The Blue Tongue That Served As A Red Flag!

Only 7 days ago a four minute and twenty six seconds long video sequence was submitted to youtube.

See video link below.



Now a week later almost 30.000 people have clicked to see the video.

For some reason this video served as the red cloth in front of the bulls eyes, causing outrage and frustration amongst riders at various places on our globe.

For some reason this particular video hit a note that all the other horrible video sequences you can find at youtube had not. Though I would argue that the abuse on display here is no worse than what you can see at any horse show, though perhaps a bit more obvious.

Whatever the reason I am happy, that at least we have some sort of common ground for what is unacceptable. For if we can agree that THIS is far beyond what is acceptable, then perhaps we have the possibility to get the attention of the riding associations - international as well as national.

I hope this will be the first topic on the long list of topics on horse welfare in training and competition that needs to be addressed if we want our equitational sport to survive.

I hope that FEI will not manage to turn the deaf ear, but will be forced to prove that they do indeed put the welfare above all. If you go through one of the older posts in this blog you will find a letter from the FEI where they state that "the FEI code of conduct explicitly states that the welfare of the horse is paramount" -

I hope we will see them actually take this responsibility they have stated for them selves seriously.

On a final note I can mention that since the petition to the FEI to BAN rollkur was released some 10hrs ago almost 700 people has signed it.