Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Western Displeasure

(Warning - may tick some people off! If you are a WP rider, please proceed with caution.)

I have been watching some of the live feed from the All American Quarter Horse Congress taking place in Ohio this month. Today they were having some sort of Western Pleasure class, not sure which one as I missed the beginning. Here is what a similar class from last year looked like:
I don't get it!!
Horses are strong, graceful, athletic, and smooth movers. Training them to move like this makes them look hobbled, lame and gives them a weird kink in their movements. And it is not pretty!!

I must be missing something.

I am sure it is difficult, and challenging to train horses and riders to do this, and I am not knocking that at all. I also realize that all disciplines have their issues, and that all disciplines cause hardship and damage to the horses. I also dislike the headsets in other riding to be fair, but at least they are not trained to look injured. I mean, horses do jump things on their own, when do they ever move like this when not injured? If I saw a horse move like that in the field, I would call a Vet.

And again, to me, it is just not pretty and graceful. Dressage movements at least lets the horse move out, and I can see the beauty, I really can't see it here.

If you can, please explain this to me.

Btw, you can see the QH Congress live feed here: http://envisionfilmvideo.com/live.html

2 comments:

  1. THANK YOU for sharing the EXACT same opinion and expressing it. Major kudos. =) Made me smile my butt off reading this.

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  2. Me too! I completely agree with you. That movement is totally unnatural and looks horrible. I can't imagine what it does to them in the long run. Thanks for sharing.

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