10/18/2022
I typically stay in my lane of Equine Assisted Learning but I agree with this so emphatically! The trainer yelling “kick, kick, kick, use your crop!” Just has to stop.
Jumping coaches: you must STOP teaching children to use a whip whenever a horse hesitates in front of a jump.
Children do not naturally have a desire to kick or hit or yell at their animals - they observe it, or are instructed to do it, by people who should know better. This generation of angry and abusive riders are specifically being TAUGHT how to be angry and abusive.
Imagine this - you see a dog being taken for a walk on a leash. The child leading the dog turns towards some stairs, and the dog stops at the bottom step. The child kicks the dog forcibly in the ribs, yells “GET UP”, and hits it with a whip.
I hope you would be outraged. I hope you would wonder who or what on earth caused the child to be so abusive to that animal. I hope you would NOT turn a blind eye and ignore it.
Now imagine this - you see a horse being ridden by a child. It is turned towards a jump, it hesitates, the child kicks the horse forcibly in the ribs, yells “GET UP”, the horse stops, and the child hits it with a whip.
I hope you would be outraged. I hope you would wonder who or what on earth caused the child to be so abusive to that animal. I hope you would NOT turn a blind eye and ignore it.
This situation is so common, normalised, accepted, TAUGHT TO THEM that nobody even blinks when it happens to a horse. I'm sure you can exactly picture it applied to this photograph. I hope you can also picture that it will not help the horse or child become safer, more confident, more harmonious, more balanced. Once these abusive “techniques” become automatic habits, they are very difficult to correct. UNLESS WE STEP UP NOW!
But but but….. why did the horse stop in the first place? There are a multitude of reasons:
Underprepared
Over faced
Tired
Sore
Lacking clarity
Rider unbalanced
Horse unbalanced
Wrong pace or line
So many many possible causes, NONE of which are helped by angry and abusive riding.
Yelling at the horse, hitting it, frightening it even further results in nobody having fun, nobody feeling safe, people and horses getting hurt, and our sport being in the media for all the wrong reasons.
Here are some phrases I never wish to hear again:
Make him do it
Don't let the horse win
Always discipline a stop
Don’t let him get away with it
MORE LEG!
Replace the above phrases with these:
Prepare, then prepare some more
Reward the smallest try
Breathe
Wait
Feel
Trust
There are also FREE preparatory exercises here: https://classicaljumping.com/next-level-freebie
Children do not naturally have a desire to kick or hit or yell at their animals - they observe it, or are instructed to do it, by people who should know better.
STOP IT!
