Cheers Jenni,
have been having email problems so haven't been able to reply to any of the messages on the APBC forum, but should get that sorted soon!!
Have you been reading Horse and Hound re this?
Helen
p.s. have lost your number again, email me it and I'd love to give you a ring sometime to catch up, can't believe November was so long ago!!
I can't believe this, well actually I can..... I've only skim-read this report but it seems to me that in order for something to be considered cruel it needs to produce lesions which can be seen under X-ray/ultrasound. If no lesions then all is fine. How about the lesions that will develop over time? I don't need a lesion for me to be in pain so why isn't it the case for horses?
I'm probably a bit too ignorant of the "technique" to have balanced opinions but I really fail to understand the advantages of it. It looks like it would produce the same musculature that riding in eg draw reins would achieve. It looks to me that it would work because it puts so much pressure on the neck that a "release" could then be the more normal head position, ie a "correct" position becomes the "reward". To be fair I've only ever seen it in photos, not in the flesh so would appreciate input from those of you who are more knowledgable.
A few things in the report caught my eye (apart from the obvious cruelty issues and how to decide who is "sufficiently experienced" to be allowed to do it and who isn't - what a load of %&@"£*)
Andrew McLean He compared classical training with operant conditioning which is used in most training systems (only most? Is there any training system that doesn't involve OC?). The former made responses more likely in the future, but the latter, which replied on reinforcement and punishment, made them less likely.
I didn't really understand this statement - I wonder if it was really what he said or whether it got warped in transcription
Sjef Janssen Rewards were given following all satisfactory movements. Total relaxation on a daily basis, included periods loose in the field or handwalking, normally twice daily weather permitting, hacking to cool down after training, occasional sessions on the horse walker and plenty of good mental relaxation.
Loose in field OR handwalking?! If these are all considered "rewards" then I'd hate to see their punishments!
Frank Odberg In germany...average age of horses slaughtered was 8-10 years old!!!!!!
And from the general summing up...
"Rollkur" is more applicable with highly sensitive horses - hmmm, I wonder why!
Horses must not be seen to be put under pressure - huh?! Define pressure - would any of those horses be in that ring without a bit of pressure?! I'm certainly not saying that I object to all dressage - that's not the case - but generally I'm not convinced that it's something a horse would choose to do. Maybe the emphasis is meant to be on the word seen - as long as we don't notice it then anything goes!
Hmmm, I think you get the general gist of how I reacted to the report. Probably best if I shut up now...
Catherine
This message has been edited by Brocksopp on Mar 3, 2006 1:10 PM
I think your reactions to the report were spot on (damn! Is there nothing we can find to disagree about!).
Re. lesions: I liked Jean Denoix’s remarks re the stresses that hyperflexion would cause – I think the committee as a whole missed his point that you don’t have to see lesions for pain and damage to be present!
I also liked Gerd Heuschmann’s remarks but again these seem to have been ‘glossed over’.
I also found Andrew McLean’s comments confusing – I haven’t read his book on training yet as I’ve always found his style a bit hard to swallow (at one time he was very into the concept of dominance (though I believe he’s changed his stance on that a bit) and he doesn’t believe horses are capable of deep emotions (from what I’ve read his basis for that belief is a rather shaky assumption about the amount of brainpower required by grazing herbivores. He also doesn’t believe horses are capable of reasoning, and he seems to rely excessively on negative reinforcement). However I thought it was time I did read it so it’s on order from Amazon! As he’s written quite a lot about training principles I thought he couldn’t be as mixed-up about it as the FEI report suggested (although there again…) so I think it’s possible that his comments in the report have got garbled somehow. If I were him I wouldn’t be very happy about that, as it doesn’t give a very good impression of his grasp of the subject!
I wondered, too, about his suggestions for removing emotiveness from the debate by defining how much contact was acceptable etc. it’s a good idea in principle but how, and by whom, would an acceptable degree of contact be established? Surely only the horse knows what’s acceptable, and the rider can only ‘read’ what the horse is telling them by the feel of what comes down the reins back to the rider’s hand and by what they feel in his back muscles. I would have no difficulty in knowing if my Arab gelding wasn’t happy with the amount of contact, but he’s a sensitive horse and I can feel every movement of his back through the saddle and every bit of tension in his neck and jaw through the reins. A lot of big dressage Warmbloods are nowhere near this sensitive and some will take a lot of contact before they object. Others would explode…how would Andrew McLean propose to measure all that? Still it was a worthy suggestion and at least shows he’s thinking of the horse rather than just papering over the cracks (which was what I felt some of the others were trying to do).
In all fairness, I did wonder whether Sjef Janssen’s remarks re rewards had got a bit garbled – or perhaps something got omitted. He states that ‘Rewards were given following all satisfactory movements’ but that to me suggests a reward at the time the movement was performed, and that his references to total relaxation etc on a daily basis were not references to rewards given that the end of each movement but examples of what they did to keep the horses happy and relaxed. However one does wonder what Janssen would consider a reward after every satisfactory movement, and it’s rather disturbing to think that the daily ‘total relaxation’ he describes could be seen by the dressage fraternity as rewarding for the horse, rather than an absolute bare minimum needed to keep a horse happy and healthy!
I think you are probably right in your assessment of why some people at least people use Rollkur, although most of them have probably never rationalised it in that way. I certainly haven’t been able to find a real rationale for the technique (working the horse low & round is a different matter altogether, and has very definite advantages, described eloquently by Jean Denoix (he of the FEI report!) and Jean-Pierre Pailloux in their excellent book, ‘Physical Therapy and Massage for the Horse’. I mentioned it in my book ‘Realize You Horse’s True Potential’. Paul Belasik has also written excellent articles about this in the Classical Riding Club newsletter.) However, even with that technique one has to be aware of the pitfalls; as always the rider has to be aware of the physiological effects of what they are doing and sadly all too many dressage riders are staggeringly ignorant in this respect (witness the utter drivel spouted by some of Britain’s top dressage riders in a recent article in Horse & Hound about what ‘classical’ dressage is - only Carl Hester seemed to have a clue).
I found Frank Odberg’s comments about the average age of horses being slaughtered in Germany very disturbing, but hardly surprising – years ago concerns were being expressed by a number of highly placed people in German breed societies about the appalling wastage in youngstock – caused, I believe, at least in part by the practice of testing potential breeding stock in ridden disciplines when they are far too immature to be subjected to such rigorous training and exercise; another cause is almost certainly the equally damaging practice of pushing young horses too hard, too soon (I’ve seen 3-year-olds working in advanced ‘outlines’ and 5-year-olds performing advanced movements. The old classical masters would not even have begun proper ridden work with a horse of that age! Wouldn’t have bitted them either, as the teeth are still coming though)
My overall impression of the FEI report was that while there were some good things in it (notably Denoix and Heuschmann and some of what Andrew McLean & Frank Odberg had to say) most of it was inconclusive and simply raised more questions. The thinking behind the use of Rollkur was not addressed at all and changing the name to hyperflexion seemed to me simply an exercise in semantics.
"Sjef Janssen
Rewards were given following all satisfactory movements. Total relaxation on a daily basis, included periods loose in the field or handwalking, normally twice daily weather permitting, hacking to cool down after training, occasional sessions on the horse walker and plenty of good mental relaxation.
Loose in field OR handwalking?! If these are all considered "rewards" then I'd hate to see their punishments!"
Now then. What could be better than a handwalk or a turnout in the field? I mean, go easy Catherine; it does say TWICE DAILY and WEATHER PERMITTING! So, in the average UK winter, that's a minimum of 5 times between November and February. Honestly, you're so harsh....
"Frank Odberg
In germany...average age of horses slaughtered was 8-10 years old!!!!!!"
Oh dear. That means that Henry is 5 years overdue a bullet. I'm going to remind him of that the next time he's a little sod!!
Haven't read the rest of the report yet. Look forward to it...I think...
Fab - thanks Mariaana. That's a great site. Wish I had time to read it all! Will have to keep going back there.
Diane - yup, Jak's beyond his time too. We were out hacking last weekend and passed a yard where I saw what I assumed to be Rollkur (or some variation on the theme - I couldn't tell if it was being done "properly" or not - tee hee!!), in the flesh for the first time. Jak just stared for ages - I tried telling him he just didn't know how lucky he was and could he just start appreciating me please but I'm not sure it's worked.
Thanks for that web site , got most of the way through it before my computer lost it.What a great site.It's actually what my instructor has been telling me for years but it's great to see it all in black and white with diagrams.