Denmark's Ministry of Justice has asked its consulting Animal Welfare Council to look into whether hyperflexion of the neck could be against Danish animal protection laws.
According to the Danish Horse Husbandry Act, the training and use of horses must befit the horse's age as well as its mental and physical capacity, protecting it in the best possible way against pain, suffering, fear, injury and discomfort. Equine welfare group Hesteinternatet af 1999 has asked Denmark's Minister of Justice whether hyperflexion of the neck is in accordance with this legislation, and the Minister has chosen to consult the nation's Animal Welfare Council.
Coercive riding - not just rollkur - has received a lot of attention in Denmark in the past few years. In April 2009 Professor in Ethology and Animal Welfare, Jan Ladewig, from the University of Copenhagen went on national television and labelled the riding filmed by Epona.tv at national and international events "animal cruelty" due to the excessive and prolonged use of the reins and spurs which the riders were using as well as the hyperflexed position in which many horses were trained. "It is not okay for a horse to be curled up like this for such extended periods of time," he said to LPS, a nationally broadcast sports program.
FEI veterinarian and Danish SPA spokesman, Jens Svenningsen, appeared on the same program. "There can be no doubt that the horse world has slowly become more callous during the last decade in search of quick fixes in stead of proper basic training," he said. After the program had aired, the SPA sent out a press release, demanding that the Danish Equestrian Federation should take immediate action towards better protection of horses within the sport. So far, this hasn't happened, but with the blue tongue uproar, increased focus has once again been placed on the issue.
LPS also spoke with Danish dressage team veterinarian, Dr. Hans Christian Matthiesen, who was at the time an aspiring international dressage judge, but Mathiessen denied that there are general welfare problems associated with the way horses are trained for elite level sport. "If you're not used to seeing this kind of training, it can appear violent," he said, but stressed that no statistical evidence exists to show that such training is bad for the horse. In his blog on a Danish horse portal, Dr. Mathiessen now laments the "loss of respect" for dressage and claims that the blue tongue clip of Patrik Kittel on YouTube has been taken completely out of context, and claims that there are horses from the Third World pulling heavy loads through Europe with old tires nailed to their feet instead of real horseshoes, which is much worse.
In the LPS studio, Danish Equestrian Federation chairman Ulf Helgstrand was shown footage taken by a German videographer in Germany of Ulf Helgstrand's son, Andreas Helgstrand aboard the much admired, early retired Silvermoon daughter, Matiné. During the warm up, the curb reins are used to pull the horse's face from side to side, and the studio debate got somewhat lost in a semantic scuffle over whether Andreas Helgstrand was "seesawing" as suggested by the host or "sensitively feeling his way" as claimed by Ulf Helgstrand, who mentioned rollkur as an example of something much worse. Watch the program here to form an opinion.
Already in 2006, the equine division of the Danish Veterinary Association was warning against rollkur on the association's stand at the Danish Warmblood stallion licensing in Herning. A gigantic poster of Salinero balancing on one foreleg in a trot extension served as a warning and to attract attention to the way in which riding with a short neck affects the purity of the horse's gaits. "Our theme that year was sustainable training," remembers Dr. Kiwa Riis-Olesen, who was head of the Veterinarian Association's equine division at the time. "Any training method which can be seen so clearly to cause deterioration of the basic gaits has to be bad for the horse, and should not be employed."
The Council of Animal Welfare hearing is set to take place in early December.
