The horse world was shocked when Charlotte Dujardin withdrew from the Olympics, 3 days prior to the start of the games. But even more shocking, the former golden girl was withdrawing because of a video of her abusing a horse. The Charlotte Dujardin?? Of Charlotte and Valegro??
The video was released yesterday, and sure enough, it’s Charlotte chasing a horse around, beating it with a lunge whip. It’s obvious that it’s clearly painful and confusing to the horse, but I haven’t seen too many people mentioning this part: there’s also a rider on the horse. The horse is scooting, bucking and kicking out, reacting to whip. That rider could have been tossed or seriously hurt. So not only is there a horse in pain, but there could have been very bad consequences for the rider. Certainly a less secure rider would have been tossed off fairly quick.
Apparently Charlotte was trying to get the horse to lift his legs more in the canter, even if that makes no sense to me. But many people online have said this is normal, or not uncommon, and are basically saying it’s not a big deal. We’ll come back to that in a moment, I just want you to make note of it.
I’ve seen several people questioning why this video came out now. It’s days before the Olympics, isn’t that suspicious? It could be a jealous competitor trying to eliminate her, yada yada yada. Granted, many of these thoughts were before the video came out, but let’s be clear that Charlotte herself was the one announced her withdrawal, she knew she did wrong. It was a buried skeleton in her closet. Has she done it before? She seemed pretty confident in her approach with that whip. But who knows, we just have this one video, and everything else is hearsay at this point.
So why did it take four years for this video to come out? Well, I don’t find it suspicious at all, because I have a pretty good idea of what happened.
When we have a trainer we like, we tend to believe everything they do is right. We see someone achieving great results, is really charismatic, or just seems really confident, and we convince ourselves that the things they do are the right way. Even if what we see triggers a little discomfort in our brain, we find ways to justify it being the right thing.
I think we can all think of a trainer right now that we respected. We constantly wanted their approval, their attention, and perhaps even their friendship. Chances are, we gave them a pass for lots of things – For showing up late to a lesson. For favoring another student at a show. For tightening our horse’s noseband much tighter than we would have liked. And in extreme cases – very rough treatment that appears to be “training.”
“It’s training,” we told ourselves. “That’s how it’s done.”
“This is normal, that’s how you get a horse to lift his legs up.”
Most people just go with it. It’s rarer for someone to stand up to a trainer, than it is for someone to just accept poor treatment, of either the horse or themselves. There are posts on horse community sites all the time that basically amount to: “How do I make my trainer stop doing this thing I hate?” Simply telling the trainer to knock it off is never an option.
Even if the person stands up against it, they might find themselves cast out of their barn circle. After all, everyone else still believes it’s normal. There’s a lot of pressure to stay silent.
Just yesterday, I saw a post about a barn of lesson horses in North Carolina that are starving. These poor animals are skin and bones, yet are somehow being used in lessons and camps and going to shows. It’s not even hidden, these horses are seen by the riders, the parents, and the outside world, at horse show.
I think a horse starving is a bit more obvious than behind the scenes abuse, but yet this barn still carried on for quite a while.
Maybe people have been trying to help, which is why the barn’s facebook page is hostile. But these horses weren’t kicked out of shows, and they still continued to have lesson business. Their facebook page had 1.8k likes. People could see what was going on, but business continued. Grown adults bringing their children to this barn either didn’t recognize what a starving animal looks like, or they just respected the trainer so much, they assumed they knew best. Honestly, I’m going with the later. They didn’t believe their own eyes because they put so much trust in the trainer.
So yes, I totally believe that a 15 year old girl isn’t going to say something about the trainer she idolizes. It’ll just eat at her for years. According to her lawyer, she asked for other’s opinions at the time, but was basically told to let it go. She finally spoke up when she saw other dressage trainers being penalized for similar actions.
*Edit* I wanted to add that my speculation/information above was wrong. It wasn’t a teenager that reported her, it has since come out that it was another trainer(?) that she worked with. Just want to clarify to be as accurate as possible!
Charlotte is out of the Olympics, and being investigated by FEI. The video looks bad and is likely going to mean serious repercussions for her. She’s already lost some sponsors. I don’t know what further consequences will entail, but I wonder how much of an effect it’s actually going to have on the wider horse world. Will it actually make stop other people?
Although it might give people competing at high levels pause, is it going to effect others? Most people aren’t competing at that level. There’s lots of trainers who only show locals, or don’t show at all, and therefore have no governing authority to answer to. There’s still the dressage trainer down the road teaching her students to jerk and hang on a horse’s mouth for “flexation.” The trainer who gets frustrated and beats a horse for not understanding. The cowboy who rides the horse to exhaustion, trying to break its will. These people exist. Abusers don’t just come in high end packages, they are literally all around us. Chances are that these people aren’t going to be reprimanded by anyone. FEI isn’t going to swoop in to strip these trainers of their non-existent memberships. The trainers get away with it because there’s no one there to hold them accountable. Their clients basically just assume they are right, and “that’s how it’s always been done,” or “that’s how they do it.”
You should question it. All trainers should be held accountable, in all aspects of horsemanship. They should be thoughtful with their horse training, and they should be professional with their human clients. If there’s something weird, a client should be able to question it immediately, and get an acceptable answer. Trust their your own senses if something feels off.
Trainers can be great people, sure. There’s definitely some greats that I know. But not everyone is. Drop the hero worship, and don’t look at trainers through rose colored glasses. Horses are very tolerant of some pretty horrible behavior, and they deserve better.
If something feels wrong, it’s probably wrong. I know I’ve had that itchy feeling, watching something that doesn’t feel right, but I’ve said nothing. I won’t stay silent anymore, though. I am the only one who can speak up for my horse, and I will take that very seriously.