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04/16/2025
One of my students wrote a paper for me on the topic of change in the horse world. I was so impressed with her work that I wanted to share it 💜 Thanks Gabi for being the wonderful kid you are and allowing me to share in this part of your journey 😁
Where Does The Change Need To Occur First?
Change is a complicated thing. Change is scary and uncomfortable, and most people tend to avoid it and the complexity that follows it like the plague. Unfortunately for some, change is a necessity, and in cases like the equestrian world, it is blatantly obvious that said necessity has been staring our community in the face for near decades.
The biggest issue in beginning the process of change in the horse world is the complexity of the change itself. Equestrians’ lifestyles are unlike any others as we deal with live animals that become our livelihoods and tend to dominate most aspects of our lives. Because of this, along with the depth and tradition of the sport, opinions are strong and vary remarkably. This makes change and reformation of the sport much harder as no one can ever seem to agree on anything and there will always be outliers and those who are relentlessly against change.
The main source of complexity is finding where the change in this relentless system needs to occur first. So which demographic of the equestrian community is responsible for the shortcomings, and which group needs to change first?
While there are many opinions on this topic, the answer is simpler than people think. Two parties must change first to have the largest lasting impact on the community and start the domino effect of change. Said groups are trainers and judges. Why? The main responsibility of this chain of change simply boils down to which groups are the most influential within the community. Simply put, trainers and judges are the most influential. To delve deeper into the responsibility of each group, we must first analyze their effects on the community individually and then how it ties into the community as a whole.
Trainers are one of the two responsible parties because of their grand effect on the riders that surround them. Trainers and their opinions and teaching mold the minds of all the riders they train, and are therefore the most responsible for making a change, as they are practically “raising” the next generation of equestrians. If the right ideas and concepts of riding and horsemanship are instilled in the younger riders now, they will carry those ideals with them throughout their career and will therefore be the generation that enacts the change that needs to occur in the equestrian world. By trainers instilling strong beliefs and confidence in horsemanship practices in their students, their students will be much less susceptible to irresponsible riding and care practices they might come across as they interact with others. Therefore, trainers are a crucial step towards change as they shape the future equestrians of the world.
Similarly, judges are responsible for change as well as they have a large impact on the way riders and trainers use their resources and ride. For example, judges giving higher scores to the flashier, bigger, more dramatic movements in the dressage ring without regard to equine biodynamics, influence how other trainers and riders compete and train after that. If the dramatic and damaging movements get higher scores than the correct and mechanically correct movements, more and more riders will tailor their rides to what will get them a higher score. Along with this concept, the audience watching this cycle take place will then also be influenced by the judges’ scoring and will give more support, praise, and attention to the riders with the higher scores. These riders are put up on pedestals and admired by all kinds of equestrians and tend to become almost ‘untouchable’ when it comes to criticism because of their status. This cycle starts with judges scoring on aesthetics and ‘wow factor’ and ends with a step backward in the progress of change in the community. While judging impacts the equestrian world in an entirely different way to trainers, they are very connected and both impact equestrians immensely.
A primary example of this phenomenon that we can use these concepts to analyze is Charlotte Dujardin. Charlotte Dujardin is a high-level professional dressage rider from Great Britain who was put up on said “pedestal” for years and was a “role model” for younger riders to aspire to. She was viewed as “untouchable” for a long time.
These statements were built on glass, however, when a video emerged of her casually whipping a horse in a training ride with a student over 20 times. This is obviously not a one-off occurrence as she previously stated, as neither she, her student, nor those observing the lesson seemed entirely bothered by the act, a woman on the side even laughing as the event was occurring. I went on to do my own research and connected Charlotte Dujardin to her mentor, Carl Hester, who I watched a few videos of his teaching and found some old articles where he remained strongly in favor of keeping Totilas in work when he was nearing the end of his unfortunate competing days.
Totilas is a perfect example of the idea of “dramatics over dynamics”. Totilas is a stallion who was ridden and competed by Edward Gal, and the pair amassed a spectacular amount of high scores and wins for their rides, however, Gal was using the Rolkur method on Totilas to essentially force the hyperflexion of the neck for the ‘aesthetic’ and along with that, Totilas has barely any motion in his hind legs, where his power should be stemming from. Instead, his front legs were left to flail out in front of him, providing said dramatics, while his back legs shuffled along behind. This combination of incorrect riding and training methods, as well as absolute disregard for equine biodynamics is why Totilas was retired from competition at the not-so-ripe age of 15, when most higher-level dressage horses should just be reaching their prime.
Tying this back to Charlotte Dujardin, she provides us with a good, modern example of this same rationality of thought. By compromising the integrity and mental well-being of the horse to get more “pretty” movements, as the video demonstrated, she shows that these practices have nowhere near disappeared, but just gotten slightly harder to dig up. Charlotte Dujardin was a role model, a public figure in the equestrian world, and one of the most well-known equestrian names, however, these recent events should show the community to take everything you see with a grain of salt and that the welfare of the animals we share our sport with and chose our sport because of should ALWAYS come first, no matter what.
The equestrian community is flawed as a whole, by taking a step back and encouraging others to do the same, we can hopefully emerge from the whirlwind of information and politics, and complexity of the sport and focus solely on why we are all passionate about it in the first place, horses. A remarkable amount of change needs to occur to reform our sport to what it should be, and the first and biggest step toward that change is identifying the problems and analyzing why they occurred in the first place. The change must first start with the trainers and judges, and with those large adjustments, we’ll all be well on our way to a better system, a better community, and a better, more humane sport as a whole.
Gabrielle Pesackis
(Thank you for coming to my TedTalk 🙂)
