As told to me at the beginning of a Mountain Trail clinic where the clinician was someone most would have described as a NH practitioner, “There is no such thing as natural horsemanship. NONE of what we do with horses is natural for either party.”
Excellent, I thought to myself, despite the rope halter and silly hats, we’re going to get along just fine. And we did me with my pointing, whip touching, and chain shank, and the western people with their rope twirling and rope halters. 
exactly.
I use a rope halter on occasion. I use a flag on occasion.
I see Parelli et. al. as a mixed bag. On the one hand, they’ve probably helped a bunch of people who don’t “get” horses. On the other hand, people who adhere to any “method” without the academic understanding get themselves into trouble, whether it be Parelli or Classical Dressage. The problem is not the techniques per se, but the rigid adherence to a structure that may or may not fit the horse in front of them.
The only thing I really struggle with is the stupid stop and face me on the longe thing. Once the “hide the hiney” game is in there it is really hard to get rid of.
I know. My horse always does this on the lunge when I ask for a halt. He turns and faces me and if I approach his side, he moves his butt away so we’re going in a circle. One thing he does that isn’t Parelli is he knows all the moves for carrot stretches and will offer them up if he thinks a treat is forthcoming. He’ll touch his sides, reach down between his front legs, stretch his neck out in front if there’s a treat to be had. It’s pretty cute. 
lol…i don’t on general principal, like a horse to give me their butt. I don’t feel it comes from a place of peace. I have this one mustang, a young mare, who during our initial gentling process would spin and give me the butt. Well, we worked it out, and now though she still gives the butt, it is done with a rock solid stand still (a relaxed one, not tense) and i get to give her vigorous butt scratches and untangle her frizzy tail (she’s a curly). It is something she and i do. I do buttscratches to other horses of course, but in her case, it was the only thing i could think of as an R+ way to handle her propensity. So, in her case: lemon into lemonade.
Ugh. This be true.
We have developed a saying out here for some of the horses that come into the barn that have been allegedly schooled with certain NH “methods”: TMP, which stands for Too Much Parelli.
I just want them to stand straight. Like…facing the direction they had previously been going. The spin and face me with the hind end away from me makes it very difficult to do things like walk-halt-walk transitions on the longe, which I do on days I’m not riding.
I don’t want them to give me their butts, although I have one who LOVES getting his butt scratched and will present it at all times. Super annoying to be trying to groom him and him saying “scratch my butt”. LOL
@Alterration YESSS.
Whoa means WHOA, not walk 5 more steps to face me. Whoa means glue thine feet to the earth and wait for further instruction.
yeah, i see your point and totally agree.
i don’t longe my horses so i don’t care about training issues while longeing, but i can see how it would be a problem.
And generally speaking, i feel it is not a good-thing for any horse to give me their butt. It is a defensive position and i could get hurt. BUtt…in the case of this one particular mare, i had no other real solution at this point in our process. My guess is once i bring her in for actual training we’ll get to a better place. Butt for now, this is where we are. It’s a sort of ‘meet in the middle’ agreement.
I say all of this in response to BrendaJane’s comment about Natural Horsemanship, which rings true with me
Oh that drives me crazy! I want the horse to halt on the circle, not swing his butt to face me.
My Ottb mare used to do that when I first got her, although I don’t think she was NH trained since I bought her directly at the track. She would face me, come in to me unbidden, and sometimes rear at me. It didn’t take long to get it out of her system, and she turned out to be pretty much perfect on the longe line with just a few vocal and body cues. I miss her. sniff
Very apt unintentional “butt” you have there! 
both applications of addt’l t were intentional 
I got my eldest gelding from a “Parelli” barn. He was shut down and near unresponsive, and, from what I was told, if he was triggered enough, then he’d break out of the apathy and attack. Oh, and that he did - if he felt like it, he’d rear and strike, and, if ridden, he had the meanest spin-ditch-bolt in his repertoire. The instructors there always kept saying that they did not trust him. I saw with my own eyes how he was hit (using the bam Bam BAM technique) for “disobeying”, for being “too lively” with a rider and for just showing a general level of curiostity, and it actually took me several years to bring him out of the state where even the slightest sighting of a whip/stick brought rage upon his mind.
Right now he’s the loveliest animal you could imagine, but he still has his flashbacks and he was incredibly hard to teach how to lunge properly, as he’d always dive towards the handler and turn his butt away. I don’t blame the method, though - but the count of the inadequate “trainers” who claim to know how to train a horse more “naturally” is appalling.
100% some follower taught hide the hiney to my driving pony before I bought him, took me so flipppin long to get over that habit consistently. Dangerous as all get out in a driving animal.
I will never buy a horse or pony that has been taught that useless crap.
Right now he’s the loveliest animal you could imagine, but he still has his flashbacks and he was incredibly hard to teach how to lunge properly, as he’d always dive towards the handler and turn his butt away. I don’t blame the method, though - but the count of the inadequate “trainers” who claim to know how to train a horse more “naturally” is appalling
This was exactly what my horse started to do—an aggressive dive, then turning out and trying to double barrel the person holding the whip. So much worse and more dangerous than what I sent him for training to address. The first time he did it, I let it go and accepted the trainer’s feedback that behavior worsens before it improves. When it started to become a “once or twice per 20-minute session” thing, I asked her to stop working with him and just continued to pay a month of training board until I could get a new place lined up. I didn’t necessarily think it was anything she was doing, I just didn’t think what she was doing was helping. But then, when he’s spontaneously gotten much better, it does suggest something more was going on.
As others have discussed, I would not blame the NH. I would blame the TRAINER.
Any training “method” has the potential to be carried out WRONG and INCORRECT in you are not reading the horse correctly and/or do not have correct timing and feel.
We have newish people at my barn who got a new yearling last September. Super cute, super well bred QH filly. Very sociable, very friendly, and (the major issue), very smart. The people who have her haven’t had horses since they were teens (30+ years ago) and went with the Clinton Anderson methods . Going so far as to have a ‘certified’ CA trainer out for an entire day of training. As many times as he hit this poor filly, I was so upset I had to leave (and I wasn’t even in the arena with them).
I have watched this poor filly go from friendly and sociable to not wanting a thing to do with people. She was a pretty nice mover, and now is so choppy because she’s waiting to get jerked on to go the other direction. It really is very sad. And now they just bought another yearling. Sigh.
That being said, when I got in to horses 30 years ago, my gelding had some super duper spoiled rotten issues. I had Parelli’s 7 games book and took a few of those exercises which really did help quite a bit. I think that was before the whole NH just blew up in to what it is today.
Also took that same gelding to a CA-based groundwork clinic. Had I known better and had more confidence, I would have just left. It was just dumb. I felt it was more about making the horse guess what I wanted than just asking them (which I finally did when the instructor moved on). He was so mad about that clinic that he ran me over the next day, and he’d never done that. I couldn’t even blame him. One of those lessons learned the hard way.
I think Warwick’s evolution is fascinating and so needed. I wish everyone would take the time to understand what he’s getting into RE: mindfulness and being present, energy and how all that can have profound positive results without “training” on the horse at all. Really been enjoying digging into his ideas and trying some of them with my horse. Good, productive, really useful stuff.
Your story reminded me of the utterly adorable little Morgan gelding I met at a boarding barn I was at. He was very curious and busy - totally needed a job. But his owner had misrepresented herself as being an expert rider to his seller and was terrified of him, never rode him and never came to see him either. He was sent to various NH trainers to cure him of well, himself - the owner never stuck with any of it. She never rode him, kept him locked in his stall, which he tore to pieces out of boredom and he later colicked and died. I would have loved to have bought him but she refused to sell, refused to let anyone ride him or turn him out - what a shame.
Oh haha I enjoy it even more then!!
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