Natural horse keeping (NHK) is a term I often refer to, but of course, I realize that not everybody actually knows what I mean when I use it, so in this post, I want to clearly define exactly what is meant by the phrase ‘natural horse keeping’. Continue reading
Impressions of Parelli
It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day and I found myself watching a demonstration of Parelli Natural Horsemanship. The clinic was being given by a Parelli five star instructor who was in the middle of a tour of Europe, and had probably got to the stage of jet-lag and fatigue where he was forgetting which country he was in, but nevertheless, he came across, (as is so often the case), as a thoroughly nice human being. He had that understated, unassuming energy that is sometimes called calm-assertive, that all animal people have, a quiet, confident authority around animals and situations. The students also, seemed perfectly pleasant and several of them had brought along their horses who I’m sure were all very nice equines. So all was set up for a thoroughly enjoyable experience, a great opportunity for learning and progress, but unfortunately that was not the impression I eventually left with. Continue reading
No nothing to do with fashion but, well it’s the talk of the internet, Pat Parelli’s own-goal at the Royal Festival of the Horse on the 10th of July at Stoneleigh. When Pat tried very unsuccessfully to get a bridle on a stallion called Catwalk. Well as most people know it all went horribly wrong. Lots of people walked out and were quite shocked at what they had seen. The 2 hour demonstration involved Pat using what English riders would call a ‘twitch’, – a rope around the horses upper lip and bringing the horse down with ropes around it’s legs. You can see the early highlights at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gf7w_1ifus (if you want to). Continue reading
For many people the first time they became aware of any kind of alternative methods of dealing with horses, it was when they first saw Monty Roberts demonstrating ‘join up’ ® . Until that time horse training methods had all been based on traditional knowledge, which usually meant doing what everybody else did, – because everybody else was doing it. As you will now know, this is what I call ‘utility model thinking’, based on the idea of the horse being defined by it’s function or utility. See other posts for more details on the utility model. Continue reading
