Janice Turner writing in The Times today about this and the ‘Strictly’ scandals, confirms as I said that “Deploying a long whip to train a horse to raise its feet in a stationary trot called the piaffe is not unusual. Dujardin just overdid it. Dressage has other controversies. That elegant bowed stance known as “rollkur” is alleged to damage ligaments and impede breathing. Winning a gold medal for getting your horse to dance precise, complex routines requires not just a rider’s patience, care and skill but whips and metal spurs. (Just don’t violate the “blood rule”, which eliminates horses with bleeding mouths or flanks.)”
So there we have it. Except that there is nothing elegant about the rollkur, it makes a horse look submissive, crestfallen, uncomfortable and unnatural and as for making a horse dance, why on earth would anyone want to?
Turner continues: “This was all seen as a fair price for perfection. But now? When radical animal rights groups call for a horse-free Olympics and even decry the “breaking” of a horse to tolerate a human rider – the basis of all equestrian sports – many will agree.” This is a real bugbear of mine – why does and how dare the media describe animal rights groups as radical? It’s an outrageous generalisation. If not that, then the description usually involves the word “extremist”. It is also ridiculous and anachronistic that horses and other animals are used by the police and military at all. We have no right.
If Dujardin had behaved like this (as jockeys do all the time) to any other animal I assume that the RSPCA and the police (dog abusers and killers of cows with their cars) would have become involved. She should be arrested, prosecuted and banned from keeping animals for life.
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