take action, if others don't, or the people that should be taking action are unwilling, then perhaps they need to have a good hard look at themselves and ask whether they should be!

However, there is a problem! I have come across incidents of judges 'over-reacting'. Everyone has their own view of what is acceptable and what is mis-use, it is extremely subjective and we have had judges reporting 'whip-abuse' because a rider has given a a horse a 'smack' coming in to a fence when they felt it 'back-off' - potentially not a problem there according to BE - and then two or three 'whacks' when it refused - again potentially no problem there, however, judge records it as mis-use on sheet and reports it to control for action. Control as they often can't see what happened have to take it seriously (to maintain credibility with the judges if nothing else).Steward speaks to rider, rider bemused and possibly a bit 'miffed', Steward not so keen next time to take action without several judges commenting so a real problem gets missed.....
 
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I think the worst I have seen was at BE, when I was fence judging with a friend a few years ago. We were at number 2, which I thought was a bit mean as only a 2nd fence - quite narrow and with a big gap to the left just asking for a run out!
Needless to say, one male rider came down the course... whip in his right hand. Gave the horse a slap down right shoulder, fair enough (nothing I'd have bothered about). However, the horse then ran out to the left. At this point, the rider pulled the horse around, crossed his right arm behind his back belting the horse down the left side while hanging on to its mouth (horse in a pelham anyway) to stop it bolting back towards the start. Then represented and the horse jumped cleanly. I was gobsmacked however! I would have complained but I was with a friends mother who didn't want to for some reason, and I felt a bit young then to be going off to make a complaint. Wish I had though - I even have photos of it all with the riders number on quite clearly (doing just what I described above) so he'd be easy to identify I imagine :(
 
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