Cyndi Plasch Beating A Horse at Midwest Horse Fair

If you're looking for my video of Asia Voight doing psychic readings for horse owners, click here. If you're looking for my full report on her, head on over to Snarkyrider. Now onto breaking news:

Wisconsin horse trainer Cyndi Plasch was caught on video tape at the Midwest Horse Fair repeatedly hitting a horse with a wiffle bat in order to force it into a trailer:

Cindy Plasch was heavily involved in gaited horses, as an owner, trainer and coach. She worked at the Missouri Foxtrotter Riding Academy (warning: site may be down due to heavy traffic) located at the Driftless Valley Ranch in Mazomanie, WI. The Upper Midwest Missouri Foxtrotter Association has just removed her from its board, but we don't know whether Driftless Valley has fired her or not. The Midwest Horse Fair organization has issued a statement condemning Plasch's actions, but we don't yet know if she will be allowed to come back next year. Hopefully, all of the media attention, including this video which has an interview with person who caught the abuse on tape, will mean permanent banishment for Plasch. Several witnesses have attempted to get some legal action going, but so far it seems officials are treating the incident as harmless. If you disagree, you can contact:

Timothy Frank
Animal Services Officer
Public Health-Madison & Dane County
Ph. 608-243-0310 or try (608) 266-4821


Or write to:

health@cityofmadison.com


Public Health Administrative Office
Attn: Animal Services
210 Martin Luther King
Jr. Blvd, Room 507
Madison, WI 53703

Plasch has now released a statement defending herself:

"Attempts to load the horse had been going on for an hour and a half prior," and "gentler methods such as tapping and using treats were used at the start and were not successful." She also said in the statement that the horse had become violent.  

Can anyone say, "lame excuse to throw a temper tantrum?" I have a challenge for you, dear readers: let's see how many ways we can come up with to get a balky horse into a trailer that don't involve beating it with a plastic bat. I'm willing to bet that most of you are not trainers, yet you can come up with dozens of better ways. Ready? I'll start us off:

- Using a butt rope.
- Training a horse extremely well prior to a major show, so that this is less likely to happen in the first place.
- Lunging the horse immediately after he refuses to go in the trailer, teaching him that refusal = more work than cooperation.

Several people have defended Plasch, saying stuff like, "A plastic wiffle bat doesn't hurt,"  "everyone loses their temper sometimes," and "the horse was aggressive." To which I reply:

A wiffle bat doesn't hurt much, but can you imagine how afraid this horse was? And the next time he even sees another trailer, he'll be even more afraid because of what he's experienced. Violence of any kind is never an appropriate training technique. Yes, everyone loses their temper, but this is an adult professional entrusted with the care of children and other peoples' horses. Even if she couldn't be adult enough to handle her shit, she could have found a better way of taking out her frustration. However, I don't believe this was spontaneous at all; ask yourself why a trainer would be carrying a large plastic wiffle bat around at a show unless they intended to use it exactly for this purpose. I'm betting beating balky horses into and out of trailers is Cyndi Plasch's favorite technique. Finally, this horse was not aggressive. Despite being whaled on with a bat, I didn't see him try to kick or bite even once in this video-- hardly the behavior of an aggressive horse. But even if it was an aggressive horse, does that warrant repeated beatings with a bat? Um, no. That's not how you deal with an aggressive horse, that's how you make one worse.

Cyndi Plasch = Scum. Spread the word.

 

Update: Plasch was eventually fined $429 (only after huge public pressure).

Scary Moments in Horse Training

1,200 pound prey animals are inherently dangerous. Even if you've got the most well-trained horse EVER, stuff happens. When you're dealing with a young horse, well, watch out. Case in point: today's trailering fiasco.

If you've never seen a horse in this position, you've never watched a very large, fat horse try to turn around in a rather narrow trailer. Sorry about the bad art; even if I had had a camera at the time, I wouldn't exactly have wanted to stop and take a picture.

Annie and I were having a good training session. We took a little walk and brushed up our leading-nicely skills, longed, and she was good for everything. Since she was calm and well-behaved, I figured this would be a good time to work on our trailering. Annie has trailered before, but she doesn't like it, and it takes a while to convince her to hop in. Closing the door and getting her to come out are stressful for her. If we're going to any parks/events this spring, we have to do better.

Eventually I got her in the trailer without too much fuss; just a lot of patient bribing and waiting. She has no problem stepping up into the trailer (there's no ramp) and indeed, she practices it daily on the tack room steps, much to my chagrin. It's getting herself all the way inside that scares her. It's kind of dark and echoey in there, and she can't see what monsters might be waiting outside. This time, however, she was pretty calm. The bucket of sweetfeed certainly helped. I let her eat a while and petted her, and tried to make being inside this dark scary tin can a positive experience. Then it was time to back out.

Annie has no problem backing up, at least on the ground. In the trailer, it's way more scary for her. Again, she can't see out, so she doesn't know what she's backing her butt into (it's the totally familiar yard she's always been in, but it COULD have transformed into a lava pit while she was in the trailer). There's also a "big" step downward for her, which she can't see. Plus, and here's where my own idiocy didn't help matters, the back end of the trailer was a bit wet/slippery. Well, she backed up, hit the slippery spot, slithered around a bit, and came forward again all spooked and jittery now. Damn, I should have put sand down!

We tried a couple more times, and she just wasn't having any of it. She pooped nervous-green-diarreha stuff and made the floor more slippery. She got so upset that she started to try to turn around in the trailer with me in it. I stopped her, jamming my finger pretty good in the process, and got her eating again, but I knew this project was going bad fast.

That's when I abandoned ship. "Sorry kid, but I can't have you squishing me to death." I unclipped the leadrope, slipped past her and went out the back (having foolishly neglected to unlatch the escape door). Whew! I rushed to grab a broom, and attacked the mess at the end of the trailer. Annie didn't move, just stared back at me with a pathetic expression. I felt terrible.

She was still pretty calm, and I for a moment I thought she'd back out on her own, but suddenly she bent sideways and threw herself forward at the same time.

 

This is pretty much my trailer, except mine is green and the windows were boarded over during the winter of Annie's injury, so that she'd be warmer on the hour-long trip to and from surgery. As you can see, it's not a small trailer. You can technically fit four horses in it, if you can get them to stand closely side by side. However, it's not a wide trailer. I'd guess five or six feet wide. Annie is probably nine feet long. You can see how the math doesn't work out here.

 

She got stuck, then went down on her knees, practically staring at her rear toes. I was totally terrified, but at least I didn't start yelling or yanking. Annie seemed unhappy, but not panicked; she stayed in this position for a minute or so, and then heaved herself around with a heroic effort, scurried out of the trailer and stopped. I caught her immediately and gave her lots of sympathy treats and petting. She was uninjured, except for a bit of a scape on her side.

I can just imagine how well our next trailering sessions is going to go!

My hubby suggested backing her into the trailer in the first place. I'm not sure I can back her into anything I can hardly get her to go into front-ways, but at least it would save us the terrifying conundrum of backing out. *sigh* Poor Annie. I HAVE to do better next time.