Thoughts around Operation X

These days I tend to keep more of a low profile in the equine industry. I focus on my passion for training horse and rider combinations that come to me for help, whilst also steering my life towards other avenues that I find interesting and inspiring. However, I do feel I have some things to say on the issues surrounding Operation X, perhaps because I’m nursing a cold so I have some downtime, and maybe because all the essays my psychology degree has me doing has inspired me to write again, but most definitely because I’ve had anger around this subject for far too long.

There has been a lot of opinions and reflections from dressage enthusiasts and professionals over the past week since Operation X aired in Denmark, and never before have I had such an emotional reaction to anything that has been in the media. Not because I was shocked at what I saw - in fact I wasn’t shocked at all - but I was disgusted that it has taken this long for these kinds of people to be called out and held accountable (one can even argue if they really are being held accountable).

Throughout my career I have witnessed countless examples of this kind of cruelty, both in Europe and in the UK. I remember being a teenager embarking on my exciting international career, bright eyed and ready to take on the world of dressage. Unfortunately, my dream was quickly overshadowed by this one thought: “If this is what I need to do to ‘make it’, I don’t want it”. I was completely disheartened by what I witnessed in professional training environments. I made steps to carefully select who I trained with and as I got older and more knowledgeable, I thankfully found my groove in a more ‘peaceful’ world of dressage. Fundamental to this was choosing to train at home in my own facilities because I could not face the cruelty and general vibe of stressed and tense horses that I was exposed to on a daily basis in training yards. We also eventually stopped renting out our stables and doing livery, because there was an abundance of what I could call ‘misinformed training’ that we witnessed on our own property by some riders and owners despite our many attempts at re-educating.

I realise that this has an undertone of ‘looking the other way’ which is never the right course of action to achieve justice. However, many people feel helpless to stand up for what is right and stop the abuse in an effective and meaningful way. When it comes to equestrian sport (and I refer to all disciplines here, not just dressage), the abuse we so often witness is as equally wrong as someone beating their dog, and yet calling it out can be more complicated and nuanced than we’d like to imagine. Whistle blowing and confrontation is shrouded with aspects of hierarchy, intimidation and the domination that trainers and top riders have over students (already problematic in the trainer-student relationship), clients, owners, spectators, officials and even judges, which make it hard to call out those riders who use questionable training methods in the moment. Unfortunately, we’ve seen that retrospective reportage of abuse is rarely dealt with in an efficient enough way that makes lasting changes to these people’s behaviour.

It's uncomfortable for us to see ourselves in a cowardly way, but when faced with a dominating figure such as a trainer or professional rider who has many years of experience and training, it is unnatural for us to contradict, argue and expose their behaviour in a real-life situation. Unless you are someone who has confidence and experience in the industry, who can make rebuttals all day about why the training methods that the abusive trainer is using are not appropriate, we have to be willing to accept the consequences of being responded to with aggression and the possibility of being outcast by the trainer, gossiped about, and disliked by your mutual connections to the trainer who most likely wouldn’t know the full situation. In my personal experience, some trainers have a superiority complex and are particularly excellent at humiliating you, making you feel like you’re the only one with a problem.

And so people take to their keyboards, commenting on videos and posts about why this or that is cruel, why this horse is being ridden incorrectly, why that rider should do the horse a favour and give up. Let’s be clear – these comments are not helpful. They do not call out the leaders of the industry on their behaviour that is kept hidden behind closed doors, they only put fear of judgement and crippling anxiety into riders who are simply trying to do their best. The only thing that can help riders to know better and do better is education. Although how are riders expected to learn how to train a horse fairly and respectfully when some of the trainers teaching them don’t demonstrate this themselves, and sometimes even worse, encourage punishment as a form of training? I am careful to say ‘some’ trainers because I don’t want to make out that our industry is rife with cruel trainers. The fact is though that ‘some’ trainers is still too many trainers behaving in this way, and we all know about what happens when there’s some bad apples.

The big question we’re all asking is what to do about this situation of there being far too many horses trained using abusive methods. Many blame the judges for rewarding incorrect way of going, overmarking stressed horses wearing a disguise of flamboyance, and not taking harmony into enough consideration throughout the test. I do agree that the judging needs to be addressed, but I think that is starting to change already – it will just be a gradual process. Many also blame ‘factory-like’ training and sales stables that use their horses like commodities to produce a high turnover of sales; training the horses too quickly for their capabilities and development just to get a higher price. I also agree that this is a big problem that can come with making horses your livelihood. Realistically, there isn’t much the average rider can do about these issues. Short of kicking up a fuss on social media, it is something for the FEI and national governing bodies to try and sort out. However, one way to contribute to the healing of this situation is something I have been trying to model since my exposure to and rejection of these methods – control what you can control.

That starts right here, with us – me and you. When we are riding and caring for our horses, what we can control is how we behave. So often, riders (especially younger riders or riders higher up the levels who have a lot of pressure on them) lose their cool on their horse when something isn’t working. It is the equivalent of a tennis player throwing their racket across the court, a football player booting a ball as hard as he can out of frustration, a golfer breaking his golf club in half. The difference is that while those objects are inanimate, our horse is a living, breathing animal. It is human to experience frustration and anger when things are difficult, but as riders, we have a responsibility to our horse to not take it out on them. We have to learn to manage our emotions and expectations.

It always strikes me as strange how equestrian is one of the hardest sports around, and yet amateur (and even many professional) riders don’t get even half the amount of help that players of other sports receive. I think it’s mainly because most of a rider’s money gets spent on looking after the horse, and we don’t have the same level of funding and infrastructure for development that other sports have. It is great to be able to spend some extra money on your horse’s therapies and care as horses obviously can’t talk so it’s better to be over-vigilant than under-vigilant, however we could be doing our horse a really huge favour by undertaking some psychological and physiological help of our own.

One of the many things that drew me to yoga was learning the ability to control the mind, and I very quickly noticed how much calmer and quieter I was as a rider the longer I practiced yoga. It is also a big reason that I now teach yoga to many riders. Riders are lured in with the prospect of gaining more body control on the horse, but as a by-product they also gain more mind control. It takes work and practice to not let our mind go to that out-of-control, red-mist place. We need to acquire enough self-awareness to notice when we are losing grip on our thoughts and emotions, and be able to regulate ourselves quickly and in an accessible way (i.e. controlling our breath and using the trained ability to calm the mind that is acquired through meditation) to not let those emotions spill over into the horse.

This is also where sport psychology or even general therapy can be so useful, especially if you notice some repetitive thought patterns coming up when faced with difficulty during a ride. These can be things from “I look awful on a horse”, to “I don’t know why I spend so much money on something I’m not even good at” – it could literally be any thought pattern unique to you that triggers a response from your ego. A psychologist or therapist can help you get to the origin of these toxic thoughts that are seriously unhelpful to you and your horse, and work with you to manage them when they arise so that you can stay focused and positive in your training session (even if it isn’t going so well!). If you can maintain a clear head whilst riding, you will be much more able to identify and prioritise the problems you’re having, and feel positive about making a plan to fix them whether that be an immediate action whilst on the horse, or a more long term plan off the horse to address an issue. But if you can’t maintain a rational mind, you aren’t getting anywhere.

At this point I also want to express my disdain for using punishment as a training method, as not only is punishment proven to actually create more problems in animals overall, but it is done out of an emotional response to anger or fear, which we really want to avoid. Animals learn through either positive reinforcement (adding something like a praising voice or a pat on the neck) or negative reinforcement (the taking away of pressure such has releasing the hand or the taking off of a leg aid). I can’t express how much it disappoints me when I see people smack their horse in response to a ‘mistake’ their horse has been perceived to have made. Some riders do it as an automatic reaction since it’s the only way they know how to manage the ‘mistake’, and some riders have actually been told by their trainer to hit their horse when it is being ‘naughty’. This brings me back to my initial point of how riders are in need of continuous good education by trainers that take responsibility for riding and teaching in ethical ways, so as to not further poison the pond by passing on non-credible training methods.

Another way punishment is used wrongly is in efforts to train the rider. I’m never sure why trainers feel the need to say some of the things they say, but if I was to try and see it compassionately, I would say it’s out of a desperation to get a concept through to the rider or try to fix a problem that the trainer doesn’t quite understand enough. Otherwise, the trainer simply needs to upskill on their coaching techniques and leave their ego out of the session. I would have thought that the kind of language sometimes used when I was undergoing all my training would have died out by now due to safeguarding and better awareness of mental health, however I still now have students tell me what another trainer has said to them that had left them in tears and with a mental and/or emotional scar. I often feel quite triggered when I hear what some riders are going through because I know how awful it feels and how much therapy it takes to undo the effects that those mindless, harsh comments have made, and the fact that it still happens today is horrendous. It is just completely unnecessary.

When all is said and done, I believe a lot of the cruelty we see is done unintentionally and most riders truly have their horses best interests at heart. After all, we ride them because we love them. I’m sure we all feel the need to speak up and take action against the atrocities that we’ve seen, but one thing we can do to make direct impact is to look at ourselves in the mirror and see where we can improve in terms of patience and rationality when training our horse, and actively distance ourselves from those trainers or riders who don’t display best practice. We may not have the guts to call them out on their bullying and abuse (of horse and rider!) but at the very least we don’t need to keep giving them our money. The true criminals are the professionals who knowingly abuse horses to gain money and power, and have their ego fed by dominating over a helpless animal. There is always evidence of this at international shows, and we can all but hope that the FEI starts to take some more serious action over disciplining these riders. This is a classic case of ‘be the change you want to see in the world’, and it’s something we can all take responsibility for.