I saw this on reddit after a deep dive, and would love to know what people think! What regulations need to put in place? How do we combat this sort of behaviour?

STOP bullying your students.

I have spent years in this industry—across disciplines, countries, cultures, clinics, lessons, and show grounds. I have seen exceptional teaching, and I have seen lasting damage. Increasingly, what I am witnessing—particularly from traditionally trained, authoritarian models of instruction—is not education. It is intimidation.

Across cultures and riding systems, excellence has never required cruelty. Yet yelling, shaming, and humiliation are still excused as “old school,” “serious training,” or “how it’s always been done.” This is not tradition. It is a failure to evolve.

Your students are not there to be berated or yelled at every time they ride. They are there because they care—because they are investing their time, their money, their bodies, and their trust in you. If they did not want to improve, they would not walk through your barn doors day after day. And yet riders are leaving. Quietly. Permanently. Barns are closing—not because people don’t love horses. Horse ownership and demand have increased in recent years. What is disappearing are instructors who know how to teach without taking their frustration, ego, or anger out on their students.

There is a critical difference between correcting a mistake and verbally tearing someone down for making one. Correction is not cruelty. Accountability is not humiliation. When instruction becomes personal—when anger replaces clarity—the lesson disappears. Fear does not create understanding. Humiliation does not create progress. What remains is anxiety, self-doubt, and silence.

Your younger students are not weaker, lazier, or less intelligent. What is happening is far more serious: they are losing the will to learn from you. Across generations and cultures, the same truth is emerging—people do not learn in environments that strip them of dignity. They shut down. They leave.

Every rider enters this world with hope—hope of partnership, harmony, higher welfare standards, and a better horse community. As trainers, you hold immense power over whether that hope survives. Your role is not to dominate it. Your role is to guide it.

I have watched it happen too many times. Talented riders shrinking. Passionate students walking away. Not because the work is too hard—but because the environment is hostile and the teaching is punitive. That loss is not inevitable. It is a choice.

This is not a call for lowered standards. This is not a demand for softness. It is a demand for professionalism. Teach with precision. Correct with purpose. Speak with intention. Hold riders accountable without tearing them down.

People do not fail because they are stupid. They fail because they are never truly taught.

If this industry wishes to survive—across disciplines, across cultures, across generations—it must stop confusing suffering with skill, intimidation with excellence, and authority with abuse.

Teach.
Stop bullying your students.
Or step aside for those who can.

So perfectly true.

When you teach, especially in a practical subject, your students try to emulate what you do. If you do nothing but show anger and bullying, that is what they learn. And that particullarly does not help if you work with any animal, the student is likely to do worse because their animal will feel that anger/fear you are teaching.

Amazing to see people adressing this. I have been under toxic trainers and emtionally abuse trainers, its an experiance i wouldn't wish on anyone.

No person should be treated to the point of wanting to quit, over and over again. Another thing i feel trainers need to stop doing is putting their students in overally dangerous positions.

A 6 year old child shouldn't be riding a 5 year old with no training, especially if its 'going to make you resiliant to getting hurt'.

Yep. My first trainer can never admit when she doesn't know something, or everything is/was her client's fault, even some of her adult amateur students. I was nine and was told to "grow up." Yeah long story short I still have many issues from her.

Don't take advantage of your students, they're there to learn not to be exploited for work. There's a line.