What is abuse of the horse?

I haven't ridden today. Instead I went to watch an affiliated prelim and novice competition at a local yard, to see what standard Jazz would have to reach. He is already head and shoulders better than most of the horses there, so that was nice :-)

But while I was there I couldn't help musing about the way I got lambasted for "abusing" Jazz at that showjumping competition just because I took a couple of sharp pulls on the bit. Today there were riders everywhere whose seats were not independent of their hands, who were inadvertently giving their horse a pull on the mouth every single stride. And one girl who was doing it deliberately to try to get the horse to soften. And there were some very leaden and lumpy riders thumping around in the saddle, and others whose legs were nag nag nag nag nag at every stride. Surely those poor horses are suffering that every moment that they are ridden - why on earth am I got at for taking one sharp pull? One pull and it's over, and I swear to it that they understand why it happens and accept it - but that endless fiddling and nagging surely must drive them mad? Oh well, just my rant for today!

What did please me is that the one horse that I saw do a seriously nice test was placed 10% clear of the rest of the class by the judge, so my eye can't be too bad :-) As for the rest, I saw horses that were clearly very unhappy and I can't understand how their riders don't see or feel it and find out what is wrong with them. One pony was miserable and I would guess he is lame in both front feet equally and so looks "sound". Several were not, in my book, sound. Another horse was struggling with a novice test, with a huge heave line in its belly from supporting a rigid and very weak looking back. And blow me down if the rider didn't bring him out for the elementary too!

I overheard a girl moaning about how she could have got bad marks in the prelim and novice and a better mark in the elementary and how she was never coming here again. My question to her is "what were you doing in all three tests? Your horse is either prelim going on novice or novice going on elementary, it can't be both. Which class were you pot-hunting in? And if you don't understand that an elementary outline in a prelim or novice test SHOULD get you lower marks, what are you doing in an affiliated class?" Good on the judges, eh?

I saw a lovely but huge (18 hands?) and very green horse struggle to get himself around the prelim, with his nose poked out the whole time - and then was brought out in the novice as well to struggle even more. That was the one whose bit was being rocked from side to side in his mouth during his entire warm-up and two tests. In fact in two and a half hours I saw very few tests that I thought were really fit to be seen at affiliated level, prelim or novice. I was very surprised because the standard at my ex-riding club was higher. I don't know if that's normal or not, I don't usually go to watch that level of test.

The other thing that struck me was that I think modern teaching is focussing too hard on "working from behind", to the detriment of the balance of the whole horse. There seems to be little understanding that if the horse is going to come through from behind then his shoulders and his forelegs have to get out of the way first, or there is nowhere for the hindlegs to go. Time and again horses were piling along behind and then doing a slight "skipping" motion in front to get the front legs out of the way. I ended up feeling that we need trainers to slacken off on this incessant push for activity from the back end and work on releasing the shoulders too, and treating both ends of the horse as part of the whole. I'd be interested to know if other people are seeing the same thing.

So, there's the apostle according to Trayes tonight :-) Tomorrow I'll be trying to put some of it into action!

C