In the space of 3 days last week, 3 different people inboxed me with examples of horse abuse at the hands of the same Australian dressage rider.
He is currently competing at a high level in Australia and also coaches kids.
“Um…I think maybe submit the complaints to the RSPCA and Equestrian Australia” I responded, with an inkling that it was probably a pretty piss-weak suggestion.
And as it turns out, it seems the situation is even more hopeless than I first thought…
BELLA’S STORY*
It’s a Thursday night & she’s scrolling through social media in the wake of Charlotte-gate, when she stops dead and her mouth hangs open.
And it’s not just because of gaping spur wounds or the whip welts she can see on the horse. It’s the background in the photos that worries her more.
She knows the scenery and she’s pretty sure she knows who has delivered those blows…. because she has a nearly identical photo on her phone.
As a teenager she worked as a groom for this man and it was her job to cool the horses off after their training sessions.
One day this is how the horse came back to the stables 👇
Bella hadn’t seen what happened but she heard him say he was training for a ‘better extended trot’.
Later on, that same horse starts pawing at the stable door… and again, this time she doesn’t see what happens but she hears it.
The man enters the horse’s stable and for the next ten minutes the sound effects are unbearable… and for the following days the horse spins and shakes any time a human even walks past…
Bella is horrified but she’s also scared of this man and his raging temper… and even though she’s there to ‘learn from the best’ she decides it would be better to leave.
And in the years since she moved on, Bella has seen this man get perpetually glorified for his ‘amazing’ dressage results and yet, and at the same time she knows that reporting him would probably be pointless.
There’s the enormous power imbalance with her age, her lack of finances and her perceived ‘insignificance’ as a groom…In addition, since Charlotte-Gate blew up, there’s also been a billion people banging on about the “context of the training” and why “if she really cared, she took so long to report it?”...
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So realistically what can we do?
Living in Australia, you’d like to think we’re pretty advanced…Most of us have the means to make ethical food choices and it would take a very brave person to leave a dog locked in a car.
So when I looked into this, it came as somewhat of a shock to realise exactly how hard it is to make a complaint about equestrian animal cruelty to the ‘powers that be’.
The processes seem depressingly dismissive and in the case of Equestrian Australia – the focus seems to be on protecting humans from bullying and abuse, with barely a mention of the horse.
So who speaks for the horse?
Well no one really… because it seems the system is structured for silence.
On one hand, we’ve got hopeless processes that present multiple barriers for people to report abuse and on the other hand we’ve got an enormous & justifiable fear of social ostracism if someone dares to speak up.
And through all this, these witnesses carry around the mental anguish of knowing it’s probably happening again and again to untold different horses. Meanwhile, the alleged perpetrators carry on coaching kids and getting decorated as a ‘craftsmen’ of the sport.
Honestly, isn’t it time that we do better?
Not just for the purposes of revoltingly hypocritical instagram captions but to actually create a community where transparency, kindness and horse welfare is valued over all else?
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My purpose here – over this series of articles – is to explore the different avenues of reporting equestrian animal abuse.
Using Bella’s real life example, I’ll explore who cares, who listens and in the end I guess we’ll see whether anything is ever done 🤷♀️
To be honest i’m already anxious that it will completely fall flat and that i’ll dig around for hours and get nothing but a whole lot of hate… But on the flip side, I really think we need a roadmap here so that people CAN speak up safely when they see something happening.
Because when we want to speak for the horse, we need to know who’s listening 🙏
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Stay tuned for Part 2 where I’ll share the responses I receive from relevant organisations, when I approach them with Bella (and others) examples of violent, excessive whip use in the setting of performance horse training.
*Name and some circumstances have been changed for obvs reasons.
good luck, maybe do a go fund me to get some lawyers?
It would be interesting to get the Animal Defenders Office’s view. They provide pro bono legal advice and have stood up in support of our brumbies.
Nikki! You with the great ideas! Thank you so much, I’ll put them on my list of people to contact 🙂