To say I was shocked would be a massive understatement. Further research on my part yielded photos taken in 'off public' warm up spaces at Essen taken two years ago. However once I started researching the photos didn't stop. They even included photos of the morning sessions at the hallowed reitschule hall in Vienna. Of 20 or so horses 19 were in some variance of the rollkur position.
While the breeding practices in Europe have in some instances seem to have erred toward producing untrue gaits and unruly chaotic trots and dropped backs, this turn in events in Vienna causes me to wonder just how far does the mighty Euro - which is much needed to fund the ongoing establishment of the SRS need to be diverted and who is at the helm of this unsteady ship?
Even SRS Oberreiters have come out in public to decry the overuse of the horses at the SRS in the daily schedule and the use of this all too familiar awfulness that is rollkur.
In my early years in dressage I was very much schooled in the classics handed down from Alois Podhasky who must be turning in his grave at all the goings-on. Since then, like any competitor/trainer I have taken lessons and clinics with a myriad of trainers. French, German, Swiss, Austrian, Hungarian, Cuban, Spanish and Portuguese, British of course, Finnish and more. That journey of more than thirty years has brought me back to the classical training more than once. I did once work with Dr. Shulten-Baumer and Isabell Werth for example, and they did propose overbending in training. I attended Lendon Gray doing similar actions behind closed doors with a Dutch stallion. It was the 'new way' of the day. But I do believe that many of us did our own math and quickly discarded the new fangled methodology which actually isn't that new if you look to the history books on dressage. I also worked with the renowned Herbert Rehbein, a man of few words but with an uncanny ability to convey the rightness of a given moment in training or the wrongness in no uncertain expression and worked with followers of true classical ethic of both huge name and of more minor fame.
It appears to me that today many students that attend our clinics are being brought along by trainers whose sole purpose is to show off the piaffe steps too early for the horse to know which leg is even on the floor never mind when, the respect for the gymnastic ability of the horse at any given time being overlooked.
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| Work your horse with kindness and a give him a solid education |
I urge all dressage trainers to be vigilant and honest in their training for our students are the next generation and need to properly understand the vagaries of extreme training and the resultant unkind actions this produces on our friend, the horse. A famous trainer and US Olympian once stated he blows through six horses to find the seventh that will make the Grand Prix. Shame on him.
The horse and his well-being must always come first.
