What would you do?
I received a private message, an explanation, for why this man was slugging his horse repeatedly during the ride, and it brings up a point to consider.
According to the explanation this horse had the problem of being "overly excited", as it was his first ride. When the horse was bought he had major problems, bucking, rearing, and hyper. He has gotten better, but at the ride was a chargey. According to the Parrelli methods,I was informed:), you have to correct a horse in a 3 second window. That is what the rider was doing, correcting in a three second window. My question, how would you guys correct this problem?
Me, when I've had a chargey horse, I either bring them to a full stop, stand a second and start again, or I circle the horse in tight circles 3-4 times then come out of the circles heading down the trail, and continue to repeat this till the horse gets the idea it's easier to go easy then to start to charge. I've never had a horse that this didn't work on, and fairly quickly, especially being consistent.
IMO, slugging a horse in the neck is NOT an appropriate method to fix this problem. And not necessairly because slugging one is actually hurting them much, it's just there is no connection between the punishment and the crime. Am I making sense. What do you all think?
Becky
Good Lord, are they saying that slugging the horse was a Parelli method??? LOL. If the guy feels that the only way to control the horse is slugging him, he needs to go back to square one and start over.
You are right, they are wrong, the guy should have been disqualified if what he did was against the rules of the race.
Was the private response from the wife? Why didn't she want to explain on the forum?
There's a new reply from "alice" there that really speaks to the issue.
"I remember watching an experienced competitor correct her horse once and thinking "wow, that's severe" but what she did worked. Evidently, it was something that had "discussed" before and the horse knew better. It did change my idea of what was abuse or not since the person involved is not someone would "abuse" a horse on a regular basis. And the correction was fair and the horse began to behave.Likewise, there have been other times I've been witness to something I didn't think was fair, and I never knew what to do, if anything. What is even more maddening is when you see an incident on the trail==horse and rider having a difficult time-- who manage to pull it together to have good scores in front of the judge and have stellar scores.
And that's the issue really isn't it?... What do you do when you see it out on trail and no one else does, and then they score very well?
Any of the methods you list would have helped. What this guy did only made the situation worse. The horse did NOT understand what the beating was about whether it was within 3 seconds or not.
One rein stop, circling in tight circles, etc., all are effective if used in the right manner. In classical dressage, we have a similar exercise called "milling". Your tight circles is basically the same thing. Mill one direction until the horse begins to soften, walk a few steps and mill the other direction. Also, instead of walking a few steps, you can sidepass and change direction to mill the other way. There are quite a few variations on this exercise that help.
Beating a horse does not qualify as correction. The only situation I can think of that might justify "beating" is if a stallion has attacked you and you need to defend yourself because you can't get away.
I agree with you here. (By the way, I'm so far behind I'm copying what I'm replying to so you know what I'm talking about). I read a bit of this the other day. I am very surprised the rider wasn't disqualified and mystified that they placed at all. I didn't think the AERC was that different from other organizations but it must be - if anyone saw anything like this on an endurance ride I'm sure some kind of discipline would result.
It could be though that there is less politics in endurance riding, or less chance maybe of it being effective. It's pretty cut and dried - time over the line, condition of the horse at vet checks and finish.