Parelli, I don't get it, can someone explain?

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bex1984

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I'm really not trying to start a debate on Parelli but just wondering if someone who knows something about it could explain something to me.

I was watching the Parelli prog on Horse and Country TV this morning and they were doing some Parelli puzzles. Now, what I don't understand is they had the horses on lunge lines, but the handlers/owners were holding and using what looked to me like lunge whips????

I thought the whole point of it was to do things without whips? I lunge my ponio with a lunge whip, and I'm sure I could make him do all sorts by wiggling it at him and tapping him with it and wiggling the lunge line at his nose...

I just don't get it. Why is it any different to how we normally interact with our horses? Can someone who uses it with their horses explain?
 
Hi Bex....it's called a carrot stick and is meant to be an extension of your arm. This is where a lot of the 'debate' issues spring from, as conventional methods use 'whips' for much the same purpose. I think Parelli peeps try to make out (some of them, not all!) that whips are used to beat horses and carrot sticks are for encouragement or communication, or something. Anyway, it's all about speaking the horses language - reading body language etc, all of which a decent horseman/woman would do anyway using conventional methods.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it doesn't work - there are some amazing results from Parelli, NH etc. It's just that I've seen so many people who have watched a vid and now stand in the school waving carrot sticks at their 'problem' horses. I think it does require a lot of training to understand it fully and to get the timing right/read the horse correctly when putting it into practise
 
I went to a demonstration earlier this summer and Pat whotsisname hit a horse across it's nose twice with the 'carrot stick'. Several people got up and walked out, including me.

IMO it is a load of old baloney - only reason why Parelli is on Horse & Country TV such a lot is because they gave the TV company £1m when they first launched.
 
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I went to a demonstration earlier this summer and Pat whotsisname hit a horse across it's nose twice with the 'carrot stick'. Several people got up and walked out, including me.


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How charming! I must say if I were going to try a form of NH it wouldn't be Parelli....
 
Don't get me started...there is a livery on my yard who believes riding is cruel. She is always doing parelli/NH/IH stuff with her horse. It's so well tuned in to her that all it does when she takes it out in the field to do her parelli exercises is graze and ignore her! I have a normal headcollar and lead rope (£6 from local tack shop) and my horse is well mannered, walks with me etc....she has all the expensive kit and still can't stop hers tanking off to eat grass when she leads it!

PMSL.
 
chestnut_cob - thats similar to what I've seen as well! Girl too scared to ride horse, does Parelli instead. She takes it into the school and waves carrot stick in it's face...horse stares back with bored/confused look on it's face before trying to wander off somewhere more interesting.....oh dear....lol!
 
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Don't get me started...there is a livery on my yard who believes riding is cruel.

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Flaming expensive pet.
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i watched the same program last nite and to me them flapping the line around and the carrot stick in their face isnt nh its annoying the horse untill they do as their told !!!

i think its all a load of rubbish tbh !!
 
That's completely it! She spends half her time down the yard watching her "trimmer" hack bits off foot off the poor thing...yes, surprise surprise it's barefoot as well!

We have another who's horse is dog lame from the trimmer but she's insistent it's laminitis....horse has been on almost dust for the last month, goes on that with a grazing muzzle, and it only started the day the trimmer came....
 
Parelli is just a trumped-up, expensive way of carrying out basic, common-sense practices with our horses. How many of us, after watching it on TV, think to ourselves, 'We all do that anyway'?

It's not a science - just years of experience put into practice. We all do it without giving it another thought. Look how much we could make if we all marketed what we have learned over the years!!!
 
What I would like to know is why if its such a natural kind way of training horses......

Why do they all seem to go round with their heads low and their ears flattened back to their heads!!!!

They dont look happy to me
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This pic. is of Neil Pye at the demonstration with my friends mare. She doesn't look relaxed does she? After 4 continual hours standing around in the school it got pretty boring for every body.

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Right I now see what I'm doing wrong....I've been wearing my riding hat whilst lungeing....clearly I need to wear a cowboy hat instead, and then I won't be lungeing with a lunge whip - I'll be doing Parelli with a carrot stick!
 
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