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Thread Nine: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1584833/posts |
Posted on 10/04/2005 9:56:41 AM PDT by HairOfTheDog
This is a horse chat thread where we share ideas, ask for input from other horsemen, and talk about our riding and horse-keeping. We have a lot of different kinds of riders and horses, and a lot to share. In the previous threads we have had a great time talking through lessons, training, horse lamenesses, illnesses and pregnancies... and always sharing pictures and stories.
I always have a link to this thread on my profile page, so if you have something to say and can't find the thread in latest posts… look for it there and wake the thread up!
I also have a ping list for horse threads that are of interest, and MissTargets will now be pinging everyone most mornings. Let MissTargets and/or me know if you would like to be on the ping list. As FreeRepublic is a political site, our politics and other issues will probably blend in…. There are many issues for horsemen that touch politics… land use, animal rights/abuse cases that make the news…. Legislation that might affect horse owners.
So... like the previous threads, this is intended as fun place to come and share stories, pictures, questions and chit-chat, unguided and unmoderated and that we come together here as friends. There are lots of ways of doing things and we all have our quirks, tricks and specialties that are neat to learn about.
Previous threads:
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread - thread ONE
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread - Thread TWO!
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread - Thread THREE!
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread FOUR
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread FIVE
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread SIX
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread SEVEN
New folk and occasional posters, jump right in and introduce yourselves, tell us about your horses, and post pictures if you've got them!
I hear you. Well I have to go to work. I didn't get home until 4am. I had a report due so I'm going in late. I have my riding stuff with me and am headed to the stables at 5. I think. Every day I've had to stay late this week. This is not going to become a habit. I've resigned from one area to do something else. Only 9 more days.
Thanks, I'll try that.
You had to confront a bucking horse much earlier in your learning than we should have wished for. It's not supposed to happen that way. Whenever new riders start, we hope and pray they can get enough experience and practice to have a good solid seat before the horse jumps and does something unexpected. But it doesn't always happen that way.
I do agree with Becky that the only way to learn those reflexes and balance is in the saddle. You can learn ~something~ from working with them on the ground.... You can learn something about the way they move and respond in a round pen... But nothing beats getting on and experiencing it from the back of the horse.
It helps to have confidence in the horse, because what we're also trying to build is confidence in yourself, and your own ability. Trying to work on both at the same time is twice as hard.
We still have half of our shutters up from Katrina and Rita, so I just have to put up the rest of them.
Depending on how quickly Wilma gets here, we may have to just ride it out like we did with Katrina.
Not my favorite option, but I don't care to end up stuck in my car on the highway when she makes landfall. If I was gonna leave, I'd need to do it today or tomorrow morning the latest.
After that, it will be madness.
WOW! It's Charlotte!! :-D
And Henkell is a VEY handsome guy!
GMTA!!
See? I'm so glad you ranted about that in here.
I'll be watching those types of videos eventually and I'd much prefer to know what the reality is, rather than a sugar-coated version presented by the trainers.
They're useful for learning finesse stuff, I enjoy watching them, but I just wish they'd show the 'out-takes' so people had some perspective, is all.
Precisely.
I wouldn't, but there are bound to be folks out there who figure that if he can walk up to a wild mustang and train him just like that, they can too!
Yikes!
No it was about Monty on ABC last night teaching kids how to behave! LOL Hair asked if he put them in a roundpen and I replied, "no, but he stopped a few bucking".....!!!
It was very interesting. : )
Well, see you have good common sense... OK - You're now allowed to watch the videos :~D
There's a neat video I've seen only one time and wish I could see again. It was about how indians used to train horses. The guy led the horse out in deep water from a boat, way into the middle of the lake, so the horse was swimming. He then climbed on while the horse was in that deep water, and turned him around in circles out there, taking him to places where he could barely touch, and keeping him in deep water up to his chest until he'd stop and turn and go forward on command.
The genius of it is, a horse can't buck or rear or run off when he's swimming. And he can't do those things real well in chest deep water either. So he gets used to the rider on his back, and learns the cues the rider is trying to give, while he has no choice but to bear him. No fight, but even if you did get tossed (they're slippery after all, and those indians were bareback) it doesn't hurt, you fall in water.
They worked them in that deep water, and swam them until they were pretty tired before bringing them out. I thought it was a heck of an idea, if you have access to a lake. :~D
Just got through reading all the stuff about the various trainers. I agree with a lot of what's been said about the 'TV trainers', it's all a bit too polished and easy. Real training is repetitive and frankly boring to watch, which doesn't make for 'good TV'. I think that books tend to do a better job of conveying what a trainer is actually trying to achieve and I really like John Lyon's methods.
When I first got ahold of John Lyons' book (the first one), I was a 15 yr old with 8 yrs of lessons under my belt, and my first horse, a 6yr old TB, who had started rearing about 2-3 months after I bought him. I read everything I could get my hands on about fixing it, and nothing I or my experienced trainer could come up with worked. (at least the ones we felt were humane enough to try.) After Beren managed to rear and nearly fall while wearing a running martingale, (two bucks and reared, never lifted his head from between his knees) my trainer refused to train me with him, so he was put on the market. In the meantime, I stopped riding him completely, and did nothing but groundwork for the next 4 months. I didn't have a round pen, I didn't even have a small arena. I had a neighbor's 5 acre pasture to work in and a horse that didn't know how to lunge. Luckily or unluckily, we never found a buyer for Beren, since I was always upfront about why he was being sold. However, after those 4 months, he had the best ground manners ever, he wouldn't rear even when justifiable and in the process we figured out why he was rearing and solved it. 10 years later, Beren's still my best buddy and lunging/roundpenning are integral parts of his training program. It wasn't a nice pretty canned process and we both lost our tempers more than a couple times, but we understand each other *very* well now.
Round pen and lunge work aren't subsitutes for good riding, but a completely different type of training. I'm sure you've seen people use them for nothing more than wearing their horse out before they ride. I think if you have to do that every single time, you probably have the wrong horse. Contrast that with a classical dressage trainer to whom a lunge lesson is a lesson in and of itself and I think the second closer to the ideal. A round pen isn't the solution to all evils and neither is any other piece of equipment, useful or not. The real solution is cutting through the feel-good-pseudo-psychology so popular nowadays and understanding *why* your horse is acting the way he is and devising a way that he will understand what you want. There is no cookie cutter solution to training.
Anyway, off the soap box for the day. :)
And yes, when I can afford it, I'm building myself a round pen cause they're handy and all.
Wow! Henkell really has grayed. He's gorgeous! I love his dapples.
The barn spider is cool. I had them where I used to live all the time. I liked to throw bugs in their webs to feed them. Have you ever noticed that when you get close to them they'll start rocking their webs back and forth. I don't know if they're trying to make you see them or what, but it's interesting. And I remember hearing somewhere that that big zig-zag strip in the middle of their webs has some purpose, other than just looks, but I can't remember for the life of me what it is.
Most spiders are ok, but I do not like Black widows. They are so quick! ~shudders~
Later, afer my test, I'll be glad to add my thoughts on these TV trainers. I am pretty much in agreement with Becky as I have seen most of them both in person and on TV.
Got to get ready for my test! Not too much more time to study so got to go over things one more time.
I think so. And a good idea I wouldn't have thought of. I think about indians on the plains, without round pens or enclosed spaces to work in, no saddle or other equipment, and it's a real problem, how to back a horse. Especially when, in those times and in that life, a serious fall or a broken bone was a very real danger that could kill you.
I do a lot of lunging. You can in fact teach most of what a horse needs to know with lunge line and long reins. I agree with you on it's value as a tool. It can be much more than just wearing a horse down or letting them run their bucks out before riding.
I've never owned a round pen, but having the physical barrier there does help them to track truer if they have a tendency to try to shoulder-in or run out of the circle. It gets in the way long reining, as I like to figure-8 them and change direction a lot. I'd build a round pen if I were going to seriously put my pony in training. A really small one :~D I want lots of time on her in a small space before she gets the freedom to get up a full head of steam.
Yeah, that horse was Bright Zip and he was only blind in one eye. He's been dead several years now.
I think that most clinicians have sound methods, but you can't accomplish their results by going to see one of their seminars or watching one of their videos for a couple of hours and then going home and practicing them for one hour once a week, and that's where most people get discouraged and think that the whole program is crap. Most of them have home study courses (for sale of course, nobody does stuff for free) that if you put in the time (and it can take months) and do them right you will get similar results.
Only one eye was blind? Really? Well, that's different than total blindess, and I had heard he couldn't see at all.
I know someone else who had a blind horse she rode... Coincidentally, also an appy stallion.
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