Henry02
Well-Known Member
whilst you personally may be a genius, there are a lot of things with horse training are common sense and simple... but most of the time you need to be told it
Parelli - yay or neigh?
- Thread starter Cheval Gal
- Start date
whilst you personally may be a genius, there are a lot of things with horse training are common sense and simple... but most of the time you need to be told it
Mule
Well-Known Member
There's definitely a very cultish vibe about it. There seems to be the attitude that their way is the right way and everyone else is wrong
Ambers Echo
Still wittering on
Theres a lot of guff spouted. Years ago I went to a Mark Rashid clinic and one of the horses would swing its bum away from the mounting block. This had been a problem for years. The owner started a lengthy spiel about the horse's feelings about being mounted and Mark politely suggested she was overthinking things and got the horse lined up solid as a rock in about 5 minutes using pressure release. Since then I have practiced lining horses up at blocks many times and never found one that wouldn't. Including a pony on my old yard. But that pony has just been featured on a local NH trainers Fb page with this great long story about his resistance to being mounted signifying trauma Blah blah. I'm all for listening to horses but we don't listen. We project. I love many people who go under the nh banner - Mark Rashid, Tik Maynard etc. But they all make things look simple not complex. Which I guess is why so many people view it as common sense. But that kind of clarity of communication with horses - which I think is what pressure release with good timing provides- really isnt that common. Or that simple. To me the person who claims the horse is doing the wrong thing because it's being a dickhead/muppet/showing you up etc and the people saying its traumatised, unconfident/needs a leader are making the same error: projecting human emotion and behaviour onto the horse. When horses mainly just need to understand what you want and get a clear 'yes that's right or no not that' response. But I'm no genius either because I don't think I have anywhere near the skill level or timing I could have in providing that clarity. Having a good seat looks simple too. I dont have that either!. Masters develop simple things over decades.
Ambers Echo
Still wittering on
ETA I realise I went off topic a bit there. Parelli are firmly in the 'make it all seem very complicated so I look very clever' camp with all their horsenality and savvy stuff
Welsh Dragon
Well-Known Member
What the hell? What is she trying to achieve? If her mission was to confuse and terrify the poor horse then yes, 10 out of 10 for that one. Mission accomplished.
Cheval Gal
Well-Known Member
Oh lordy, I sing to mine too haha! Sometimes I even ad-lib ?Skib - I sing to mine. AC/DC's Back in Black is good for keeping my butterflies in check, the poor neds must think 'oh no, not again!'
ETA - Shils I do see your point about white noise. I think I need to pay attention to how much i blabber on to them or not and try to get the balance right.
honetpot
Well-Known Member
Well I know I am not a genius, but my twelve year old self would be very surprised that an adult could not work that out. That's perhaps the fault of the system of learning we have had over the last forty years, that you can not learn anything unless and expert tells you something, nothing anyone knows is valid unless they have a formal qualification, they are selling something, or they must know something because they have won competitions.
On the education thread there has been a discussion of how people are educated, and a lot of emphasise is placed on riding and competing in the currant systems, when really horsemanship, is a general knowledge about the horse and its well being and their management in the everyday world. I have never ridden really well, what I am good at is managing horse behaviour/welfare, some of this I will have been told how to do, but not in any formal way. My basic horse care skills were learned from watching others and books, and there used to be a pool of practical knowledge in the horseworld that was passed from either grooms, farm workers who used working horses, ex-army riders, the men that worked down the pit who worked with ponies and the gypsies. Most of this work was done with basic equipment, feed, and buildings, so you would think that with all the available new science based knowledge and equipment, things would have improved vastly and there would be fewer problems with horse management but there seems to be more. Basic skills seem not to be passed on, or made to sound like the average horse owner should not have them. I would say that 95% of your time with horses is spent off a horse, if you are lucky, if you're going to be responsible for one you should spend more time working on that 95%.
confusedmum
Well-Known Member
Absolutely brilliant I could not have put it better myself ! I have been ostracised in several yards because of my views on Natural Horsemanship it distresses me to see horses being subjected to these methods by people who have very little knowledge about horses but have watched a video or been to watch these people at work and are all of a sudden experts
confusedmum
Well-Known Member
Gingerwitch
Well-Known Member
But back in the day horses worked hard, were turned out more, and fed less. Most of us did proper fitness work, we used to wear shoes out before the 6 weekly re-shoeing and had to ride to the forge. We did far less surface work and endless circles and the combination of road work and occasional surface riding did seem to give us much less soundness issues. Plus they were fed to what they did and not to what everyone else was doing.
SEL
Well-Known Member
I went with a friend to a 2 day demo at the NEC about 10 years ago. It was very evangelical and i did wonder if we should be shouting Hallelujah Praise Parelli at times.
They had a demo horse who spooked at fillers. Now I'm no expert but that's something I'd feel I could work with. He had balls bounced at him, ropes wiggled etc etc
On day 2 they announced the owner had agreed to transfer their dangerous horse to one of the Parelli team. All very surreal - I couldn't spot what was dangerous from how he'd been described and i couldn't work out how balls thrown at him were helping.
Huge number of middle aged ladies buying carrot sticks during the break!! Heavy marketing and evangelical progammes not being my thing I wrote the weekend off as "interesting" but expensive
Goldenstar
Well-Known Member
Personally I think often it’s a convenient excuse for not grafting to improve your own riding .
I ride like lump of lard but it’s ok because I have a carrot on a stick .
I ride like lump of lard but it’s ok because I have a carrot on a stick .
Tiddlypom
Carries on creakily
And you can upgrade the string for your carrot stick as you progress through the levels
.Everyone starts off in the Parelli Program with a white string for their carrot stick and as you achieve a level you are awarded a special colored string. Red for Level 1, Blue for Level 2, Green for Level 3 and Black for Level 4.
cauda equina
Well-Known Member
Blimey! Like belts in judo
Gloi
Too little time, too much to read.
Good grief, I just looked at the prices on their site
FinnishLapphund
There's no cow on the ice
And you can upgrade the string for your carrot stick as you progress through the levels
Everyone starts off in the Parelli Program with a white string for their carrot stick and as you achieve a level you are awarded a special colored string. Red for Level 1, Blue for Level 2, Green for Level 3 and Black for Level 4.
Oh my God, I thought for sure you where only joking, but I googled, and it is real.
FinnishLapphund
There's no cow on the ice
Good grief, I just looked at the prices on their site
I agree that the prices in their shop makes me go ouch. But I also noted that you have to be careful which Parelli shop page you shop on.
By coincidence, I opened two of the google search results, and noticed that on the first Parelli page it says that the price for a purple savvy string is 18,94 € for non members, and 13,91 € for members (the string is apparently available in a few colours not related to Parelli levels):
https://www.parelliuk.com/collections/equipment/products/6-ft-savvy-string?variant=10443829411882
But on their Parelli Shop Europe page, the same purple savvy string costs 20,00 € for non members, and 15,00 € for members.
https://shop.parelli-instruktoren.com/en/product/34
HazuraJane
Well-Known Member
Off to Google Image the term "carrot stick." Oh, it's a dressage whip with a leather baffle. For $30 (US) more than a regular schooling whip. For sure.
Tiddlypom
Carries on creakily
It‘s not a dressage whip, it’s a rigid fibreglass pole with a loop on the end for the string
.As I said earlier, I still have mine. It now makes a useful third hand to block a gateway with when training a newbie the way of bringing horses in/out here at TP towers, ie one horse at a time, no barging through the open gate. A regular whippy whip doesn’t work as well for that.
Apart from that, it stands unused in the rug room.
(This is me finding a use for it, not a parelli endorsed procedure)
ETA I dabbled with Parelli after I knackered my back 12 years ago - 4 slipped discs and 6 months off work. I didn’t think I would be able to ride again, and indeed I couldn’t for 3 years. A self taught friend came round once a week, initially to help the (now senior) mare with a loading issue, then more in hand stuff. My friend made a much better fist of Parelli than the Parellis themselves - no horse bashing.
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Caol Ila
Well-Known Member
And you can upgrade the string for your carrot stick as you progress through the levels
Everyone starts off in the Parelli Program with a white string for their carrot stick and as you achieve a level you are awarded a special colored string. Red for Level 1, Blue for Level 2, Green for Level 3 and Black for Level 4.
I also thought this was satire.
If you guys want to go down a strange rabbit hole, Google "horsenalities."
Tiddlypom
Carries on creakily
The horesnality thing is very important in Parelli world. Senior mare is a right brain extrovert, the late chestnut git was a left brain introvert...
Izzwall
Well-Known Member
I'm another who is not a fan of parelli. What's worse is I ride in a rope halter (which is now called a parelli halter ? don't get me started on that...) and the amount of people who ask if I do parelli get a short sharp answer of NO!! I do pressure and release, it's black and white for the horse and the rope halter is a fab bit of kit for it. I'm a freelance groom and I reckon I have lost many potential clients over the years as they see me out and about riding my horses in a 'parelli' headcoller and assume I'm a part of the parelli cult. I do have a two parelli clients, one is lovely and is more western based, the other does tend to lecture me on parelli techniques, 'horsnailty', how other methods are cruel and don't think about their horses etc but I normally glaze over and think about what I'm going to have for dinner later.
NightStock
Well-Known Member
On a lighter note, I have never enjoyed dish washing as much as I did when I had my neighbours parelli training sessions to watch from my kitchen window.
She had a lovely, sensible little cob, who would quietly stand and watch her waving her arms/stick around in a very dramatic style before quietly stepping back/sideways etc. I could almost hear him sign and think 'I know what you want,I've done this a million times, you just have to ask!'
It's not for me!
She had a lovely, sensible little cob, who would quietly stand and watch her waving her arms/stick around in a very dramatic style before quietly stepping back/sideways etc. I could almost hear him sign and think 'I know what you want,I've done this a million times, you just have to ask!'
It's not for me!
pansymouse
Well-Known Member
My main problem is that one of my closest friends does Parelli and it means we can't talk about horses much because are views are so different. She rarely ride; I ride at least four times a week.
southerncomfort
Well-Known Member
Grest post by AE.
The thing is that most of us would use groundwork as a means to an end i.e you have an issue, you use groundwork to work through it and then you transfer the solution to ridden work. Whereas with systems like Parelli their is no clear end goal and the horses end up being drilled endlessly.
Their is no ' horse clearly understands now so let's move on to something else'. The horse is just asked to do the same thing over and over again, and the horse's acquiescence is taken to mean that you've bonded with the horse, rather than the horse is bored out of its skull but has learned not doing as its told will involve orange sticks and massive metal lead rope clips being used.
Also, lest we forget....wasn't it Mr Parelli who said that anyone who wore a helmet did so because they were a coward and scared of their horse?
The thing is that most of us would use groundwork as a means to an end i.e you have an issue, you use groundwork to work through it and then you transfer the solution to ridden work. Whereas with systems like Parelli their is no clear end goal and the horses end up being drilled endlessly.
Their is no ' horse clearly understands now so let's move on to something else'. The horse is just asked to do the same thing over and over again, and the horse's acquiescence is taken to mean that you've bonded with the horse, rather than the horse is bored out of its skull but has learned not doing as its told will involve orange sticks and massive metal lead rope clips being used.
Also, lest we forget....wasn't it Mr Parelli who said that anyone who wore a helmet did so because they were a coward and scared of their horse?
9tails
Well-Known Member
I'd forgotten all about the horsenality chart! Biggest load of old guff to ever be printed.
9tails
Well-Known Member
Rick Gore says that too. I have some time for Rick; apart from his misogyny, he talks a lot of sense. Though I bet he's an anti masker.
Gloi
Too little time, too much to read.
It seems an American thing. Even the safest horse can stumble and put you head first into a rock though. ,
Meowy Catkin
Meow!
I do wonder how many PSSM horses, for example, are assigned a personality because of their illness and then never see a vet?
My gelding would have been assigned a personality that wasn't correct too due to his previous ear twitching experience. Assign a super reactive personality and you expect that, where as what he needed was confidence and gentle handling around his head. If he's worried that you will grab an ear he is completely different to when he is at ease with his handler.
Tiddlypom
Carries on creakily
Nooo, MC. Tsk
.The horse doesn't need a vet, it needs you to buy more dvds/carrot sticks/attend more demos/pay an accredited parelli instructor to analyse and sort out
*tongue in cheek post*