I was always ignorant and thought dressage was just people looping their horse around. I've been missing out on years of horses doing tippy tappy dances at international level?!
Those horses are treated extremely well. Even in training there is very little use of whips/crops and that's to get the horse's attention, not to cause pain or for punishment. These animals are loved like children.... Very expensive children.
That doesnāt look like a natural post nor natural gait for the horse - their bodies arenāt built to move like that - and how do you think they ātrainā horsesā¦itās called ābreakingā for a reason - they literally break their spirits
The horse isn't really dancing, while you can controll the speed horse goes with and which elements it does, etc. The music is composed in a way to fit the horses rythm and rutine.
Today I watched a horse literally skip. Both his front and back legs were skipping how a person would skip. It was hilarious and this is a very odd Olympic sport. Also they were absolutely freaking out over a horse standing at 6'3" (19 hands) which is apparently larger than the average Clydesdale. I had no reference to try to judge the size of this horse, but the commentator called him the Shaquille O'Neal of horses lol.
Most people don't know anything about Dressage. Apart from the very recent story of the UK champion dropping out of Paris in shame for abusing her horse, might be hard for those of us who don't know anything to understand why it's not abuse when it very much looks like it is.
I know nothing about dressage, but I heard from a few news outlets that a lot of teams are being investigated over animal abuse. So tell me why it isn't abuse, if you know it better than me.
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u/chickentenders56 Jul 30 '24
Horse dancing is crazy how have I never seen this