Posts Tagged ‘showing’

America’s Dumbest Criminals are showing TWH’s!

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011 | Tags: , , , | Category: Uncategorized


Three Indicted in Chattanooga for Soring Horses

I really have to ask…are you that stupid? The USDA has been on your asses for years about soring. You know your horses are going to be inspected. Are you (a) so arrogant you think you won’t get caught, or won’t get in trouble, (b) so greedy you will take your chances or (c) just plain STUPID on top of cruel?

Which is it?

Here is the actual indictment for your viewing pleasure.

For those of you who don’t yet know about soring, here is some information on it:

What is Soring?

Soring is something that happens when winning is everything and no one gives a shit about the horses. Here are some show results so that you can see the names of Barney’s clients, who do not give a shit about their horses:

Randy Drinkard, the Ricky Bryant Family, Sharon Lee don’t give a shit about their horses

Billy and Audrey Quarles, apparently you don’t, either. But HEY you got a BIG TROPHY! We all know that is way more important than your horse’s happiness or ability to live a pain-free existence.

Here is Lynn Dropka bragging about her show wins and claiming Barney never abused her horses. My ass, he didn’t. Lynn says “We need to try and remember he has a family to support and trying to destroy him and his name isnt helping his children any.” Um, lady, by that logic, we shouldn’t put anyone in jail no matter what they do because that isn’t helping their family any. Actually, if he treats his children like his horses, maybe it WOULD be helping them to put his dumb redneck ass in a cell.

On that same forum, someone describes Barney’s behavior at shows: “I been good and not commented on the matter but horseman1965 he don’t always win especially when usda shows up he throws horses in trailer and takes off.” Uh-huh. Yes, we know. That’s what they all do. USDA shows up and 70 or 80 percent of the competitors turn tail and run like the scummy rats that they are. Guess what, folks, if your trainer ever turned tail and RAN at the sight of the USDA, they ARE abusing your horses.

I am not surprised about Barney and his cohorts but I do think it’s time owners were held legally accountable. Sorry, but I do not buy the pleas of ignorance, because I have been in not-so-great show barns and I know how it works. You come in all bright and innocent and bushy-tailed and, over time, people talk you into the abuse and convince you it’s normal. When I was young and stupid, I got talked into snapping on horses’ faces and spurring the fuck out of them and tying them around for hours. Whose fault was that? MINE, for being spineless, easily led and wanting to be liked by the Big Cool Trainer. I pulled my head out of my ass early in my 20s and stopped doing all of that after I discovered, hey, you could go to the hunter-jumper shows and be nice to your horses and still win. (And yes, I have now seen that you can create a stock breed pleasure horse in an abuse-free way, too). But I’m just saying, I’ve been there – I’ve been that owner/non-pro that got convinced abusive crap was normal, and I know how it works. I was not ignorant of what was going on and neither are most of these people. It’s time responsibility for abuse-free training was placed equally on the heads of the trainers and the owners.

As always when I mention this topic – kudos to Friends of Sound Horses for their absolutely tireless work in convincing owners of gaited breed horses that there is another, better way. You guys rock and the horses owned by your supporters are lucky!

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If at first you get caught, switch breeds and try, try again!

Thursday, November 4th, 2010 | Tags: , , | Category: Uncategorized

So guess who won the Men’s Western Pleasure at the Appaloosa World Show? Yes, it’s our favorite arrogant, famous, horse-beating cretin, Cleve Wells.

For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Wells, here is my previous blog entry on him:

Big Names Behaving Badly

Here is a video about him. No graphic pictures, but graphic descriptions so watch with caution. He is “famous trainer.”

Cleve’s response to the lawsuit referenced in my blog is too funny not to print again, mostly because he appears to have the I.Q. of a turnip: “Good morning — customers suggested to continue silence an let everyone bury themselves then they will move in…i have to support there decision because they support me as i said i have a very loyal and wealth set of clients… That speaks for my integrity honesty and loyalty. Thank u for ur respect and i do believe u will do what is right”

Well, the AQHA did do what was right, they suspended his ass. Amazing, I know. News article So what did Cleve do? Well, he showed NSBA, because they of course didn’t give a shit what he did as most of them were doing it, too.

And now apparently he has moved on to the poor Appaloosas. Some asshat from Minnesota named Gary Raak decided he had to win at any cost, so he hired Cleve to win at any cost. And win he did. And now everybody is whispering about it because apparently they are skeered of Gary and his money and his lawyers. (And can I just say, dude, what is WITH the orange spray tan? That doesn’t look good on Snooki, and it doesn’t look good on an old fart from Minnesota. Seriously.)

We here at the Fugly Blog continue to not be skeered of asshat show people who think it’s ok to rip horses’ sides open with spurs, tie horses’ heads up overnight, stick the tongue IN BETWEEN the two twisted wire bits (my trainer told me she’d seen that one done, I about puked) block tails and whatever else evil shit they are doing these days. Gary, you are a shitty human being for letting Cleve Wells touch your horse. Cleve, you’re a shitty human being for being you and I really wish you’d get into a job that does not involve living creatures that feel pain. Rock My Style, shit, I feel really sorry for you and I hope someone buys you and is nice to you before your brain is completely blown and/or your body and you hate all humans. Appaloosa Horse Club, WTF, you HAVE in IN YOUR RULEBOOK that people who are suspended in other orgs can’t show at your shows! Disciplinary Reciprocity, Rule 20H1b! Cleve is still suspended because he refuses to pay his $10,000 fine to AQHA. Do you READ your own rulebook, or are your eyes too close to Cleve and Gary’s asses while you’re kissing them? I tell you what, if I owned the 2nd place horse, I’d be talking to lawyers right now, because that person got ROBBED.

Oh, and P.S., folks, please don’t patronize Gary’s company, Twin Cities Featherlite Trailers. Buy your horse trailers from someone who does not put that money into the hands of a known horse abuser. It is not that damn hard to find a trainer who isn’t, like, the #1 most well known abusive show trainer in the whole fricken’ USA! Better yet, buy yourself a nice Four Star (they’re better anyway, IMNSHO) and then call Featherlite and tell them why you bought from their competitor! Money talks, folks…let yours speak for those poor horses.

305 Comments »

Open Line Friday!

Friday, October 1st, 2010 | Tags: , | Category: Uncategorized

Yes, just like they do it on the radio – today is your day to start a discussion about what you want to discuss and hear what other readers have to say about it. I know some of you have e-mailed me about things and are frustrated they don’t get posted. Sometimes I don’t see enough evidence, sometimes it is just too similar to five other blogs I’ve already done, and sometimes it requires more investigation than I have time for in the middle of polo season. (That’s almost over and I will be spending more time on the complicated stories over the winter!)

So whether it’s a situation you want to bring to peoples’ attention, an update on a previous story, a farm that is breeding so many fuglies you can’t believe it, some showing/training thing you want to vent about, a hideous trainer, or just something you want some advice about, feel free to post!   

And happy Friday!!!


Here is a Shiloh cutie for you – a four year old Thoroughbred, ready for whatever you’d like to train him to do. Check him out!

331 Comments »

And you’re OUT!

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010 | Tags: , , | Category: Uncategorized

Just a short note today, I am having one of those weeks where it would really help if I could skip sleep, because I just don’t have any time for it! :)

…how cool is it that they eliminated Adelinde Cornelissen for her horse having a bloody mouth at the World Equestrian Games? I had to laugh, the first link I found said the horse bit his tongue. Yeah, and the wife with a black eye walked into a door! It is funny how in thirty-five years of riding, I have never had a horse wind up with a bloody mouth, isn’t it? I will bet many of you can say the same. I started rolling my eyes at this excuse after I saw a picture of Adelinde riding.

Gosh, maybe my horses don’t bite their tongues because I am not rollkur-ing their heads off? Just a theory! Anyway, HUGE KUDOS to the judges for dismissing her from the ring. That sent an excellent message that is unlikely to be ignored.

For more WEG news, be sure to check out the Hoofprints Across My Heart blog in my links to the right – she is there and blogging!

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Let’s talk about my least favorite people to show with!

Friday, July 30th, 2010 | Tags: , | Category: Uncategorized

It’s not the people who crank and yank on their horses (though that is always high on my list).

It’s not the people who cut you off and sideswipe you and try to ruin your rides or spook your green horse.

It’s not the people who park other peoples’ trailers in, apparently believing that no one should get to leave the show grounds before they do.

It’s not even people who steal at showgrounds and other events (although really, that is a royal pain in the ass).

Who are the grand prize winners? Selfish asshats who bring sick horses to shows and other events. You know, it truly does not get any MORE selfish than that. When you bring a horse that you know is sick to an event, you may ruin someone else’s entire show season. They may miss a show and not get their year-end. They may have a big vet bill. You may even kill their horse. Or they may go home and give whatever your horse has to their whole barn and kill some little kid’s old horse. It’s kind of like those charts that show what happens when you don’t spay and neuter. When you bring 1 sick horse to an event, you expose the other, say, 100 horses at the event. Those horses go home to their home barns and potentially expose everything in their barn. In the space of a day, you can spread disease to a few thousand horses and infect dozens of different boarding and training facilities, causing thousands of dollars of vet bills with even a simple respiratory infection.

And we have ALL seen it done. We have ALL seen the person who brings the obviously sick horse to the event – snotty nosed and coughing. Some wonderful person started spreading an upper respiratory around all the Pacific Northwest shows this year. My horse came back from a show and all four legs swelled up and he spiked a fever. Well, two months later, a friend of mine’s horse came back from a show 300 miles north in a different discipline and got the exact same symptoms. I’ll be interested to see how many people reading this have gone through the same thing this summer.

But hey, at least it wasn’t strangles. Strangles is a huge fear of everyone with a boarding or training barn, because it spreads like wildfire and it can be fatal, particularly for debilitated or young horses. Different vets will advocate different treatment protocols, but no matter what your particular vet believes, strangles in your barn is a huge hassle. You have to put the whole place on lockdown, bleach and sanitize everything you can, and police your boarders and students like crazy to make sure they don’t touch a sick horse and then touch a healthy one. This is assuming you still have customers, since a disease that results in huge, pus-dripping abcesses under the neck and jaw and the horse dropping weight faster than a bride before her wedding does tend to scare people, even newbies who don’t really know what it is or what it means.

That’s why everybody is so upset over the recent case of PQH Pretty Boy. First off, I want to say that I believe from everything I have read that his owners had no idea the horse was sick until after the show.  They are completely innocent.  The horse was in training at the time and had been at the trainer’s for years.  They were trying to do exactly what I tell people to do with a young stallion – get a show record on him and make him worth something.  He went to a show the weekend of June 25-26. On Monday June 27, the trainer claimed he was colicking and the owners gave permission for him to be hauled to the clinic. Two days later, he was dead.

The owners understandably freaked out and did everything right. They ordered an autopsy to find out what the hell happened to their 3 year old stallion, who had allegedly been fine all weekend at the show. The autopsy showed he died of strangles.

Then the owners, in a rather amazing and impressive burst of responsible behavior, told the entire internet what happened and warned other exhibitors of the risk. Wow. You know, sometimes people just surprise the heck out of me with how decent they are. This is one of those cases. These people did not go, omg, I don’t want my farm associated with strangles, let’s hush it up. They said, let’s try to make sure no one else has to go through what we are going through, and they told everybody. Very nice to see!

The show facility freaked out and did everything exactly right. They removed all the dirt from the arena and they hand-disinfected all of the areas the horse might have been in. Again, very nice to see – they clearly wanted to do whatever was necessary to protect their customers, not their checkbook. They did not try to hush it up either, but instead discussed the incident very openly on their web site.

If you’re looking at the timeline, that leaves us with the next obvious question: What the HELL? How did the horse have strangles bad enough to DIE from it Wednesday morning, yet was at a show the previous Saturday and Sunday? What, it just magically got sick on Monday morning? Come on. No one believes this, including apparently the horse’s owners who seem pretty darn p.o.’d from what I have read, not to mention emotionally devastated over losing the horse so suddenly and at such a young age. Best case scenario, the trainer, J.P. Bell, wasn’t paying attention to how his training horse was looking or feeling, and worst case scenario, he took an obviously ill horse to an event, risking every other horse there, to make money. Again, it wouldn’t be the first time this had happened in the horse world. As a trainer, you make a lot more money if the horse goes to the event than if it stays home sick. The only thing you have to gain by being honest with your customer and responsible toward others and leaving him home – especially if he’s not showing obvious symptoms but you just know he’s off his grain and not right – is good karma. As we know from the number of people riding obviously lame horses at competitions, that is just not enough for a lot of folks – but at least their behavior is only hurting their own horse!

Before someone else says it, I know there are horses that have allergies or other chronic and not contagious conditions that may cause coughing or some nasal discharge and yet not hurt others. In those cases, it pays to have a letter from your vet with you to prove it to the event management (and any other exhibitors who may be wary). It keeps your reputation good and shows that you are honest, and since most of us show in the same general group of shows/venues every year, word will get around.

So let’s hear your stories now. Have you been at an event where someone brought an obviously sick horse? What did you do? Did you tell the event management and, if so, what did they do? Have you had a horse get sick right after a show or event and how were you affected by it?

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