I don't follow the gaited horse scene, so I don't know if these folks typically show in USEF classes. If they do though, I'll bet they'll secede so they can continue torturing horses.
There's a YouTube video here. This schoolgirl's haltingly read yet otherwise excellent presentation of the problems with "action devices" should show my I don't follow the gaited horse scene.
I'd like think the USEF licked the "Big Lick," but I doubt it'll die so easily.
Most horse auctions in the United States depress me since they send old, injured, and unwanted horses off to sad fates in foreign countries. However, at the other end of the spectrum, auctions of elite Thoroughbreds bring out buyers securely in the ranks of the super-rich.
This morning I found among the many news articles on horse abuse one from Minnesota giving a reason why hay prices skyrocketed:
A ton of hay costs $220 -- nearly double the $120 it cost a year ago, said Krishona Martinson, equine extension specialist for the University of Minnesota. The rising costs are attributed to drought and farmers' reluctance to grow hay, which cannot be insured through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Growing soybeans and corn is less expensive and less of a risk, Martinson said.
My hay supplier here in Colorado told me many of his resources shifted to corn or other crops last year. Considering the drought, I wondered why. Crop insurance. That explains much.
The extreme drought in Colorado also explains why $220 a ton sounds cheap to us. Local hay supplies withered. Wyoming hay was over $300 a ton, and top quality hay much more than that. I can vouch for that.
German riding master Waldemar Seunig (1887-1976) called a trot where a horse loses the parallelism of front and rear cannons "a poodle trot." This short, clear video featuring German veterinarian and certified rider/trainer Gerd Heuschmannshows exactly what Seunig meant.
Anyone who's ever been to a Saddlebred show or maybe watched Arabian Park horse classes will recognize this flashy trot immediately. High, flailing front feet, dragging butts, and caved-in backs come from poor training and poorer understanding of conformation and biomechanics. Ever wonder why American Saddlebreds suffer from so much lordosis?
On rare occasion, a horse with the build to lift the front and match that lift with drive from the rear finds a great trainer who can develop that talent and bring up the horse's back. For example, some Tom Bass-trained Saddlebreds showed stunning front flash with matching drive from the rear. Unfortunately, not many people have Tom Bass's ability. Most front flash means the hind end drags and the back sags, the antithesis of the engagement described in classical dressage texts.
So I stopped watching upper level dressage rides when this trot started winning in competitive dressage classes. For example, watch Edward Gal and Moorlands Totilas setting a Kuer record at Hickstead.
Below are a couple of screen captures from this ride. The horse's front end flies high and mighty, the rear end lags behind.
Several friends disappointed me by loving this ride. Bigtime judges horrified me with their scoring. Is Toltilas not closer to "a poodle trot" than an engaged trot?
Happily, classical dressage may be on the way back. Charlotte Dujardin and Valegro, 2012 Olympic dressage winners, show no traces of rollkur or the "poodle trot."
Compare Totilas and Valegro. Unlike Totilas's rear, Valegro's hind end is well under. The result is a beautifully matched pair of cannons--or cannon and shannon, if you're old school in nomenclature--and a hind foot well under his belly. Even this still gives an impression of flying forward. The stills of Totilas show a hind foot barely up under his sheath.
I hope Velegro's triumphs mark a trend back to classical dressage.
This short but valuable view of history also has another feature that interested me. The narrator says Man o' War was "retired to the stud." Few people--except me and a few diehards--use the word this way anymore, but this use from a more animal-oriented era gives the hearer more information than the current use as a synonym for any intact male horse. The word once meant a horse breeding farm, and on such a farm would be stud horses and stud mares.
Not only a superb runner, Man o' War went on to become a top sire, even though his book of mares was restricted by his owner. Had he been on the open market, his name might be even more prominent today.
My, my. I expected the BLM mess to continue, but I hadn't expected Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to threaten an investigative reporter who dared to inquire about the issue.
Of course, Secretary Salazar wasn't expecting to find himself on the viral video carrying his threat.
The posturing and rhetoric is likely to continue. The welfare of the horses is unlikely to improve. Too many cattlemen want the horses gone. Too many companies want to extract the last ounce of minerals from the land the horses occupy.
Tom Davis' name has been coming up a lot in horse circles of late. With any luck at all, it'll soon be coming up in court. The bare facts revealed so far indicate the corruption goes way beyond Davis too.
Davis, 64, a livestock hauler and proponent of the horse meat industry who lives in La Jara, 15 miles southwest of Alamosa, has purchased more than 1,700 wild horses from the federal Bureau of Land Management since 2008 — roughly 70 percent of all horses sold by the agency.
Could anyone of normal intelligence read this article and think Davis found "good homes" for all these horses?
Worse yet, the BLM--or at least some BLM employees--were deeply involved in this. As the director of Wild Horse Education, a Nevada-based advocacy group, Laura Leigh said,
Let's get real. There is no way the BLM could think someone was buying that many unadoptable horses for anything but slaughter. The people who sold those horses are just as culpable. This is a breach of public trust and there needs to be some accountability.
Here's the contact information for Colorado’s 12th Judicial District Attorney, David Mahoney:
Alamosa County Office
426 San Juan Ave.
Alamosa, CO 81101
(719)589-3691; (719)589-2734 fx
Feel free to give his office a call. In fact, put his number on speed dial. Call early, call often. Then call local stables, horse owners, and the media. I want more coverage of this mess.
Flagrant law breaking and corruption don't sit well with me, especially when Mexican slaughter houses are involved.
For what it's worth, I'll add that I'm not utterly opposed to horse slaughter. I am however absolutely opposed to inhumane horse slaughter and inhumane horse transport, both of which flavor this story of contempt for horses and laws.
