Roundpen Sour?

[horse bothered!]

help!! Im new to the natural horsemanship thing, got as far as leaning over my youngster to find things not quite right, very tense! enlisted the help of a natural horseman,been there 6 wks, learnt loads, join up follow up etc, all going very well if incredibley slowly ( and i mean 2 -3 hours just to tack up!) all going ok, but the weekend , after he has been good just walking in round pen under saddle for over a week, he decided to buck my instructor off!! then didnt want to do anything.Do they get sour of doing the same thing day after day? is going so slow ever going to work? any thoughts?? i am close to just giving up!

 

[scally]

I am assuming that if you are doing join up then you are using one of Kelly Marks Recommended Associates.

Have you had back, teeth, saddle etc checked.

 

[horse bothered!]

hi, yes had his teeth done beginning of the year and his back checked before he started work, it just seems a little strange to try to bore a horse into being ridden, its all waiting around, waiting for the horse to decide he is ready, is this normal ? he seems to want the horse to be asleep all the time! i am new to this method, and his groundwork is great, but it just seems odd to just wait around for the horse to be ready to be sat on

 

[scally]

Who is the trainer?

 

[JanetGeorge]

There are - no doubt - good NH trainers. This one sounds like one of the other sort! I gather your horse is being backed???

IF a horse is allowed to be half asleep through his early work, he WILL wake-up with a vengeance at some stage!! A horse can't LEARN anything by going to sleep - he should be relaxed about the process but he also needs to be reasonably alert and listening!

And yes, you CAN bore a horse senseless - to the point where he switches off! Or decides to end the boredom!

 

[horse bothered!]

hi, thats what i though! good to hear it from someone else, jsut doesnt make sense to bore the horse (and me) , and yes he is supposed to be backing him, but its been 6 weeks and to me, its a long time , and still no closer to trotting on him than a fortnight ago! thanks for your help i think its time the horse came home and i find someone else to help.

 

[kerilli]

erm, sorry, but even though I quite like certain aspects of Parelli and other NH 'schools', taking 3 hours to tack up is just ridiculous. horses need to respect you and to have Leadership (iirc this is the title of one of the Parelli modules!) and faffing around for 2-3 hours to get tack on a horse sounds like a distinct lack of Leadership to me! Horses can get bored and seriously pee'd off - maybe after 2 hours he was getting hungry, or thirsty, or just sick to death of being faffed about with?!
One of my horses has an unstable axis/atlas joint so I don't tie her up at the moment in case she pulls back and affects it again, so she wanders around the stable (15' x 15', so plenty big enough to avoid me if she wants to!) while i groom and tack her up. even allowing her to wander away a bit, it takes me about 5 mins to groom and tack up... if she evades me, i will put an arm around under her neck to get her to stop, etc. if i just kept following her, it'd take all day! btw, this mare is fully joined-up...
sorry, but i'd go to Kelly Marks, or one of the top NH people, if you aren't already.

 

[AmyMay]

Send it to Janet George to start for you.

She'll get it done properly, sympathetically and professionally.

 

[Maesfen]

To bring horse home sounds a sensible plan! What a way to spin money out of you, could take months at that rate!
If I sent anything away I'd want it able to be basically ridden in all paces, stop, start and steer, even from scratch within six weeks although each horse 'takes as long as it takes' to coin a phrase by our local top producer. The finishing touches can be done over the rest of its life, but you should have seen better than what you have by this time.

 

[horse bothered!]

I do seem to hear that phrase rather alot! thanks for advice, horse will be coming home the weekend, think i need to decide wether to give the horse a bit of a break or find somewhere else to finish the job .

 

[The_snoopster]

I think that sometimes N/H and parrelli especially parrelli are an extremely slow and drawn out process, and I have seen first hand when it is done wrong you can end up with quite a bored and sometimes aggressive horse.
My youngster as just started his backing and training and after day 3 days of being introduced to tack it is taking no longer than 10 miniutes to tack up and it is done nice and slowly so not to scare him, and this is a pony who although is well handled had never seen a saddle or bridle in his life.
Wishing you luck with yours.

 

[HollyP]

Your horse sounds pretty introverted. I highly recommend seeking another qualified trainer. They will help you develop a better relationship with your horse where you both enjoy what you are doing!

 

[horse bothered!]

The insanity of it all is, i had the horse lungeing and long reining round the village in full tack happily before i sent him to be backed!! i didnt have any help to back him, and he seemed a bit nervous if i leaned on him, so i thought i was doing the sensible thing in getting help!! we live and hopefully learn!! just cost me a fortune with no results!!

 

[scally]

If you go to Kelly Marks website you can see who the recommended associates are. If your trainers name is not on the list than they are not trained to her standards. There are a lot of people out there that claim to be that arent.

If yours isnt then I highly recommend you ring up your nearest and have a chat to them. If they are, then to be honest I totally have 100% faith in all of them, and maybe you need to sit down and have a long chat with them about how you feel, the aims and goals, what the problems are and how to move forward.

Good luck.

 

[HollyP]

I do not want to put you off NH, I practice parelli and the changes are incredible, you just have to be prepared to change everything you know, its like starting over, but you do need someone who can keep you on track which is why i suggested finding a qualified trainer!

 

[ironhorse]

Whereabouts are you? If you like the NH type approach you'd be as well sending the horse to a western trainer - I can recommend several. You don't have to ride them western afterwards, they just learn to guide from your legs and seat without someone hanging onto their mouth.
If he'd been long reined and lunged he should be ready to get out of the round pen and into a big arena or better still, hacking out within a month at the very most.
This person is taking YOU for a ride by the sound of it and you are getting a fed up youngster as a result!
(Sorry if this sounds harsh, I just object to these people taking money from horse owners and failing to deliver!!!)

 

[horse bothered!]

I have looked on kelly marks website and think i will ring kate reece when i have the horse back home!

 

[AengusOg]

Either this trainer is utterly inept, or he/she is taking advantage of you and your money.

A horse trainer has to adopt a continuous approach to the advancement of the horse's training...that is, the trainer must always be asking the horse to accept new things and, when he does, pushing the boundaries in order to keep the horse focused. This will allow progression.

Waiting for the horse to 'be ready' for this or that will only result in a horse which very quickly learns to 'dictate' how his training can advance. Such horses will quickly become bored. Horses need to be kept occupied during training sessions.

Certainly, there will be times when the horse is genuinely not ready for certain things. Perhaps that particular exercise is too advanced in relation to the horse's current level of education. In such cases there is always something else which may be done to keep the horse learning and move its education forward to where it will be ready next time it is asked.

Some methods of so-called Natural Horsemanship do produce bored and troubled horses, particularly in cases where there is lack of progress, as does working a horse in the same environment all the time. Horses need to be inspired, just as we need inspiration, in training.

 

[JanetGeorge]

hi, thats what i though! good to hear it from someone else, jsut doesnt make sense to bore the horse (and me) , and yes he is supposed to be backing him, but its been 6 weeks and to me, its a long time , and still no closer to trotting on him than a fortnight ago! thanks for your help i think its time the horse came home and i find someone else to help.

You can't put TOO much of a time limit on backing because every horse is different for one reason or another. But 6 weeks is a long time to be just walking in a round pen.

By way of illustration: we started two home-bred geldings 3 weeks ago. They have been worked on - same rider - 6 days a week.

They were both born here, by same sire, similarly bred dams, same upbringing, EXCEPT that Stardust had Neo-natal Maladjustment Syndrome at birth and spent 6 days trying to die. So for 6 days he had an enormous amount of handling, including repeated sessions of me kneeling with one leg oneach side of him (to hold him upright) while I force-fed him bottle. As a result of this, he's ALWAYS been far quieter than Rhythm (who was left a colt until he was nearly 2 - and who hd a mother who was SO foal proud that handling him wasn't easy for several weeks!)

Stardust has now been working under the rider for just over a week in walk & trot, and has just started a little canter - dead quiet - in fact today we even put a potential buyer on him. Rhythm MIGHT get to the 'sitting up' stage tomorrow (for the first time today his back didn't lift 12 inches when rider laid across him!)

If we'd tried to keep them to the same time-table, I'd be without a rider now! On the other hand, if we wait until Rhythm tells us he's 'ready', we could still be backing him next year!!