I was watching Clinton Anderson’s series “Training a Rescue Horse” on youtube, and something he said got me to thinking. He said to treat rescued horses just the same as you would any other horse, no special treatment. It was a little eye-opening for me as I’ve always been a little extra cautious when meeting them. I was wondering what your positions were on this? Would it work for every rescue horse (brutally abused, starved, etc)? I know it worked for Cider but I didn’t fully know her background and just HOW abused and mistreated she was. I volunteer at a rescue barn and wondered if this “philosophy” would help out the horses there, as well as the people handling them.
Let me start with I do not like Clinton Anderson. I think his methods are too rough, that he sets horses up for failure just to discipline them and when he has fully trained a horse it is an automaton with no personality. I saw him on one of his tours.
I think you should treat each horse as an individual anyway no matter what their backround is. Some horses you can and need to really get after them to correct something others you might just need to growl at them or step towards them and that is the only correction you need. If he means that you treat a rescue horse like any other horse in that you assess what is standing in front of you now and you adjust your training methods and level of correction and teaching methods to the individual horse then yes I agree with him.
If it means that you use the exact same cookie cutter methods and level of correct on every horse including rescue horses then no I don’t agree.
I don’t think just because a horse is a rescue and was physically abused that they get a pass on basic manners. They are still horses that can hurt humans or worst case kill one even if it is not on purpose.
You still need to make sure they don’t run you over, pick up their feet, don’t bite, don’t kick, lead safely and are generally safe to handle. You may need to adjust how you teach that to them based on that individual horse’s reaction to a correction. But they still should not get a pass on bad manners just because you feel sorry for them.
You don’t need to instill that in the first week especially if they have been physically neglected too but it shouldn’t take years just because Rescue Dobbin needs to be coddled and loved on. Rescue Dobbin can still break your leg if he kicks you, he can still cause severe bodily injury if he bullies his way through the gate and runs you over.
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I hear you on the roughness. I don’t like everything he does, but the concepts of how he gets there (along with other trainers) is what I really look for and decide what I like best.
Oh no definitely they don’t get a free pass I think we can all agree on that. His example was “if a skinny horse is in a herd of healthy ones, they’re not going to say ‘oh no let him eat he’s thin’, that horse is going to go straight into the pecking order just like another horse. If you treat them like they’ve been mistreated then they’re going to act like they are”. I don’t think he was referring to any “cookie cutter” training, but I’ve really only seen the Rescue Horse series as well as a few problem horse ones so I don’t have anything similar to compare it to. I agree with all your points though, thank you!
Don’t care for CA either but agree that " rescue" horses don’t get a pass on basic manners. Any horse you don’t know well should be approached with caution and you don’t have to beat them to let them know you expect them not to bite, kick or drag you around. Usually voice and body language are enough.
Many “rescues” are just creatively marketed low end dealer horses these days, horses that at some point did learn manners. Nothing special needs about them other then needing groceries and a minor tune up in how to behave. Think CA was speaking to that larger group, not the special need severely absused types which need a very different approach and may never recover. Fortunately there aren’t that many of those and real rescues don’t adopt them out due to those special needs and safety doubts.
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Ooh, CA. A hot button topic with a lot folks.
I do agree with some of the philosophies CA talks about. I do also think some of the episodes on his Youtube play out like scripted reality TV. Anyway, my own thoughts… Horses are, fundamentally, horses. If you’ve got some decent horsemanship skills and you’re a fairly experienced hand, you should be able to work with a previously neglected or mistreated horse not much differently than you’d work around a horse who’d lived with a much better level of care. Each horse has their own character and will learn at their own pace; some horses are more flighty naturally and some because it’s a learned response to the presence of a person. Patience is a consistent requirement in handling and riding horses, regardless of discipline, breed, age. There is no rider or trainer out there who has a short cut, and if they appear to, it’s potentially not a long lasting one. Being able to read a horse is something I’d consider a necessity. Most horses will indicate that they’re afraid or unhappy, it’s a matter of the handler recognizing that and perhaps coming up with a different approach. The few horses that are explosive, with very little to no indication at all, are horses I’d think only very experienced trainers should be working with.
I think what CA may mean, is that people tend to create excuses for horses based on them being a “rescue”. Sometimes those excuses or that thought mentality that influences a change in someone’s approach to dealing with a horse, can ultimately be detrimental. For example, someone may inch around a previously abused horse because they don’t want to frighten it. But sometimes that behavior can be perceived by the horse as being a reason to be afraid. Another example may be that someone doesn’t correct unwanted, potentially dangerous, behavior because they don’t want to be mean to a horse. There’s a girl I know who has a previously neglected horse, the horse treats a lot of things, people included, as chew toys. It’s been years now since she originally took him on, and she still uses the rescue case schtick to excuse a lot of what he does. IMO, that’s not helping take that disenfranchised horse and helping them to become a citizen with value.
I’m always reserved when I handle unfamiliar horses. I don’t treat them the way I do my own initially in the sense that I don’t know them the way I do my own. It’s giving the horse the ability to get familiar with me, and me it.
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Clinton Anderson is an asshat.
But question, if he doesn’t think that rescue horses should be treated any different than other horses, why does he need to make a video series “Training the Rescue Horse”? Why wouldn’t his other videos be good enough? LMAO!!!
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Because his disciples will buy anything he puts out and noobs will fall for the “rescue” schtik as they used to go for the majikal kohlrabi ruse.
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I will preface this by saying that I hang out at the low end of “nice” horses, where folks have an eye for a good horse but generally small budgets, so many of us end up with “projects” which often means an adult horse whose education is not consistent with his age. I honestly don’t see much difference between a horse that was bought cheap from the owner because it “fell through the cracks,” and one that for some reason has the “rescue” label attached to it.
I think that every experienced horse person would agree that you get the full range of behavior in “rescue” horses as you do in other kinds of horses, and also that the term “rescue” is so broad as to be almost meaningless.
Here are some things that might count as a rescue horse to some people:
- horse in field, owner died, heirs handed over to a rescue or took to an auction
- horse in field, owner died, horse lost weight over the winter, SPCA seized
- any horse that goes into the auction pipeline, regardless of health, weight, training, age (ie, unbroke yearling, crippled race horse, aged schoolie)
- horses in fine condition but living conditions so horrible SPCA seized
None of these situations imply any psychological or deliberate physical abuse, and the horse that comes out of that situation is not going to be mentally any different than if you’d stepped in and bought it for $1 from the original owner the day before they shipped him out (in which case it would be a lucky buy, not a rescue, and indeed much cheaper than if the horse went into the rescue or auction pipeline!).
Around here, there are several low-end horse dealers who call themselves “rescues” and actually have big hearts, but they are really just buying and selling low-value horses. Or getting low value horses donated, and selling them.
If you bought an unbroke yearling at auction, let’s say culled by a quarterhorse operation that deliberately overbreeds, it would be the same (but much cheaper!) as its half brother that was just sold as a reining prospect for several thousand dollars. If you bought a questionably sound OTTB at auction, it would be the same as if you’d bought the horse straight out of the backstretch for $500.
Same training holes, same issues.
The number of horses that actually get seized or rescued for actual brutal handling by the owners, if everything else is OK (good weight, health, living conditions) is very small. Actual brutal handling tends to be sporadic and hard to document, and who is around to monitor the teen girl who has a temper tantrum back of the barn, or the self-styled “trainer” who whips his horse onto the trailer?
Arguably as well many disciplines have established training practices that amount to systematized abuse, but as the case of the Big Lick Tennessee Walkers demonstrates, it is very hard to do anything about, and the SPCA is not about to seize thousands of show horses for “abuse.”
That said, it is also true that the horses that end up in the rescue or auction pipeline may be there because they have holes in their training or quirks in their personality that made their previous owners give up and either toss them into a pasture or send them to auction. These quirks might include bite, buck, bolt, rear, or general insubordination. The quirk might be due to health problems, owner ignorance, or the fact that the owners bought a green horse and didn’t have the skills to train it. How many OTTB or OTSB end up unrideable because they get bought by the wrong people?
In other words, the “rescue” label does not necessarily imply any trauma or cruelty above and beyond what a low-value “normal” horse would go through. Lots of horses get scary thin and then gain weight, without the SPCA ever being notified. Lots of horses get tossed out on pasture for their lives and basically grow up unhandled because their owners don’t have the time or energy to get them started. Lots of horses endure ongoing psychological and physical abuse to some extent, and just suck it up, and nobody intervenes.
That said, the term “rescue” is a current feel-good word, and it also interestingly helps people have lower expectations for their horses. I had one friend with several horses she called rescues (one was bought out of a lesson string) and she always had the out, when it came to potentially larger expenses, of saying that well, they were rescues, she had already done the huge job of saving their lives, and therefore she could be excused from getting her saddles reflocked or vet diagnostics on obvious problems, etc.
I expect that if CA is doing a video on rescue horses, it’s because that is a self-aware self-defined market, and perhaps his main point is “treat your horse like you’d treat any horse that you don’t know well.” But guaranteed the title of the video will appeal to the “rescue community” even if the information in it is the same as in the other videos.
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Well put Scribbler, very sensible assessment.
Marketing. Similarly to why would anyone need a Downunder Horsemanship halter and lead over one you can pick up at a store, or anything else he’s peddling. Scribbler touched on it, there’s appeal in the title to the “rescue community” who may already think their horses are somehow set apart from the rest of the horse population. Perhaps he uses some “rescue” horses in the series to demonstrate his point that they’re not much different at all. Who knows, I don’t intend to tune in.
OP, if you want to watch CA’s series, by all means go ahead. You will find a lot of folks outside of his fan base who aren’t supporters. Take what he says and does with a grain of salt. Some of his philosophies are common sense or are horsemanship principles that aren’t unique to his method. Some of his other approaches are, uh, rather unorthodox. For example, I don’t know when I’ll ever find myself repeatedly cracking a bull whip mere inches from my horse. Doesn’t seem likely. I don’t really know the origin of CA, either. I can imagine he, at one point, was just another guy trying to hang it out there as a horse trainer. His marketing team is the genius behind it all, really, and it’s sort of carved a niche out for him. He’s infinitely less successful as a performance horse trainer, it seems that those horses often find their way into the hands of a more capable trainer and showman. Take any DVD or online video series for what it’s worth, use what works for you, leave what doesn’t. Instructional DVDs or books shouldn’t replace actual work with a trainer, though, and don’t get yourself in a jam trying to follow something you see in a 20 minute CA short.
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LOL- don’t worry I don’t drink the koolaid. My question was highly sarcastic and totally rhetorical 
Ah! I picked up on some sarcasm but missed some of the point :winkgrin: Guess I’ll be returning your CA brand stock stick. Merry un-Christmas to us all.
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Good points all. A neighboring horseman adopted CA methods for starting horses, Quarter horses. Neighbor is a great, sensitive horseman with lots of ‘feel’ and reading ability. He doesn’t continue the CA progression, just starts them and moves on to another. This has been very successful for him and the horses.
He would tell you, a horse is a horse. They are all individuals, just like us.
CA’s main demographic is relatively inexperienced horse owners.
Many in that same demographic seem to see having a “rescue” horse as some kind of badge of honor, and will therefore call any horse that was mildly underweight on arrival, or came from an auction, or lived in a run-down barn, a “rescue”. Similarly, any horse that is skittish or has poor manners is often assumed to have been abused, when in reality it is much more likely that the horse has simply not been taught to have manners. In that way, CA is right … these horses do not need to be approached any differently from other green horses.
A severe neglect case is going to need specialized care to bring it back to health, but once healthy isn’t likely to need a significantly different approach from any other horse that has had limited handling.
A horse that has truly been subjected to intentional cruelty/abuse (which is fairly rare) may have additional baggage, and need to be approached more carefully, but that will still depend on the temperament of the horse and the type of abuse it endured.
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Agree with treating them all the same and working through a humane and logical training program to make them good solid citizens.
A few people mentioned “roughness.” I don’t follow Clinton Anderson, but you do need to push a horse pretty hard sometimes to get them to make mistakes so they learn the correct response. If you tiptoe around them and modify your actions according to what the horse “likes” and “doesn’t like,” you will run into trouble down the road. Emphasis on humane and logical.
In the Walkabout clinic I saw he had a horse with poor ground manners that was a local horse. The horse would get in his personal space. Initially he allowed it as he talked but then he suddenly reprimanded the horse.
Generally if I want a horse to stay out of my space I will block him with an elbow or forearm but not follow through and hit the horse. If he continues to get in my space I will up the level of correction. (Exceptions to this are biting/kicking then I unload pretty quick and hard.) I horse that does not already know that staying of of a humans personal space and all the horse does is touch me or bump me I am not starting at hitting with a follow through.
I felt like he let the horse get in his space repeatly, gave the horse no indication that this was not allowed and then when he finally got to the demo part he let the horse come in again and drove it harshly out of his space. I felt he set that horse up. He basically let the horse in his space repeatedly so the horse then felt that was perfect acceptable and then he harshly reprimanded the horse. The horse was a demo horse because he had personal space issues that the owner was not correcting or not effectively correcting. Therefore the horse had a history of being allowed in people’s personal space and did not understand this was not acceptable behavior.
Understand this is also in a very large coliseum type environment which further upped the horses agitation. CA did not start with asking the horse to stay outside his space, quietly reprimanding the first time the horse got in his space and then upping the reprimand when he got in his space again. He never gave that horse a chance to know what was expected of him. He allowed that horse to be agitated, walk around on the end of the line, swing into his space for a good 5 minutes and then decided he had enough and WHAM got after him hard. That was not fair to that horse. He set the stage to the horse of what you are doing is okay, it’s fine, NO JUST KIDDING it isn’t okay.
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Its kinda like when you’re out somewhere and there is a kid constantly misbehaving. Finally after letting the kid get worse and increasing the bad behavior the parents step in and go overboard on punishment, where if it was caught early, you wouldn’t have to use the same punishment. Not fair to the kids or horse, but you do have to draw the line in the sand at some point. If you make your point hard enough, they don’t test it again. Ask a boss mare.
I’m not a CA fan or Parelli, he’s too rough and pushes the horse way more than he should. I do like to watch Warwick Schiller. He’s not perfect but makes the other two look like Neanderthals.
I agree with most of your post except I find that the kid or horse sometimes over reacts to the harsh punishment and then does not always associate the punishment with the specific bad behavior that caused the punishment. They are so surprised and upset by the harsh unfair punishment that the don’t always remember what caused the punishment and frankly that may not be clear since it likely is a combination of behaviors that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
Was it the whining, was it grabbing the candy, was it the wandering around the store, was it kicking the shopping cart?
For the horse was it the getting too close to the human,was it actually bumping the human, was it that they were leading the human rather than the human leading them, was it that they were calling for their horsey friends and not paying attention to the human, was it that they were pulling on the lead and dragging the human around?
When they have gotten away with it for a period of time they are more likely to challenge it or fall back on the bad behavior pattern. Therefore they do repeat the behavior and have to be harshly reprimanded another time or two before they associate the punishment with the bad behavior.
A good boss mare does not let a lower horse steal her hay a few times before she bites/kicks the lower pecking order horse. She starts by pinning her ears or swinging her butt toward the offender when he gets too close and if the ignores that then bites/kicks him. She provides warning as a lower level correction and she gets him on that first infraction not after the 3rd/4th/5th infraction. She establishes those boundries clearly and immediately. She sure as heck does not allow him to cross the boundries multiple times before she kicks the crap out of him.
Timing is everything.
That’s one of the hardest things for many horse newbies to learn so they need a coach with impeccable timing and a very high threshold for real anger.
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He’s a marketing genius and a terrible horse trainer. They are all different; one horse needs 2 seconds to decipher where his feet go stepping into my trailer, the other two hop right in without a thought. I have 2 seconds. The horse isn’t refusing, he’s immature but kind, and doesn’t have the miles the others have. In time, he will.
That’s knowing horses, not caving to their whims because I’m a bunny hugging softhearted newbie idiot. I do like bunnies though, cuties.
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