Livestream Aachen - ArabianLines.Com Forum

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to you to raise some concerns about the handling of the in-hand arab horses at the recent Nations Cup held at Aachen. I dipped in and out of the live coverage over the whole weekend until I could bear no more and had to turn it off.

It may help if I explain my background. I have worked on a variety of showing/breeding yards, both purebred and part breds. I hold my National Pony Society Stud Certificate and I am now an advanced endurance rider with three purebred arabs of my own and a part bred.

One of my arabs is an ex in-hand show horse and in his day he was a British National Futurity Champion. Unfortunately he bears mental scars from his time as an in hand show arab, and given the wrong set of circumstance he will throw himself into the �frozen pose� in a panic. It has taken us several years to get him to trot calmly without panicking or spinning at endurance ride trot ups. When he left his show career after mentally burning out, he was so stressed he was covered in a bubble-wrap like skin reaction all over his body.

However, this horse is not a neurotic horse. Far from it. He is otherwise such an easy horse to do; he is the one we stick visitors on because we know he will look after them. The panic is not �him�. It is something that was done to him. He is fine now, relaxed and chilled with some very well trained humans that dote on him, but it always makes me sad that such a simple innocent soul was so messed up by some of the previous humans in his life, all in the name of showing.

I used to think that our arab was unlucky, that he had just landed with the wrong people. I used to think that I had been unlucky when there was a new yard manager at one of the yards I worked at and the in hand arabs started getting �vitamin injections� before they went in the ring.

However, watching the footage from Aachen this year brought it all back. Not only that, but the standard of handling seems to have got even worse, with the bad handling much more widespread. Having been out of the 'scene' for some time the changes were that much more noticible to me. I could count the empathetic handlers on the fingers of one hand and they were very much in the minority.

What I saw on the footage from Aachen was terrified horses reacting violently and out of fear of their handlers. I saw handlers with very aggressive, intimidating body language. I saw horses so scared and stilted that they could not demonstrate their paces. I saw people chase and scare the horses so that they ran hollow and broke pace. I saw judges that had to keep running backwards out of the way so that they weren�t squashed by horses who leapt sideways as if they had been shocked. I saw horses whose eyes were rolling in fear as they were asked to pose. And yet the judges said nothing and continued to place the horses.

The truly depressing thing is that the arab does not need this kind of handling to show itself off. If an arab trusts its handler, it will dance and float and play. No dominance or aggression is needed.

There are already rules in place, I believe, to prevent distressing and abusive handling. Why are these rules not enforced? Please can you tell me, for the sake of other horses like ours who are being abused in the name of the in hand arab show circuit, what the ECAHO intends to do to enforce its own rules in future and prevent this kind of distressing spectacle from happening again? How can we claim back our breed?