Parelli question - yikes!

Our little Shetland's previous owners were Parelli practitioners and she's a very nervy little thing with adults - she's the same, if you raise your hand or move just that bit too quickly she'll just about have a heart attack :rolleyes:
Strangely enough though my 2 year old can do anything with her & regulary squeals at her or runs towards her without warning (we are in the process of teaching her not to do these things but 2 year olds are a law unto themselves some days!) and Strawbs doesn't bat an eyelid - the worst she's done is grunt with surprise! :)
 
How to phrase this without sounding like I have a troll-hat on... hmm, not sure, but certainly that's why I don't want to start a new thread to ask the question, sorry!

I'm one of those who thinks a little bit of common sense goes a long way - and suspect that some NH methods are common sense rebranded :) But beyond seeing Monty Roberts a couple of times (awfully dissapointed by the marketing last time) :( I know little about the methods. The youtube demos I've seen haven't offered anything I think I could understand and try myself (but then the clips shared on HHO are probably not the best examples) ;)

I think I lack some of that 'common sense' everyone suggests Parelli repackages! I don't want to discount anything 'just because'. But I also don't fancy paying out for a DVD and a magic wand when I don't know what I'm getting into. How would someone with a casual interest like me find out more about the basics without jumping in with both feet? I'd love to dip in and borrow good ideas from all sorts of sources and I do feel my groundwork and handling could use work, but where would you start? I suppose it sounds like I want a free dinner - perhaps not that, but how about a taster?!
 
Floxie there are a few books around but not sure exactly what you are after, you don't have to follow one specific method for everything. I have books from a few different authors that have groundwork exercises that I dip in and out of, some f these also have riding exercises And some are mostly riding with the odd in hand exercise thrown in. Some are more traditional but I have found use in all of the following and will continue to use them in my youngsters training. (I don't follow any of them religiously, I do some of the exercises and not others)

101 horsemanship exercises
Perfect manners (Kelly marks)
Kottas on dressage
Ride with your heart (Jenny Rolfe)
Schooling exercises in hand (Oliver Hilberger)
 
Equilibrium Ireland said:
Parelli did not open doors for Buck. He would kept doing what he did without the film maker. Making better people and horses. Knew of him way before Parelli. I spent time with people who knew these older guys including Ray Hunt.

Terri
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Don't you think that PR meant that Parelli coming to the UK made people more aware of the options and therefore sort of "opened a door"? I didn't know of him before I heard of Parelli, but once I'd studied a bit of Parelli and decided it wasn't quite what I was looking for, I started to find out more about Buck B and the others. So for me I suppose it did open some sort of door. I knew I wanted to do things a bit differently, but wasn't sure where to start.

Floxie, if you want to find out a bit more about Parelli, or any approach to training, I'd suggest leave your horse at home and go and watch some completely new people and horses on their first lesson or clinic. There are some interesting trainers in the UK, and visiting in the summer. You can pm me if you'd like some ideas.
 
How many people watching the Buck film, seeing him work with a horse he shouldn't have been working with in the first place, rope the horse's hind leg and have it hanging there, getting his helper really badly injured and then blaming the owner and really having a go at her then feel inspired to follow his methods?
 
I had no problem with anything that happened in the film Buck.
The horse was a reflection of the way his owner had kept him. Hand reared and I believe sometimes even in the house wasn't it? She'd let him jump all over her and play with her like a dog when he was little, and ended up with a stallion that felt the only way to be around people was to attack them. She brought the horse to the clinic hoping for some magic "fix" and Buck assessed it to see if there was anything he could do. People in the UK get their knickers in such a knot about a rope around a leg, he wasn't restraining the horse, he was trying to see if he could divert it's attention and whether it could yield to pressure I believe. The horse was going to die, or a person was going to die, there are worse things than putting a bit of rope around a horse's leg. (And arguably, any properly trained horse should be OK with that... but that's an inflammatory thing to say here of course). Buck wasn't there when his "helper" got injured and it wasn't clear if the man was working under Buck's instruction or not. But if he was - then aspiring horse trainers have to do the things that us normal horse owners don't, and that includes dealing with the difficult and dangerous ones that have been let down by people.
At the end, when Buck was quietly loading the horse into the trailer to be taken away to be shot - didn't you just want to wring the owner's neck? Buck is telling her to keep out of the way and keep quiet, and she's rattling her hands in the trailer and calling sweet nothings to the horse. She takes the horse to a clinic to see if anyone can fix the mess she made, and she still can't take a simple bit of instruction.
I think the way Buck walks off away from everyone as the trailer is driven off says it all.

p.s. I'm working my way through Buck's new DVD's of the clinics that he was running during the making of that film. There is so much useful stuff in them it's unbelievable.
 
What TP said. I felt very sad for the stallion, made that way by the ignorance of humans. I truly believe Buck did his best for the horse.

As for ropes round legs... what happened in the documentary could be justified, in my opinion, although in general I am not a fan of roping horses to 'subdue' them and intensely disliked Pat Parelli's use both with Catwalk (headshy stallion) and with Sage (needle-phobic mare).
 
I was going to start Parelli a few years back, just to see what all the rage was about really. So brought a halter and long rope etc.
But I just couldn't quite commit to something that seems to take quite a lot of force to begin with to create a horse that reacts to the lesser force (eg wiggle finger).

It just didn't feel right for me, it didn't suit my non-confrontational character. It would have never have translated through to the horse very well if I didn't believe in my heart that I had the right attitude to practice the system.

I think it takes a good person with a lot of feel and a very good knowledge of pressure and release to practice any form of training with a horse. And that may be where things go wrong with systems such as Parelli, or Join Up.

Sorry OP, I havent answered the post. I know a pony who is Parellied, and she is very headshy if you raise a hand near her head. However, this may not necessarily be a direct relation to the Parelli itself.
 
Floxie said:
How to phrase this without sounding like I have a troll-hat on... hmm, not sure, but certainly that's why I don't want to start a new thread to ask the question, sorry!

I'm one of those who thinks a little bit of common sense goes a long way - and suspect that some NH methods are common sense rebranded :) But beyond seeing Monty Roberts a couple of times (awfully dissapointed by the marketing last time) :( I know little about the methods. The youtube demos I've seen haven't offered anything I think I could understand and try myself (but then the clips shared on HHO are probably not the best examples) ;)

I think I lack some of that 'common sense' everyone suggests Parelli repackages! I don't want to discount anything 'just because'. But I also don't fancy paying out for a DVD and a magic wand when I don't know what I'm getting into. How would someone with a casual interest like me find out more about the basics without jumping in with both feet? I'd love to dip in and borrow good ideas from all sorts of sources and I do feel my groundwork and handling could use work, but where would you start? I suppose it sounds like I want a free dinner - perhaps not that, but how about a taster?!
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Floxie, if you wanted to get a free taster of Parelli, they do a free trial of their savvy club membership. You can go to parelliconnect.com and sign up for a free month long trial. When you're in it is kind of a social networking thing seemingly based on facebook, but there are tabs on the top called e-learning and resources which you can access (I am pretty sure you can anyway) during your trial. You get all the lessons for level one online groundwork for free on the e-learning (even after joining you still have to pay for the other levels, I am level 3/4 but prefer to learn from an instructor rather than DVDs, learn however you like really, there are instructors for the old fashioned amongst us). Then there is lots of other stuff - articles and videos and things to look through in the resources tab.

If you find it useful you pay £6.95 a month to keep your membership which also entitles you to take lessons, attend clinics, do auditions, get a discount on all their products etc. If you don't find it useful it is pretty easy to quit. They are easier to find out about without paying lots of money now than they used to be I think.
 
Wagtail said:
Parelli trained horses are trained to back out of your space with just a look or the wiggle of a finger. Raising your hand like that is a massive amplification of that command and therefore gets an amplified response.
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I haven't read further than this but ^^^ is exactly it! I have had a person do this waving stuff with my horses and mine also jumped away from this person. I'm not a parelli person but I don't go around waving my hands or putting my hands up to as a 'stop' sign for my horses. The only time I would ever do that would be if in a situation where a horse might be looking like it's going to run me over! I'm gentle with my horses and all I have to do with them is slowly raise a finger and they notice immediately. I banned the waving person from ever going in my horses fields after seeing her do it lots of times over a period of time.
 
Wheels said:
Floxie there are a few books around but not sure exactly what you are after, you don't have to follow one specific method for everything. I have books from a few different authors that have groundwork exercises that I dip in and out of, some f these also have riding exercises And some are mostly riding with the odd in hand exercise thrown in. Some are more traditional but I have found use in all of the following and will continue to use them in my youngsters training. (I don't follow any of them religiously, I do some of the exercises and not others)

101 horsemanship exercises
Perfect manners (Kelly marks)
Kottas on dressage
Ride with your heart (Jenny Rolfe)
Schooling exercises in hand (Oliver Hilberger)
Click to expand...

Thank you - a good answer to a poorly written question! I actually have Perfect Manners (the book, not the trait sadly) and I'll dig it out, it got burried in a move - I'd forgotten all about it. Thank you for the other suggestions, too - it's scary how easily I forget about those ole fashioned paper things ;)

Tinypony said:
Floxie, if you want to find out a bit more about Parelli, or any approach to training, I'd suggest leave your horse at home and go and watch some completely new people and horses on their first lesson or clinic. There are some interesting trainers in the UK, and visiting in the summer. You can pm me if you'd like some ideas.
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Thank you, I'll bear that in mind and keep an eye out - we have a good equestrian college near us (where I saw Monty last) so I imagine they will run the odd thing. I'm literally only just thinking about this so I won't bug you just yet, but may do in future if the offer of info still stands!

unbalanced said:
Floxie, if you wanted to get a free taster of Parelli, they do a free trial of their savvy club membership. You can go to parelliconnect.com and sign up for a free month long trial. When you're in it is kind of a social networking thing seemingly based on facebook, but there are tabs on the top called e-learning and resources which you can access (I am pretty sure you can anyway) during your trial. You get all the lessons for level one online groundwork for free on the e-learning (even after joining you still have to pay for the other levels, I am level 3/4 but prefer to learn from an instructor rather than DVDs, learn however you like really, there are instructors for the old fashioned amongst us). Then there is lots of other stuff - articles and videos and things to look through in the resources tab.

If you find it useful you pay £6.95 a month to keep your membership which also entitles you to take lessons, attend clinics, do auditions, get a discount on all their products etc. If you don't find it useful it is pretty easy to quit. They are easier to find out about without paying lots of money now than they used to be I think.
Click to expand...

Thank you - that doesn't sound as scary as I'd imagined lol! I appreciate you breaking it down and explaining it - I probably wouldn't have found out that much because I'm pretty wary of schemes, groups and suchlike that sound like they might make it very easy for you to sign up and impossible to escape! So it's good to know that they won't, and a little of what to expect. I do find a lot of the jargon and hype a little offputting sometimes :)
 
Can I suggest again that you don't take your horse to a Parelli clinic until you've been and watched what happens to other brand new horses and students at their first couple of days of training? And when you do, just watch the horses and make your own mind up about what is happening, rather than completely taking on board the explanation that is given? Personally, it was watching repeated teaching of the Yo Yo Game (including watching Pat himself teach it) that finished me off in Parelli.

If you type Parelli Audition into You Tube you can see Parelli students working with their horses.

Re Perfect Manners - the yields on the ground start with backup if I remember correctly. That might be much easier if you work on forequarter and hindquarter yields first, then go to backup when the horse does those in a free and relaxed manner. With a lot of horses it doesn't seem to be most productive to start by asking for backup, they often find that a bit sticky. (I mean a backup with a good head carriage and lightness in the front end, not just legs walking backwards).

The DVD of Buck is available on Amazon, as well as the pirate bits on You Tube. It's not expensive.
 
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