Traditional Horsemanship

fidleyspromise

fidleyspromise

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I've been doing a lot of thinking (not good for me at my age) :D and various methods of horsemanship are bandied about a lot.

So we have (to mention a very small few):
Monty Roberts - with join up and his dually headcollar
Parelli - with levels, halters and carrot sticks
Michael Peace - with think equus

I know what my thoughts are but would just like to see what your opinion/thoughts are on traditional methods. What DO you class to be traditional methods?

Hope this makes sense (it does in my head) Haha.
 
Hmmm good question, think it just boils down to having an open mind and having experience, it’s about understanding the horse you are handling, gaining respect mutually, training a horse in calm and forgiving manor while making the training an enjoyable experience, a horse will give you his all at something providing you find what that little something is, so focusing on a horses natural talant (if we are talking about training on the riding side of things), no idea that’s traditional it’s just my take on good horsemanship! lol
 
Seems to be that the modern trend is mostly about marketing. And some are better at that than others.
I have no argument with those wanting to make a living but wrapping common sense up into new-age psycho babble is just plain irritating. Nothing actually new to say just different packaging.
 
To me horsemanship is being able to take an animal which is a prey animal, flight or fight response, that will push through pressure to escape, and have that animal learn to trust and respond as opposed to reacting.

So that the horse will accept our harness and us as a rider, without fear, and yield to pressure, go forward when asked. Yielding to our leg and hand is (to me) the basis of anything that you ask of a horse, from the most basic level of training to the highest levels of dressage, or any discipline that you care to name.

Also that horse must accept all manner of activities, where that normal flight/fight response would typically be triggered. Travel in horse boxes, hack along roads, noisy crowds, being seperated from the herd, etc, and have enough trust that they can go about their job no matter what they are asked.

Traditional horsemanship involves a lot of training on the ground, irrespective of the discipline, western, dressage, or any discipline or the name you give the training method, good horsemen invest this time in their animals. NH and classical dressage have this at the core of the training method. It also involves an understanding of how and why horses behave the way they do.

I am not sure if the Tom Roberts books are available in the UK. Tom Roberts was an Englishman who at the age of 14 joined the army, and at 16 became a rough rider for the cavalry( He was the youngest ever rough rider and the course to becaome a rough rider was extremely difficult). He was in WW1 with the horses, I think then went to India, (not sure of exact timeline) and later Australia. In Australia he worked with the Mounted Police. Managed to sign up for WW2 as well, (a different type of war), came back to Australia again and continued with mounted police. He dedicated his life to improving the lot of difficult horses.

As he was not able to have a second job as a policeman he did all the work for free. He devleoped an incredible understanding of what and why the horse did what it did, and his books are fascinating as they explore different problems he encountered and the solutions that he came accross. He was a natural horseman before the term was coined, but also was heavily involved in the early dressage scene in Australia, (and polo and hunting and jumping). He studied the classical dressage training and western style training, he did not care who he learnt off, he just wanted to learn. Tom Roberts was a master horseman and a traditional horseman. He saved many horses that others would have had destroyed because he took the time to understand them.
 
Traditional people tend not to bang on about dominance, hierarchy and other psychobabble to do with equine social behaviour. That's because traditional folk tend to consider themselves as humans and not other horses, and just let the horses get on with the social stuff amongst themselves. They don't try to emulate horses with quite the same gusto as NH folk.

Their understanding of equine behaviour is intuitive and "commonsense" rather than formal with lots of terminology. This also applies to how horses learn - traditional people don't bang on about positive and negative reinforcement, and their understanding of "learning theory" concepts like punishment is a natural one ("commonsense" again) rather than rigorously scientific.

Traditional people are more likely to attribute human attributes (like emotions) to horses than NH people, although the latter group are not immune from this either - for example, they tend to talk about "leadership" and "respect" in anthropomorphic ways.

Okay, so this is generalizing a bit but is based on personal experience. Hope I haven't offended a lot of people!
 
In my mind traditional is the old school English ways,

However I think there is soon to be a new type coming around the "new age horsemanship" or whatever it will be named which is a mix of types, the old English, PP, MR, endospink etc, and I think that this will be the way forward.

***(runs for the hills)***
 
fburton said:
Traditional people tend not to bang on about dominance, hierarchy and other psychobabble to do with equine social behaviour. That's because traditional folk tend to consider themselves as humans and not other horses, and just let the horses get on with the social stuff amongst themselves. They don't try to emulate horses with quite the same gusto as NH folk.

Their understanding of equine behaviour is intuitive and "commonsense" rather than formal with lots of terminology. This also applies to how horses learn - traditional people don't bang on about positive and negative reinforcement, and their understanding of "learning theory" concepts like punishment is a natural one ("commonsense" again) rather than rigorously scientific.

Traditional people are more likely to attribute human attributes (like emotions) to horses than NH people, although the latter group are not immune from this either - for example, they tend to talk about "leadership" and "respect" in anthropomorphic ways.

Okay, so this is generalizing a bit but is based on personal experience. Hope I haven't offended a lot of people!
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Traditional people tend not to bang on about dominance, hierarchy and other psychobabble to do with equine social behaviour. That's because traditional folk tend to consider themselves as humans and not other horses.......

Traditional people are more likely to attribute human attributes (like emotions) to horses than NH people................

Is it just me, or do para's 1 and 3 of the above contradict themselves?
 
I suppose it depends on what you mean by traditional here in the UK. We lost millions of horses in the First World War, as well as the majority of horsemen who went with them. No horses which survived the war came back but were destroyed for fear of continental disease.

Horse ownership declined through to the Second World War where we lost more horses and men. Mechanization took over in rural areas to some extent with the lease lend scheme from America.

The Pony Club was set up in the 1920's or there abouts by ex military people who were predominantly Cavalry and the BHS wasn't formed until 1947. Once again a strong military influence.

Therefore it can be argued that a lot of our Traditional Horsemanship is not that old and based on strong military lines, which when you think about what we do is pretty obvious.
 
Pale Rider said:
I suppose it depends on what you mean by traditional here in the UK. We lost millions of horses in the First World War, as well as the majority of horsemen who went with them. No horses which survived the war came back but were destroyed for fear of continental disease.

Horse ownership declined through to the Second World War where we lost more horses and men. Mechanization took over in rural areas to some extent with the lease lend scheme from America.

The Pony Club was set up in the 1920's or there abouts by ex military people who were predominantly Cavalry and the BHS wasn't formed until 1947. Once again a strong military influence.

Therefore it can be argued that a lot of our Traditional Horsemanship is not that old and based on strong military lines, which when you think about what we do is pretty obvious.
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You are incorrect in saying that horses were not brought back from WW1 - many were and at the start of WW2 many were commandeered to return and several owners then had them destroyed rather than put them through it all again.

As with all things methods used in the early 1900's were not all good but the ways of breaking were much the same, lungeing, long reining and riding or driving away.

It was not the Pony Club nor the BHS who 'invented' the methods.

I am old enough to have known people who were working with horses all their lives some from the late 1800's and, learned a lot from them. Some of it was very tough but none of it would be considered cruel in my mind.

Now, there are more and more people who own horses that have had little or no experience of the handing or practical side of dealing with many different types of equine. People start riding at a riding school, but a horse or pony and keep it somewhere privately. This has happened for several years now and, these are the people now teaching the next generation when many have not had the experience of many different horses, nor of the way of 'military' teaching or, more importantly, the military way of learning to ride which concentrated on balance and seat.

Traditional for me means understanding the horse's instinctive reaction, working with it rather than against.

It is also a matter of knowing what is best for that particular animal, no one method works on all horses.

There is a place for what some call 'natural' horsemanship but like with all, people are inclined to take what they like and forget about the rest.
 
The key thing really is to find good horsemanship, which is summed up by many of you above. The reality is much horsemanship really isn't common sense, logical, safe, efficient or kind, and so keeping an open mind to nick ideas, (new old or recycled) that work is more important than labelling what is or isn't traditional. It's traditional advice to break an egg on the head of a rearer. I see so much good in some old horsemanship, and love reading old bits to pick out the things we still use, or good things we have forgotten, or crazy things we know better than now. I do believe it's dangerous to defend things on the basis of their being traditional since many people are doing crazy things in the name of traditional horsemanship that would make any of us squirm. What's interesting is that it seems to me what many of you are saying is that there is not that much difference between good trad and good nh other than the packaging, this should mean you can see the benefits on someone being able to communicate this good (old, traditional, natural, whatever) horsemanship to those who don't have access to it. If your lucky enough to already know it all through traditional routes, then be aware of the genuine thousands for whom the traditional techniques passed to them did not work to create the horsemanship you describe above.
Personally I believe there is much good horsemanship of old, but Chinese whispers means it hasn't always survived throughout horsepeople as it should have. Keeping an open mind towards the new( and being neither repulsed or engulfed by any marketing!) might reawaken some of the good old lessons and even teach some new ones. It would be madness to disregard generations of horse knowledge and equally madness to refuse to allow change and encourage new angles, especially when our scientific understanding of the horses mind and body has changed so much since some of those old knowledges were held as truth.
Techniques and knowledges change, it's the values that we need to keep clear of and it's the values of traditional horsemanship that you defend most strongly, perhaps because they have been challenged by nh professionals. The key value I guess is that we all do the best we can with the knowledge we have at the time, and you really are very lucky if you believe you have enough knowledge to stop reassessing and rethinking about what u are doing and how useful it really is.
I'm not a nh cult brainwashee, and it saddens me when people either side of thus 'divide' stop thinking and worship the method/practioner/history rather than assess any positive value of the technique.
Whether or not the cruel and ineffective training all over this country takes place under the banner of traditional horsemanship or not is less of a worthwhile discussion, as you have so beautifully shown in your above responses, we are all coming from the same place anyway so surely there is something positive to be learned from every experienced horseperspn you come across?
Good interesting thread!
Off soap box and running for tin hat
 
irish_only said:
A combination of commonsense, understanding of equine behaviour, and being able to think like a horse is to me traditional horsemanship.
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Yup :D. Well said :D


When I'm stuck and can't see it from the horse's side, I rope in Mickey Gavin. He's grand at seeing it, though as he says, he's still learning (part of the reason I like him).
 
if you say 'traditional horsemanship' what instantly springs to mind are 2 words, BHS and rigid, probably due to my age where it was the BHS way or no way. For a while I thought that NH was the be all and end all , those guys were showing us all how wrong we had been blah blah. Now after looking at lots of different 'techniques' I've decided that really the labels are pointless, there's either good horsemanship or there's bad.
Good horsemanship is about understanding why horses do what they do and working with them to achieve harmony, Bad horsemanship is about dominance and force and lack of understanding.
 
fburton said:
Traditional people tend not to bang on about dominance, hierarchy and other psychobabble to do with equine social behaviour. That's because traditional folk tend to consider themselves as humans and not other horses, and just let the horses get on with the social stuff amongst themselves. They don't try to emulate horses with quite the same gusto as NH folk.

Their understanding of equine behaviour is intuitive and "commonsense" rather than formal with lots of terminology. This also applies to how horses learn - traditional people don't bang on about positive and negative reinforcement, and their understanding of "learning theory" concepts like punishment is a natural one ("commonsense" again) rather than rigorously scientific.

Traditional people are more likely to attribute human attributes (like emotions) to horses than NH people, although the latter group are not immune from this either - for example, they tend to talk about "leadership" and "respect" in anthropomorphic ways.

Okay, so this is generalizing a bit but is based on personal experience. Hope I haven't offended a lot of people!
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Not offended but affected by the utter contempt!

Traditional to me is... a moving target. Lots of common sense but also lots of anthropomorphism like excessive stabling, rugging, bandaging, washing, cleaning, feeding high energy stuff then feeding calmers to counteract the effects of the feed. Focus seems to be on damage limitation rather than prevention in both common conditions like gastric ulcres and laminitis etc. and training.
More attention seems to be paid to what is convenient for humans than is best for the horse. Oh yes, and you have to DO something with your horse, so there is this major peer pressure on people to get on with it.

If this forum is traditional then there are many common sense horse centered thinking peeps on here but there are also many who see a horse as an extension of themselves and rug when they feel cold, feed up, protect hooves rather than find out what a horse needs to have strong feet etc. etc.
Traditional must have come from the need to keep working horses in stables etc. in towns when they were the main mode of transport. The management of horses needs looking at from a modern (horse needs) perspective more imo rather than clinging to traditional ways.

Like most forms of horsemanship (oh except NH it seems :rolleyes:) it varies widely.

My belief is we should take the lead from Natural horses in planning our care.
Many don't agree and say domestic horses are different, to me that's a load of balony!
 
I think there are good and bad in all aspects of all training.
I firmly believe they all have something to teach me, whether i choose to use it with a particular horse is then up to me, i wont close my mind off to anything, but wont neccessarily use it.
I cherry pick parts that i feel are of value and are appropriate to what i want to achieve with my horses.
And no, my horses are not confused by that, they are well rounded nice horses.
On a personal note, a horseman i admire is Richard Maxwell, ex army RI who also trained and rode for monty roberts, i feel he uses a good mix of different training styles and the results he achieves are great.
 
irish_only said:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Traditional people tend not to bang on about dominance, hierarchy and other psychobabble to do with equine social behaviour. That's because traditional folk tend to consider themselves as humans and not other horses.......

Traditional people are more likely to attribute human attributes (like emotions) to horses than NH people................

Is it just me, or do para's 1 and 3 of the above contradict themselves?
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Not sure why you think the two contradict themselves/each other.

The kind of human attributes I had in mind that are ascribed to horses by traditional people more commonly than NH would include a sense of humour, embarrassment, and "naughtiness" in the sense of the horse doing something even though he knows it is wrong. Not everyone by any means - or even a majority - I'm talking about tendencies.

Traditional people who would talk about "showing the horse who is boss" did so in very much a human-having-control-over-horse sense. However, I have noticed ideas from NH creeping in over the last couple of decades, so that now it is rather more common to hear talk of humans-as-horses, e.g. us being part of the horses' pecking order, and taking on the role of the "lead mare".

So basically there are no longer any hard and fast divisions between "traditional" and NH, as people become more willing to use ideas from other traditions and schools of horsemanship.

Hope that clarifies what I was trying to say.
 
Traditional horsemanship is what has been learned through the ages by observation of what works (or doesn't). Horses and their jobs have changed throughout the 5,000 or so years during which we have domesticated and used them, and training methods have, over time, changed also.
 
My Grandfather lost all his horses to the First war, he wanted any survivors back but they were shot in France allegedly. He was a tough old man, but kind to his horses and dog. He was very against the pony club and later the BHS because of the military links. He used to say their priorities were wrong and said they didn't care about the horses, just as long as they were polished up.
Little he did was in line with BHS teachings, so I suppose he really was what you'd call a traditional horseman.
 
amandap said:
Neigh! translation, no I obviously don't. neigh. I think you spoke from the heart and I hear the speak of 'others' in your words. :(
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Well, I am sorry you feel that way. :( If there is any contempt (considering worthless or despicable) in what I say, it is for certain ideas, not people. A profound dislike and distrust of unconditional anthropormorphism doesn't mean I dislike or distrust of those who engage in it. (What is actually anthropomorphic is up for debate.) Whether or not you believe me is obviously your choice.

P.S. What 'others'? I really don't know who or what you're referring to here.
 
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fburton said:
Well, I am sorry you feel that way. :( If there is any contempt (considering worthless or despicable) in what I say, it is for certain ideas, not people. A profound dislike and distrust of unconditional anthropormorphism doesn't mean I dislike or distrust of those who engage in it. (What is actually anthropomorphic is up for debate.) Whether or not you believe me is obviously your choice.

P.S. What 'others'? I really don't know who or what you're referring to here.
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I don't know what exactly unconditional anthropomorphism is but I do not believe that many NH peeps and certainly not myself think we are horses or wish to behave like horses. I've read many Traditional peeps saying you have to 'boss' him and 'kick him back' because that's what is done in the herd etc. etc. etc. It seems in your mind only NH people are capable of this sort of thinking!

'others' are those that have extreme views and insult people for their non (supposed) scientific view, clicker trainers with extreme views in this instance.

I have never seen you write with such contempt before so a shock for me and a readjustment of you in my head of your thinking. Please don't feel responsible for how I feel you are certainly not.

There's one positive thing about NH, it certainly gets people thinking and talking.
 
My feelings on this subject are that it dosent matter what approach of horsemanship you take with your horses.

The most important attribute is to have the ability of 'feel'.

With different approaches old and new, you very often see a lack of this important attribute.

Good horsemen/women wont preach to you what and what you shouldnt do with your horse, they tend to be the quieter people on the yard, or not the best 'people person'.
 
amandap said:
I don't know what exactly unconditional anthropomorphism is
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Ok, I was a bit opaque there, sorry. It was an indirect reference to the idea of 'conditional anthropomorphism' that Marthe Kiley-Worthington advocates e.g. in her book Horse Watch: What It Is to Be Equine - a limited form which allows for assuming that horses do indeed think and feel and would therefore think and feel certain things about us - but not necessarily the sort of things we would think and feel if we were stuck in a horse's body!

but I do not believe that many NH peeps and certainly not myself think we are horses or wish to behave like horses. I've read many Traditional peeps saying you have to 'boss' him and 'kick him back' because that's what is done in the herd etc. etc. etc. It seems in your mind only NH people are capable of this sort of thinking!
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No, not at all! All I was suggesting was that this sort of thinking is more likely amongst NH people than traditional. I admit I was generalizing - and I may even be wrong about that as well! I'd be interested to hear what others think.

What about lungeing vs roundpenning as a concrete example on traditional vs NH activities and interpretations? They both involve a horse running around a human, but the purposes are different. There are at least some NH people who would explain roundpenning in terms of the way horses communicate with other horses, and that it involves emulating the actions and body language of another horse. (Interpretations in terms of human as predator also exist, of course.) I don't think many traditional people, when they are lungeing a horse, feel that they are communicating with it in a way that bears any relation to how one horse would communicate with another - it's strictly human and horse, with human voice aids. Again, if I have got this completely wrong, I am happy to be put right.

'others' are those that have extreme views and insult people for their non (supposed) scientific view, clicker trainers with extreme views in this instance.
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I am not a member of that clique, or any clique for that matter. I try to think for myself. In any case, I don't think I was speaking from a specifically clicker training point of view.

I have never seen you write with such contempt before so a shock for me and a readjustment of you in my head of your thinking. Please don't feel responsible for how I feel you are certainly not.
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Ok, I concede the grumpy old sceptic side of me overcame the polite, considerate side of me a bit too forcibly, but I also think you were perhaps a bit over-sensitive. (You did know there is a grumpy old sceptic inside me struggling to get out, didn't you??)

There's one positive thing about NH, it certainly gets people thinking and talking.
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It sure does... lol! :D
 
My Grandfather took with him 6 stunning black, gun pulling horses to Flanders within the hull of a ship during WW1. All were killed in the first 2 weeks and when ever he spoke of it, he had tears in his eyes.

He was the best horseman in the world:o, who had a real connection with horses and taught me a lot about feel.

I have his words as my sig which just about sums it up for me.
 
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