The latest on Rollkur

According to Horse and Hound, the FEI are going to debate the Rollkur issue at their general assembly on 15th November in Copenhagen. A spokesman said "important developments will be announced as soon as possible."

When you look at the FEI's dressage page, and see listed along the right hand side article after article on Anky and other Dutch dressage riders (Anky, the Olympic gold medallist, is very well known for being a Rollkur practitioner, as I believe are most of the Dutch team) it is immediately obvious what a tension there is here. On the one hand, the top echelons of the sport support rollkur, and are presumably lobbying very hard for the FEI not to change their stance; on the other there's a great deal of public attention being directed at a sport which has only just emerged out of the shadows and started to become popular.

In an ideal world, I would suggest a moratorium on rollkur being practised until definitive studies have been done on the effect on the horse's mental and physical wellbeing have been carried out. Until those happen, the need to produce a top competition horse, will, unfortunately, take precedence as rollkur's practitioners argue their practices do not harm, and in fact can help the horse.

Vote on Rollkur

Horse and Hound have a poll going on on their front page at the moment. You will have to scroll down the page a bit to get there - it's on the left hand side, but if you want to tell H&H what you think, here's your chance.

Rollkur and the blue tongue

I've been meaning to write about this all week, but reading the exclusive in Horse and Hound about the controversy tipped me over the edge.

For my non-horsy readers, rollkur is a training/warming up technique used by some dressage riders. It basically involves riding the horse with its jaw pulled in virtually to its chest, in order to increase suppleness.

Patrik Kittel , a Swedish competitor in Odense was videoed riding his horse in this way. If you watch the video, you'll see the horse's tongue hanging out - blue. It takes a while before the rider notices this. When he does, he stops, puts the horse's tongue back in, and carries on.



There are two things which bother me about this. Firstly, I am fully aware large sections of the dressage world, and some of its brighest stars, consider rollkur perfectly ok, but the FEI guidelines state this practice should only be for short periods, allowing the horse to rest. Patrick Kittel apparently rode the horse for two hours in rollkur, albeit with rests: look at those round about him in the video. None of them seem remotely bothered, which suggests to me riding your horse this way is not unusual enough for anyone to notice, comment, or do anything about it.

Secondly, Patrik , in Horse and Hound, said "Scandic sometimes plays with his tongue. During the filmed period of my training, he caught his tongue over or under the bits. I stopped when I noticed, and put it back in the right place." And so he did, but he didn't get off the horse, and carried straight on with a bit more rollkur. If my horse had had a blue tongue, I would have thought that sufficient reason to STOP. To stop, get off, and let my horse recover, during which period I would be checking his tongue, and not carrying on until I was certain he was ok.

I don't like rollkur: it is not a natural process. You might see a horse piaffe, or do extended paces in the field, but you will not see it canter round and round with its chin tucked into its chest: it can't see, for one thing. I am constantly amazed at what horses let humanity do to them. If you can't achieve the higher echelons of dressage without rollkur you shouldn't, in my opinion, be attempting them at all.

Read more about it here and here. Thank goodness the British Horse Society have come down off the fence, unlike Horse and Hound.

Review: Susannah Leigh - Strangers at the Stables

Susannah Leigh – Sandy Lane Stables – Strangers at the Stables
Usborne Books, 2009 : £4.99

Age 10+ (or thereabouts)

This book was originally published in 1996, but it’s been republished a couple of times since then and is still going strong. The latest reprint came out this year.

The latest cover re-design is of the twinkle-twinkle-fairydust school. Goodness alone knows why. There’s nothing remotely fantastical about the story, so presumably this latest effort is to make the books appear fashionable and “new”. I don’t dislike the cover particularly (I love the grey Arab in fact) but I wonder if it wouldn’t confuse its public a bit: this is a straight down the line pony story and there’s not even the merest hint of a mysteriously fading sparkly hoofprint anywhere.

The Sandy Lane Stables series is one I’ve been aware of for years, but which I’ve managed to avoid reading, assuming from the various cover designs that I wasn’t going to enjoy it. Well, I was wrong. I haven’t read the whole series, but I liked this later example from it. Rosie, stalwart teenage helper at Sandy Lane Stables is the book’s heroine. The stable’s owners have to go to America for three weeks, leaving their new groom, Becky, in charge, but when she breaks her leg in an accident, guess what! The children are left in charge. However, the author thankfully took note of the fact that times have changed since fictional riding stables would be left in the hands of eleven year olds for weeks at a time and the stables only has a couple of days being run by the children until Sam and Vanessa turn up to run it. Sam and Vanessa are not what they seem, however, but the only one who can see they’re iffy is Rosie.

I liked the plot: it twists and turns, and kept me interested, though I couldn’t help but wonder how likely it was Sam and Vanessa would have been able to leave their other life not so very far away and no one would actually have spotted. The characters emerge, pretty much, as separate individuals, as do the ponies. The book is a good, fun read, and probably one of the nearest things you’re going to get to a traditional pony story for this age group at the moment.

My little pony goes Gaga

I've mentioned these before, but Finnish artist Mari Kasurinen has transformed some more My Little Ponies......

I love these, particularly the Gaga one, and the Elvis unicorn is just brilliant. The artist presumably has a bit of a thing about Johnny Depp, as there's a pirate pony, and a dreadfully pathetic Edward Scissorhands.

Book memories meme

Book memories meme

The following meme comes from the Ibooknet blog.

The book that’s been on your shelves the longest.
A bit difficult, this. As with most people, I guess this would have to be a childhood book. The one I've had the longest would either by my extremely battered Winnie the Pooh paperback, or my slightly less battered but still not good Wind in the Willows, both of which were read to me by my mother.

A book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time).

Well, most of them do, really, even ones I've bought on to sell remind me of where I bought them. Hmmm. There is something that reminds me very specifically of a time in my life, and that is "Jane Hankey" scrawled across the title page, as that was my name when I was married first. I used to spend a lot of time either in Mowbrays (which at that time was north of Oxford St and not amalgamated with Hatchards as it is now) and was one of my lunchtime haunts, or in W H Smith in Victoria Station, waiting for my suburban train home. My then husband did not approve of my book habit, and sadly as our relationship deteriorated, less and less of what I actually read. Then as now, I didn't spend a lot of time on the far shores of edgy modern literature which might have provided a literary argument, but was far more likely to read a Dorothy Sayers or Margery Allingham. The bone of contention was that I did not read enough Christian literature, which is a tad ironic considering Mowbrays was well known for being the churchman's bookshop and supplier of all sorts of other bits and bobs to the church, and if I'd had a mind too, there was a more than ample supply of reading material.

A book you acquired in some interesting way.

I've had a few books sent to me by the authors, which is always fun, though slightly worrying when I know I have it for review, and I have to balance the fact I don't wish to upset someone who has been kind enough to give me something with my desire to make my dislike fairly plain if I don't like the book.

When we moved here, we did find a huge heap of books, mostly alas damp ridden beyond saving, in the pigsty.

The book that’s been with you to the most places.

Probably Pride & Prej I guess, as it came with me to university and I moved every year, books bunged into my splendid collection of International Stores carrier bags.

Your current read, your last read and the book you’ll read next.

My current read is actually reads, as I always have several books on the go at a time.

Currently on the go are Dickens - Dombey & Son, Mistress of Charlecote - the Memoirs of Mary Elizabeth Lucy, Dervla Murphy - Through Siberia by Accident and Phillis Garrard - Hilda's Adventures. Last read was Phillis Garrard - The Doings of Hilda, and the book I'll read after I've finished the current lot is probably going to be the first Pony Club Annual as I need to start my research on those.

Bonkers Advertising Copy - Joules

Eating my cheese muffin at lunch today I was mulling over the Joules catalogue, as you do, when I came across this:

"One of life's greatest pleasures is a loose fitting shirt pulled overhead."

I can think of a few circumstances where that might be the case, but frankly, in the general scheme of things, isn't your life a bit sad if putting on a shirt is your greatest pleasure in life?

A bulging parcel which you know contains a book being pulled out of the letterbox, on the other hand....