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tashyisaudrey

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Rollkur? Just wondered as someone just asked me and I'm sure I read it somewhere in a contraversial context but am not sure. Memory is too selective!
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Tierra

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Rollkur is a training method whereby horses are worked very overbent and very deep (with their noses close to their chests).

Its controversial as some schools of thought think that at best, it is a quick fix method of training and at worse, its cruel and physiologically damaging to the horse.

Theres some pictures on the site below:-

http://www.sustainabledressage.com/rollkur/index.php

You realise quite quickly that the above site is very much against, but if nothing else, the piccies will show you what it is.
 

AmyMay

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It says that some famous dressage riders still use it ??

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It's becomming more and more popular.
 

Tierra

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I assume it's to prevent the website author from getting in any kind of trouble. Whilever the face is blanked out, she can say the pictures are purely there to demonstrate to the reader how the horse looks when being worked in rollkur. The female rider in many of the pictures is, of course, Anky.

Yes, its very popular in the dressage competition world. Rollkur isnt a new thing, but it was relatively recently that a couple of very famous riders were photographed training at home using this method. Initially there was a lot of denial about it saying that the pictures were unrepresentative of the work over all.

More and more pictures came to light of famous names working horses very deep and Anky and her partner started to come clean about their methods and why they trained their horses this way. They've also done a number of training days, including in the UK, explaining the ins and outs of rollkur.

Personally - Im 100% against it. I think its unnecessary and a quick fix solution to avoid the years of training that SHOULD go into producing grand prix flatwork. It also results in horses that work in a fashion that is fundamentally wrong in dressage terms. Working a horse correctly should require "back to front" riding... power generated from behind FIRST and then contained within an elastic contact. Rollkur has frequently been referred to as "front to back" i.e. control the head first as a method of controlling the back end.

The argument in favour is that it helps the horse to raise its back faster. So rather than using various other warm up techniques, by using rollkur, the horse will lift through its back and work correctly much faster. Its also been argued that as the dressage warmbloods tend to get larger, its a technique that helps smaller, lighter female riders to get their horse working.

Many fans of rollkur will argue that the horse's head isnt tied down precisely because they dont become heavy in the hand. This is true, they dont. Ive sat on horses that are rollkured on a daily basis and they dont feel heavy - they're just stuck! They're not heavy because thats how the muscles develop. (Although a lot of tugging and pushing tends to go into getting them to this stage)

Another argument for is that if you work your horse very overbent for most of the time, then in a test situation where it's potentially more on its toes, the head wont come too high up - infact - it should come more upto the point that people would want it. I certainly know of a well known grand prix dressage rider who works ALL of the liveries horses very deep all week long. At the weekends, when the clients want to take their horses competing, they're literally thrown on just for the show. The horses are trained in such a way that even with a poorer rider on board, their heads dont raise a great deal. The result? The clients get the marks they want at dressage without putting an enormous amount of effort in.

The down side? Very deep rollkur limits the horses sight so that basically its staring at its own feet. The neck muscles, when worked in rollkur for long enough start to "fix" there. Its often quite easy to spot which riders practice it and which don't by the way the horses neck is bent, where its bent and to what extreme. Similarly to riding in draw reins if you life.. eventually the damage becomes very hard to undo.

Aside from this there is another MAJOR issue with rollkur. Due to the people now being famous for using it - Anky, for example. Lots of her fans are wanting to use it. Anky herself has stressed many, many times that in the wrong hands rollkur is very damaging to the horse. Of course, that wont stop people trying it out at home without the supervision of someone who knows what they're doing.

The debate about rollkur is still raging on and probably will for a considerable time to come but, as Amymay said, its becoming more and more popular as a training method at all levels of the sport
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Tierra

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Well thats part of the debate. In the wrong hands it is for sure very very damaging to the horse.

In the right hands... i still think its cruel

I think its cruel. I think its physiologically damaging and i dont think its nice for the horse.

There has been some research that has studied the long term effects of being worked very very deep and have claimed it damages the horses back beyond repair.

Part of the problem I have is that while it aims to lift the back, it doesnt always do this. You see many horses just working very very deep with an overbent neck (so the outline breaks mid way down the neck as opposed to the poll being the highest point) and a very disconnected back. The aim of the rider, in terms of preserving the horse, should always be to ride correctly with the horse round up and over its back as a hollow back is a weak one (so over a life time, a horse worked incorrectly will have a shorter work life than one worked correctly).

My personal opinion therefore is that its cruel both physically and mentally (tying heads in so the horse can only see its own feet is not right to me). I think rollkur is a result of the competitive equestrian world having gone too far. People want results fast rather than the 10 - 12 years it can take to train a horse classically, correctly.

This is precisely why the debate rages on.

If you have a look around the net, you'll find lots of for and againsts... what ive written above is the against
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