The reining sport authority says: “All complaints filed with the NRHA are confidential, as are the decisions made by the committees in closed session.” Well that keeps it all a secret does it not? – click here for a redacted copy of a letter signed by the National Reining Horse Association. And the rules state you must […]
The truth is that a person deemed as knowledgeable, may well be the cruelest person that ever stepped into a horse pen. Ask a reining trainer or clinician how they train their horses and they will have a mantra response that is palatable to most people’s ears. What they won’t talk about is the […]
With a massive 94% of the weighting for welfare and medications clauses sitting squarely on medications, not abuse, in the National Reining Horse Association Handbook, the questions need to be asked: “Have you had your horse tested at an official NRHA event anywhere in the world?” and “How often are they testing at official events?” […]
The new 2017 National Reining Horse Association – NRHA Handbook is now available online Unfortunately, they have let the horses down once again with their lackluster approach to animal welfare and no changes being made from 2016. The Animal Welfare and Medications Provisions is focused on medications demonstrating they believe they have a greater drug […]
In March 2016, the NRHA abandoned their welfare statement, and all other statements contained within their Code of Ethics for NRHA Professionals. The program designed to govern the standards of reining trainers and a compliance requirement that remained the same since 2011. What caused this major change in their position on the Code of Ethics […]
“Unfortunately we do have our share of abusive trainers in our industry that I consider a minority, and when identified, they should be removed, period. It is these individuals that attach a bad stigma to the industry” says Rick Dennis of Wind River in May 2015. A highly respected quarter horse performance breeder and competitor […]
The issue of animal welfare is high on the agenda of competition associations as they work to clean up their public image to meet the modern day informed standards and social media scrutiny. Welfare statements and importantly their management can define an association in the eyes of the general public and those interested in sports. […]
In a world where transparency of sports performance is a public expectation, the global body known as the National Reining Horse Association (NRHA) are seemingly defiant in meeting those expectations. For sports people involved in racing, football, baseball, cycling, Olympic events to name a few, their performance is measured, reported and public scrutiny is par […]
Clinton Anderson describes training techniques for a reining horse and children NRHA has a new self-appointed ambassador of reining, Clinton Anderson of Downunder Horsemanship, a constant of the North American clinicians circuit in recent years. Anderson is taking his thousands of followers on the journey of training his NRHA reining futurity prospect Titan (aka Telling White […]
Many associations, like the National Reining Horse Association (NRHA), take an approach to managing animal welfare through self-regulation by trainers and the case study of the Tennessee Walking Horse tells everyone, that it fails. Over the past half-century, the treatment of the Tennessee walking horse has increasingly become more inhumane as they attempt to achieve higher […]
