Flossy is well known to many on the British Dressage Forum as a teller of interesting stories and perhaps the odd joke or two. We have selected a few tales for your pleasure.
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With out bits
We all know that currently the sport of dressage is under scrutiny , a group of horse lovers are hell bent on eradicating what they perceive as abusive training methods from the sport their actions are : to expose riders with unethical riding style and expulsion of show officials with defective eye sight not able to perform their duties effectively.
This educated body of experts after a long scientific research has identified exactly what is abuse and what not and circulated on the internet their findings, from what I gather , horse abuse is centred only around the horses neck and head ,any position of either the neck or head which deviate from the straight as a plank is considered un natural and abusive to the horse .
Contrarily to every ones thinking the FEI, BEF and BD are taking these issues very seriously and in order to prevent tongues wagging and air turning blue from these allegations , conducted their own research and findings of how to preserve the image of the sport in the publics eye and prevent disturbing images from being displayed on the internet.
There were suggestions to exclude spectators from all international competitions, obviously on a vote this idea was rejected as impractical , in most shows the only spectators are close relatives of a competitor or associates of some official that provided his mates with free admittance . The second idea was to conceal the working in arena from unauthorised photographers , that failed too as equine photographers are a very resilient characters willing to live and work in the most inhospitable environments including the Danish wild bush, in pursuant of their goals, they use modern technology like CIA spy drones to foil any attempt to hide any bit of information from the public.
After long consultation with all the stake holders the governing bodies came the idea that changes to the sport are the required solution and recreated international dressage, the following changes were undertaken.
On the first day of a FEI championships tests will be ridden bitless, on the second day all tests will be performed bridle less and the final championship class will be performed tack less.
It did require some changes to the scale of training as riding from behind into a contact was no longer applicable, the other technical requirements stayed the same.
Top Competitor took the the sports reputation and image very seriously ,he was going to insure that every thing will be transparent out in the open and if any natural fundamentalists are around he will expose every thing, proving to the world that dressage riders has nothing to be ashamed of.
He was delighted with the FEI latest move and supported it whole heartedly.
At the first CDI employing the new rules Top Competitor was working in for the “Bit less, bridle less, no saddle championship”.
As he entered the main arena he was pleased to see the electronic judging machine in place, programed for the new judging system, its laser tentacles' zooming on to his horses bio acceptable head position.
It was one of his ideas, in order to make the judging fair this roll was taken away from human beings and intrusted to a machine that will not show weakness of nationalistic or personal biases, even if it was developed and made by Siemens in Germany , financed by a Danish body called “horses for grazing only” this machine was bias less .
The strength of the new system was that the elements required to be evaluated were reduced to one: the HEAD POSITION.
As competitors performed the test the the computerised scanners would lock on to the horses head position, even if the horse only lower the head to rub his nose or remove a fly a loud sirens would announce a warning “nose approaching the vertical, nose will reach vertical innnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!! 5, 3 , 1, seconds, vertical breached, we have rolkur, repeat, we have rolkur. Please can all spectators with video evidence report the offence via the BD forum’. and FB or TWITTER groups to the FEI. All you human judges if you want to one day be intrusted with the judging again please note this is RK not a fly removing action”(all this in 7 languages including Swedish)
As the test is ridden tack less, should a head position deviation happen , obviously the offender is most likely to be the horse who would be panelised for SELF ABUSE ,
on the 3rd offence the horse would be struck out of the competition with the rider completing the test on his own..
Top competitors test was un interrupted, the sirens kept stump the giant search light never illuminated, he was leaving the arena in a free walk on no rein with a big smile on his face, just as he was about to exit the stadium he saw a group of ladies dressed in combat fatigue a appearing from behind the bushes excitedly shouting to each others “ LETS CHECK HIS BITS”
Top competitor gave them one of his sideways looks and calmly replied back “the only bits left on me or my horse you ladies aren't doing any CHECKING well not in front of all these people unless there is a special prize ”