Today, I sent an email to the AERC BoD .

[k s swigart]

Joe said:

> While I do believe that our continued association with

> the abuses of Region VII is the biggest threat to the

> AERC's future, I can see that airing that dirty laundry

> in public is a threat as well.

Personally, I do not believe that the AERC’s continued association with the abuses of Region VII is the biggest threat to the AERC’s future. Nor do I think that airing that dirty laundry in public is either.

I think that the biggest threat to the AERC’s future lies much closer to home. The biggest threat to the AERC’s future lies in the loss of trail access. Land managers where AERC rides are held do not care about what is going on in Dubai, nor do they care that a handful of Americans go there to participate, nor do they care that on paper the AERC has a relationship with USEF, who has a relationship with the FEI, who has a relationship with the UAE, or that a handful of horses are dying in a foreign country on the other side of the world.

Land managers care what AERC riders do on their own lands at AERC rides. And what some AERC riders are doing at AERC rides is running amok: They shove each other and other trail users off the trail, they turn their horses loose, their horses run out into traffic and cause traffic accidents, they ride their horses into people standing on the ground, they let their horses skitter around uncontrollably, and they consider all these things to be a joke. All of these things have happened at AERC rides and neither ride managers nor the AERC itself has done anything about it. John Crandell put it very well in his blog on the subject. He said, “No picking on novice riders with their horses bouncing around in panic here!  Just get on and giggle.” It is isn't just novice riders, even some experienced riders have horses bouncing around in panic; no picking on them either.

Not only does the AERC not doing anything about such things, it has even given a lifetime achievement award to a man and his horse who spent 20 years letting the horse regularly get away from him and run loose in camp…making a joke about how unmanageable the horse was while giving the award instead of recognizing that ANY loose horse is a dangerous menace. Darolyn Butler spent upwards of 20 years inadequately restraining her horses and letting them run loose in camp, and despite multiple complaints over the years nobody was willing to do anything about it until other people's horses got killed (although, I bet if it had been people and not horses that got killed at that event, the AERC would not have required her to take financial responsibility for that but instead would have helped her to argue that horses running loose in camp is typical of AERC rides so she shouldn't have any responsibility for letting that happen).

Not only do ride managers do nothing about such things, some of them even publish statements acknowledging that they actively discourage any participants from making official complaints about dangerous behavior.

In the 2103 Tevis Forum there was a message from the VP of the WSTF Board of Governors: "I am writing this article because during the 2012 Tevis Ride there were several instances of riders blocking the trail. One case was a violation of the Tevis sportsmanship rules, and in the second case, A DANGEROUS SITUATION WAS CREATED FOR BOTH HORSES AND RIDERS." [emphasis added]  Outcome:  "Fortunately, tempers calmed and no complaint was ultimately filed. Riders need to realize that ride officials are obligated to investigate these types of complaints..." [Hint, hint, please don't complain because then we will have to do something about it...but the first thing we will do about it is try to convince you not to complain.  Because "...reasonable minds prevailed in this case..." i.e. the complainers were talked out of their complaints before we actually had to do something about it.]

So there you have it, somebody creates a dangerous situation for both horses and riders on a narrow, single-track trail on a ride that has a history of people and horses falling off of it and horses falling to their deaths...but the policy of the governing body is to talk anybody who dares to bring a specific instance to their attention out of making an official complaint because then they might have to actually do something about it.

No land manager in their right mind would allow such an event to occur on a trail where there is the possibility that there will be other users. There are too many endurance riders who don’t know how to share a trail, and there are too many ride managers who won’t tell such people to put their horses back in the trailer and go home. And if they do and the rider files a protest, the AERC won’t support the ride manager in that decision because such behavior is "typical" of endurance riders (after all, the AERC even gives prizes to people who habitually let their horses run loose in camp).

It is this kind of behavior that I consider to be the biggest threat to the future of the AERC, not anything that foreigners are doing in the deserts of the Middle East.

The continued complaints by the AERC about what is going on in the UAE reminds me very much of a quote from Mark Twain: "To do good is noble. To tell others to do good is even nobler and much less trouble."  It is much less trouble for the AERC to tell USEF and the FEI that they ought to do something about all the abuses in UAE endurance than it is for the AERC to actually do something about the abuses right here at home.

I am aware that there are some people on the AERC's Board of Directors who are trying to address this growing problem with AERC rides and AERC riders; Susan Kasemeyer even mentioned it recently in one of her Vice President's messages, but they are met with substantial resistance. However, if it tries, the AERC is likely to have more success at fixing its own problems than any of the FEI's. But, like the FEI, in order to fix its problems, first it must acknowledge them.

The whole UAE thing is nothing more than an irrelevant distraction.

kat

Orange County, Calif.

:|

[Nicole Chappell]

Thanks Kat for writing this! I believe in what you say All this way. I hope more people start to realize that we need to focus on our Aerc issues at home than elsewhere.

[Ed & Wendy Hauser]

On 1/20/2018 10:38 AM, Nicole Chappell wrote:

us on our Aerc issues at home than elsewhere

No argument with focusing on home issues, but that does not preclude doing the right thing and refusing to associate with those who neither follow our lead, nor listen to us.

Ed

--
Ed & Wendy Hauser
5729 175th Ave.
Becker, MN 55308

Ed: (406) 381-5527
Wendy: (406) 544-2926

[Truman Prevatt]

Lets review the past number of years.  There is an outcry and the BOD ignored it.  Then at some point after drugs were discovered and enough horses abused with some killed - the AERC BOD finally wrote a letter to the FEI which looked more like apologizing for actually writing them the letter.  The AERC BOD crawled back in their hole pulling the cover over their eyes again.  Then more horse abuse in international and AERC BOD writes another vanilla letter. Nothing happened but a rebuttal telling the AERC - we got this handled trust us.  

Now it is up to us the membership to demand action from our BOD or to replace them with someone that will take action.  We can’t complain about not taking a stand on international while electing the same people that didn’t take action.  

Folks it is up to the members - to force the BOD to take the appropriate action.  If the members don’t they cannot blame the BOD they can only blame themselves. 

Truman

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"It is hard to fight an enemy who has outpost in your head." - Sally Kempton

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[Merri Melde]

however, you overlooked the One Big Fact that abu dhabi (the Other Guys... fierce rivals of Those Other Guys) *has* taken a huge stand against endurance horse abuse and, not wanting to be painted with the same brush as the UAE rule-breakers, and fighting upstream all the way, have instituted new rules of endurance riding and horse welfare, and ways of recognizing horses and riders (not "winner winner chicken dinners" with cars and trucks and money), and they have been wildly successful with high completion rates (approaching completion rates of our endurance rides here in the US) and few treatments and emphasizing horsemanship and Best Condition horses.

I expect all the pressure that was put on the UAE by *us* - AERC, and primarily England's Pippa Cuckson who has done alot of the investigative journalism *did* in fact help affect change over there, however godawful slow it's been.

I think that's a *huge* deal and nothing less than extraordinary, taking into account the impossible and impassible political and cultural rivalries in that country, and the FEI stance of preferring to either pretend things aren't happening until they are uncovered, and hoping problems just go away.

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www.TheEquestrianVagabond.com

On Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 3:32 PM, Truman Prevatt <tpre...@mindspring.com> wrote:

Lets review the past number of years.  There is an outcry and the BOD ignored it.  Then at some point after drugs were discovered and enough horses abused with some killed - the AERC BOD finally wrote a letter to the FEI which looked more like apologizing for actually writing them the letter.  The AERC BOD crawled back in their hole pulling the cover over their eyes again.  Then more horse abuse in international and AERC BOD writes another vanilla letter. Nothing happened but a rebuttal telling the AERC - we got this handled trust us.  

Now it is up to us the membership to demand action from our BOD or to replace them with someone that will take action.  We can’t complain about not taking a stand on international while electing the same people that didn’t take action.  

Folks it is up to the members - to force the BOD to take the appropriate action.  If the members don’t they cannot blame the BOD they can only blame themselves. 

Truman

--

"It is hard to fight an enemy who has outpost in your head." - Sally Kempton

On Jan 20, 2018, at 17:15, Ed & Wendy Hauser <ra...@sisuwest.us> wrote:

On 1/20/2018 10:38 AM, Nicole Chappell wrote:

us on our Aerc issues at home than elsewhere

No argument with focusing on home issues, but that does not preclude doing the right thing and refusing to associate with those who neither follow our lead, nor listen to us.

Ed

--
Ed & Wendy Hauser
5729 175th Ave.
Becker, MN 55308

Ed: (406) 381-5527
Wendy: (406) 544-2926

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[Michael Campbell]

Dear Truman,

Your recollection of the last several years is sadly lacking.  The AERC board never sent a letter to FEI.  I sent several stongly worded letters to USEF and FEI officials over the three years I was president of the board.  None of them were in any way apologetic and they were unrelenting.  They began with the video death of Splitters Creek Bundy, continued with drug charges, fake rides, horse substitutions and various other forms of cheating that were well documented.  FEI was interested enough in our correspondence that they sent two high level representatives to our annual convention.  USEF was likewise impressed enough to send their president and CEO's to two of our conventions.  I was in contact with the presidents of endurance organizations in Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany and other countries.  We coordinated our protests to FEI.  In response, FEI strengthened their rules, suspended UAE twice, removed the WEC from Dubai and imposed other sanctions on Group VII.  This work continues.  Most of my letters were published on Fb.  I know that Dubai is still a work in progress.  But like training my horses, I'm determined to outlast their misbehavior.  Abandoning this fight and allowing equine abuse to continue in Dubai is just unacceptable.  To paraphrase someone wiser than I, "For equine abuse to continue, all that is necessary is to turn a blind eye."  The abuse  is in one venue of several  hundred monitored by FEI.  I have regualarly urged AERC members to not ride in Dubai or sell their horses there.  Nothing plain vanilla or reticent about my correspondence on this issue or my attitude about it.  The AERC board of directors was fully supportive of all correspondence in protest of equine abuse in that venue.  Many of them wrote letters as well.  The board has taken appropriate action and Dubai has suffered the consequences.  They may need more severe lessons for it to sink in and that's okay with me.

Michael Campbell

On Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 5:32 PM, Truman Prevatt <tpre...@mindspring.com> wrote:

Lets review the past number of years.  There is an outcry and the BOD ignored it.  Then at some point after drugs were discovered and enough horses abused with some killed - the AERC BOD finally wrote a letter to the FEI which looked more like apologizing for actually writing them the letter.  The AERC BOD crawled back in their hole pulling the cover over their eyes again.  Then more horse abuse in international and AERC BOD writes another vanilla letter. Nothing happened but a rebuttal telling the AERC - we got this handled trust us.  

Now it is up to us the membership to demand action from our BOD or to replace them with someone that will take action.  We can’t complain about not taking a stand on international while electing the same people that didn’t take action.  

Folks it is up to the members - to force the BOD to take the appropriate action.  If the members don’t they cannot blame the BOD they can only blame themselves. 

Truman

--

"It is hard to fight an enemy who has outpost in your head." - Sally Kempton

On Jan 20, 2018, at 17:15, Ed & Wendy Hauser <ra...@sisuwest.us> wrote:

On 1/20/2018 10:38 AM, Nicole Chappell wrote:

us on our Aerc issues at home than elsewhere

No argument with focusing on home issues, but that does not preclude doing the right thing and refusing to associate with those who neither follow our lead, nor listen to us.

Ed

--
Ed & Wendy Hauser
5729 175th Ave.
Becker, MN 55308

Ed: (406) 381-5527
Wendy: (406) 544-2926

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[Diane Trefethen]

Let's say M Campbell is correct. If you were to draw a timeline on the
abuse/death of horses in Group VII since 1990, would that graph trend up
(ie more deaths and abuse) or down?

If up, does it matter whose recollections are "right"? If down - then why
are we complaining?

Diane Trefethen
AERC #2691

[Truman Prevatt]

Of course my “recollection” is probably not to the minute accurate because I didn’t keep a detailed time line. That’s beside the point as the point is the linearity of the progress of the description was accurate.

Bottom line this has been evolving since the mid 1990’s. For a long time - the AERC BOD stuck it’s head in the sand. Only when it reached crisis status did the AERC reluctantly get engaged and that
engagement was more generated by outraged by some of the European countries - particularly the UK - than the US. That didn’t work. One simple reason is the political organization of the UAE - which has
nothing to do with endurance, horses, the US or the AERC. The biggest offender is the President of Dubai. The president of Dubai is also by definition the Prime Minister of the UAE. There is of course nothing
the AERC can do about that and there is little reason to believe that the UAE is going to force Dubai to clean its act up.

Another letter from the US and little has changed. The AERC wrote another letter washed its hands - thinking I guess that writing a letter would absolve the AERC from abuses to horses in the sport that they created.
The response letter from the FEI - which was “thank you very much, we’ve got it, trust us and go away” although it was stated very diplomatically.

So now what is going to happen, is the AERC going to yet again wash its hands - because they have been absolved again. H. L. Mencken once described, “Every election is sort of an advanced sale on stolen goods.”
If the members are fed up with the sport of endurance being tainted by the opulent examples of equine abuse that goes on in its name in parts of the world and has been ongoing for close a generation and the AERC
BOD sticking its head in the sand - then we cannot blame the BOD we can only blame the people who put them in that position. Again as Mencken said, “It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it only takes a few
determined leaders and a sound cause.”

Bottom line the abuse of horses in the name of the sport endurance on the international level has been going on for almost a generation - and the AERC has been complicit to the point of being an "accessory after the fact” by its inaction.

T

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