Head Tucked in= Good!

This is another of my pet hates. I don't want to see the horse I might buy with his nose yanked into his chest! Seriously! Whether that's in a cart:

Or under saddle...

These are not horses being driven/ridden nicely in a contact or on the bit or in an outline or whatever you would like to call it- this isn't it!! These horses are being forced into an incorrect frame, with their noses behind the vertical; they don't look right, they don't look comfortable and if they've been ridden like this a long time they will be prone to fixing in this position and holding themselves behind the bit instead of accepting the contact- not easy to correct! Some people seem to think the horse looks super impressive like this- to me it just looks awful. Honestly, I'd rather see them relaxed on a long rein or poking the nose out a little, especially if they're young. Much easier to introduce them to going the right way from those basics rather than trying to correct the bad habit.

Here are some dressage horses- which are for sale btw, visit http://www.dmdressage.com/ed/home.html- working beautifully WITHOUT their noses in their chests! See the difference?

Not that the world of dressage has it's house in order. Wouldn't you rather watch the horses above being ridden like that than this one being ridden like this?

Sadly these shots are of 2012's SILVER individual medal combination Adelinde Cornelissen on Parzival. In addition to riding her horse into the arena in the over flexed position 'Rollkur' as shown in the top shots, her horse tellingly failed to rein back when asked, instead tucking his nose into his chest in the classic Rollkur position. It's ugly and unpleasant and unfortunately, seems increasingly common in the higher ranks of Dressage competition. More information on this here: http://deserthorseinc.com/blog/2012/08/05/rollkur_olympics/
http://fuglyblog.com/2012/08/03/rollkur-at-the-olympics-a-new-equestrian-event/ http://suite101.com/article/dressage-rollkur-debate-rears-or-tucks-in-its-head-at-olympics-a410572.

But I digress. To return to the selling issue, I am sure many people out there are saying that some of the sales shots I have found are bad moments in time- and I agree, some probably are. But the important point is THEY ARE THE PHOTOS BEING USED TO SELL THE HORSE! Someone somewhere in these people's lives must have a phone that takes pictures or a digital camera- couldn't they get better pictures taken and use those instead, even if it meant delaying the ad a day or so?!