I am a firm believer that peer pressure can be a very powerful incentive for behaviour modification (see the naughty list on my website www.applausedressage.com if you don’t believe me). So, with that in mind, I am pleased to provide you with the video of Michael Morrissey BEATING his horse at the US team trials. Some clever soul managed to obtain some video footage and not only did he or she post it on youtube, he or she has sent me the video footage. So, if you are reading this and about to yank the youtube video, don’t worry. I’ll post it right on this blog without the aid of youtube if you do that.
Following the official FEI statement which you can find in my last post – the one that says MM was disqualified from all further participation in the US team trials, I found him in the results for the next week’s Trial #3, which was held on March 3 on the Steeplechase Field at WEF. MM had 12 faults and was 24th in the overall standings. He has been ‘disappeared’ like an Argentinian dissident from all the results at shownet.biz, but trust me, he was there and whoever ‘disappeared’ him has not been able to erase him from every single website or press release. I have now been contacted by an individual at USEF who is taking responsibility for giving the FEI wrong information, which the FEI then sent to me. This individual says that in fact MM was disqualified AFTER trial 3, and that he made a mistake in his reporting to the FEI. I’m not buying it though. Not one little bit. Come on! How can you say someone was disqualified from competing when he was right there in the flesh, and on the results – at least for a while anyway.
Here is the video. Note that he has turned the whip around in his hand to get more force in the whacks. He also hits the horse on the shoulder a couple of times before going for the golf swing on the backside. As I said in an email response to the individual at USEF, never mind the rules. Anyone with a shred of humanity would cringe to watch a horse treated this way. I am still awestruck that nothing was done to discipline him right after it happened – by USEF or the FEI.
