Parelli’s Catwalk Nightmare

No nothing to do with fashion but, well it’s the talk of the internet, Pat Parelli’s own-goal at the Royal Festival of the Horse on the 10^th of July at Stoneleigh. When Pat tried very unsuccessfully to get a bridle on a stallion called Catwalk. Well as most people know it all went horribly wrong. Lots of people walked out and were quite shocked at what they had seen. The 2 hour demonstration involved Pat using what English riders would call a ‘twitch’, – a rope around the horses upper lip and bringing the horse down with ropes around it’s legs. You can see the early highlights at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gf7w_1ifus (if you want to). Read more »

Horses in cages?

Horses in Cages, surely not? What kind of unprincipled person would put a horse in a cage? Well, as we shall see, whether you see it as a cage or a stable, it is really only a matter of perspective. Read more »

Horses and Conservation Part Two

The  field you keep your horse in is also the environment you keep your horse in. It is the horses home. Ideally it should be where your horse lives all the time, preferably with a group of other horses (i.e. a herd). It stands to reason that everything that happens in that environment will have an effect on the horses and the way the horses interact with the environment will affect the environment too. Read more »

Horse Environments and Conservation

Introduction

I’ve recently been reading a book on, ‘pasture management for horses’, you might think that’s probably because I have too much time on my hands and not many friends. Neither of which is true, I hasten to add. Anyway, the book has raised some interesting questions. The approach taken by the (otherwise excellent) author is rather conventional. I would describe it, not so much as sound advice to the horse owner more as one way of looking at pasture management. I tend to think of this approach as ‘Penelope’s perfect pasture plan’. – (probably for Penelope to keep her perfect pony in), but enough of this alliteration. Read more »

What do you do with your horse?

This is inevitably the first question that I always get asked by people when they discover that I own horses. Actually I dread it, not because I don’t ‘do’ stuff with my horses, like riding them (this is what they really mean), – I do, but to be honest, riding them is perhaps the least important aspect of what I do with horses and when someone wants to know the answer to that question I always know I am dealing with a ‘mentality’, and it is usually going to be hard work! Read more »

It’s not about training, – it’s about trust

It’s not about training, it’s about trust….

In the last post ‘The politics of join-up’, I looked at the join-up process primarily as an behavior based on negative reinforcement, I also looked at how join-up was a ritual that is part of the repertoire of ‘political’ behaviors which allow a horse to join a new herd or group. What I didn’t ask was why would a horse want to do this? Read more »

The Politics of Join-up

The Politics of Join-Up

For many people the first time they became aware of any kind of alternative methods of dealing with horses, it was when they first saw Monty Roberts demonstrating ‘join up’ ® . Until that time horse training methods had all been based on traditional knowledge, which usually meant doing what everybody else did, – because everybody else was doing it. As you will now know, this is what I call ‘utility model thinking’, based on the idea of the horse being defined by it’s function or utility. See other posts for more details on the utility model. Read more »

Clicker Taining Principles 3

How to do it

When we clicker train an animal we are using two types of learning. Don’t worry too much about the names but it is important to understand the principles here. Read more »

Clicker Training Principles 2

Clicker training is something that has been around for many years, it is also known as positive reinforcement training, (PRT). This is a more accurate name that describes the basic mechanism. We have three elements here: Positive, this means that PRT works only with positive emotions. Reinforcement this means that behaviors that are reinforced are likely to reoccur and training which implies some form of learning is taking place. Read more »

System Thinking

Systems thinking is something that is very popular in human society and something that simply does not exist in horse society. We humans love to buy into a system when we buy a horse we usually decide somewhere along the line which particular system we are going to put the horse (and ourselves!) through. It might be a very traditional and specific approach such as classical dressage or it might be something more general such as ‘English riding’. It might be a Western system or it might one of the growing number of alternative ‘natural horsemanship’ type systems. Systems are great aren’t they? Just follow the individual steps in the booklets, DVDs or podcasts and hey presto! At the end of the process you have a perfectly trained horse and a perfectly trained rider. Well actually no, that usually is the opposite of what happens. Read more »