I was shocked, horrified by what I was seeing. Not understanding how people could do something like this!!!!!
I could be talking about so many different things but at that time I was six months in on a new online equestrian magazine and the topic was rollkur the practice of overbending the horse as a training method which sadly limits sight, breath, damaging physically and emotionally on so many different levels.
But it turned out few were aware of the practice that was rampant, especially in dressage with top level Olympic riders. Few aware because what was happening in the training ring was not being reported on, because anyone who tried was threatened legally with repercussions to their livelihood. Although the practice was rampant and growing everywhere.
But those who wanted to bring pictures to the world to see the extreme postures the horses were going through in the name of training were trying hard, working behind the scenes trying to find a way to get the word out but couldn't find a footing. It didn't help that one of those riders' families basically owned every news publication outlet in her country. So, between the threats, the lack of knowledge on the damage caused and the influence exerted, these images of rollkur were kept buried.
Shocked, disbelieving, hurting for the horses I offered to post the images collected thinking, to be honest, if they wanted to sue me, they couldn't get blood out of a rock. Yes, it could destroy what I was trying to build. But... the pain these poor horses were in... well there really was no choice. I must say first I did next to nothing. I just published what had already been so painstakingly gathered. I didn't gather the material, put together the material available on why this was so wrong, at least not then.
Within hours of the release of that issue and those images, the equestrian world was in an uproar. My site crashed as everyone at once tried to access those images. At that time, it was on various discussion boards not social media that people shared their thoughts and ideas and 70 equestrian discussion boards blew up linking to the site and those horrible images. Some in languages that I had never seen before.
There was so much shock. People horrified by the images. Completely unaware that this was happening. And I committed from that point forwards to include at least one article each and every issue to make sure attention was kept on this issue.
Once the floodgates were opened so many people knew after those first few hours what was going on, the genie was out of the bottle. And there was no way that threats could be used against everyone. No way to try to sue that many people.
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