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Well, since everyone has disappeared here, I’m wondering if I’ve insulted or irritated some of you, and the rest is sitting back wondering, OK now what:)

If so, first I want to apologize sincerely. Mostly I was just trying to spark a good lively discussion, on what horses like, dislike, and methods of training. Things get a bit slow here, we’ve cussed and discussed just about everything, so sometimes throwing out a debatable topic can be interesting.

I do believe that asking/questioning training methods are fair questions. I wasn’t the only one that ask “how do they get horses to do that?” IMO, and I’m open minded that my opinion is wrong...the commentators comment was wrong. I don’t believe the horse “liked/enjoyed” doing what was being asked of it. I don’t believe her tail swishing was enjoyment leaking out her tail. She was beautiful and very well trained, as I’m sure the black horse is. I believe it is nieve to think that some trainers because of their desire to win won’t use harsh measures. I do believe as Beaker said, there are probably horses out there who can be trained to do this sort of thing without harsh measures. But I feel certain there are horse that can’t do it, but are pushed till as she said, their brains are fried.

As I mentioned I believe abuse is a subjective thing mostly. IOW’s training methods may seem abusive to one person but not to someone else...

But as a whole abuse was not what I was thinking about, I never said dressage horses are trained by abusive methods, or is abusive in and of itself.

We all make our horses do things they don’t want to do...does that mean we are abusive, I don’t think so. Does that mean the horse dislikes doing the things we make them do, I don’t think so, if they do things willingly does that mean they like it, I don’t think so.

It’s just, IMO, that attributing human traits to horses demeanor is not a true guide to determining what they like and what they don’t like. IMO that romantisizes horses in general, and that puts horses in danger of abuse or at the least contributes to some people handling them wrong and turning them in to misbehaving brats. I just didn’t care for the comment from the commentator. That was it.

Becky

I haven't been on the thread because it's been busy here at work. I wasn't offended/irritated at all. Just contributing and discussing. :-) I don't like anthropomorphizing horses to the extent that commentator did. You just can't do it, because horses aren't people and vice versa. I do believe, though, that depending on the partnership and once you've built up a level of trust, a horse will want to work for you. Oliver, for example has finally trusted me, and he goes quite well. You can tell these things because he's relaxed through his back, he plays with his bit, he yields to my hands and takes contact on his own. We just kind of click.

But I do believe that horses can grow to like(heh there's that word again) people, and yes they do look for you when you've been gone. One of the appy's at the barn always knows when her person has arrived. Oliver always come up to meet me at the gate.

And of course it's naive to think that trainers won't use harsh measures to get what they want, regardless of the discipline, and of course some do, that goes without saying. One could say that rolkur is harsh. But others say that it's a valuable training tool in the right hands, and if done in short periods it can't hurt, but it's abused and misused. However, not every dressage rider uses it, and lots are against it. I personally don't like it, and I think that it goes against every principle in dressage.

I do believe as Beaker said, there are probably horses out there who can be trained to do this sort of thing without harsh measures. But I feel certain there are horse that can’t do it, but are pushed till as she said, their brains are fried.

Dressage isn't just training the horse to do fancy moves. These horses start from the ground up, and the point of dressage is to teach the horse and rider to move in balance with one another. You'd be surprised what you can do to throw your horse off balance, and how easy it is to do. Dressage training benefits every horse and rider team, regardless of their discipline.

And yes there are horses who can't do dressage at certain levels, and if they can't, you won't see them performing at that level, that's my point. It's like asking a horse who can only jump 2 feet to jump a 4 foot grand prix course, or your average backyard trail horse to do competitive trail riding. The point of dressage is not to fry a horse's brain and teach it to dance around the ring. :-) And people that are out there to do it that way, shouldn't be doing it at all.

Again, I don't want you to think that I'm being agressive-agressive or even passive aggressive, (grin) I just want you to understand what dressage is all about, and that just because you see a grand prix dressage horse doesn't mean that harsh methods were used to get him there.

You’re right, I was just hanging back watching the discussion. I really don’t know if horses “like” things or not, but I do think that they like certain people more than others and are more willing to perform for some than others.

And you’re right that what is considered abuse can be a very subjective thing. On the one hand you’ve got folks like the PETA people who think that even keeping animals in captivity is abuse, and on the other you’ve got people like you were talking about who will do what ever it takes to get the results they want as long as they don’t get caught. I think most of us fall squarely in the middle.

That said, and even though I don’t know a thing about dressage training, I don’t think that it would be possible to achieve the higher levels through harsh means. You can tell it in a horse’s expression or body language when they’re doing something out of avoidance. I see it in the gaited horse show ring all the time. They either have a dead look in their eyes, or a wild look, like the devil is on their backs. I didn’t see either on the gray mare. She did seem to have that extra “spark” that I guess could be construed as “liking her work”. Now whether she really did or not is anybody’s guess. I like to think that she did, but then I tend to treat my horses more as pets than you do. I’m not saying that one way is better than the other, I’m just stating my own personal preference.

So there’s my 2-cents worth. I really didn’t say anything that all the rest of you haven’t already said. But I guess I had to say it anyways.