Thursday, January 8, 2009

Harsh hands


Here's another horse that's praying for all he's worth. Look how far that asshole has that bit engaged....the shanks are right up along the horse's jawline.
How about if the professionals went back to square one and used a sidepull? They say these Icelandic bits should only be used by professionals. What a load of crap. Every single pic you see of one of these professionals is awful. It's NOT a moment in time. These assholes don't know how to ride or train. They hop on a horse 10 minutes before a competition and stresss the horse to the max. Apparently Icelandic horses aren't naturally gaited or they wouldn't need to tie the horse into a frigging knot during a competition.
Honestly, take some riding lessons and learn about the concept of 'seat and legs'... actually let 'seat and legs' be your mantra.
This crappy riding by so called professionals has got to stop.

1 comment:

ISCanadian said...

Yes this is a bad picture but I need to point out some information on the icelandic bit. When a rider has contact with the horses mouth, the shanks are suppose to be straight back. The chain is suppose to be loose enough that the rider can have direct contact with the horses mouth instead of indirect contact like with a western curb bit. You are making a very nasty assumption about something you don´t know anything about.
Riders warm up their horses according to the horse. To say they all do it 10mins is naive. Some horses that don´t have naturally high energy levels need shorter warm-ups. Horses with higher energy levels need longer warm-ups. Horses with naturally stiff bodies need longer warm ups. Horses that are not physically fit enough need shorter warm-ups. MOST if not all of the trainers that I´ve seen warming up do the same things: bending and flexing of the horse´s body, some slow tolt and some speed changes and gait changes for tolt, fourgait and five gait. I have seen trainers be more harsh on the lazy horses, stressing them up and such and the reason for that is because of pressure from the owners and breeders. The horses don´t show well with a regular warm up. So what you call 'stressing them up' is the trainers making the lazy horse more sensitive to the commands of going forward. It doesn´t make it right but if you are going to slack the trainers off, you need to include all the trainers, all the breeders, and the general horse public in every breed of horse in the world. I can make a large list of trainers that are very fair and do the best they can with the horses they are given. All of them being professionals. I can also make a large list of trainers that are not fair to the horses and they shouldn´t be training horses period. But it´s the same with any disciplin of horse riding. There are good and bad horse people everywhere.