WS is good stuff. Bonus for being able to ask for straight whoa and come in towards me (hide the hiney) too with no confusion.
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Random, cruel, inconsistent punishment based treatment messes horses up regardless of what the practitioner calls themselves.
IME a horse naturally turns inward either longing or liberty when asked to halt. On longe because of tension on line and at liberty because of curiosity and wanting to keep an eye on you, or more positively because they want to come visit as soon as you take off the pressure.
Teaching them to halt straight on the circle is more effort.
A horse kicking out at you deliberately is a whole other level and needs to be dealt with in the moment.
I always thought the point of round pen was to get join up and you need to recognize when thars happening, so continually pushing horse away is silly and counterproductive.
Anyhow you need to think systematically about what you want from a horse. If you want calm and non reactive in everyday life then donāt make them reactive and freaked in ground work. You want a horse to be less reactuve less spooky less likely to freak out when tied, and to respond promptly but calmly to cues to move. You donāt want a horse flying backwards in the stall or trailer so why teach that in groundwork?
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Saintly school pony came with this installed and it is so annoying during lunge lessons, lol. Sheās getting better over the years, thankfully.
Yes, it is a natural response. However certain practitioners have added the bit where you then cannot walk next to them without them spinning the butt away (Clinton Anderson, Iām looking at you) to correct the stop. Iāve backed many young horses and reschooled older ones and I can always tell which ones have been Andersoned.
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I second this! I feel a lot of ppl equate natural horsemanship with groundwork and that seems to lead to Parelli and the like. But Schillerās approach is about establishing communication with your horse and setting them up for success without that domination crap.
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I had a horse on layup for a couple months. I bought a book, True Horsemanship Through Feel, by Bill Dorrance and played around with it. It was actually pretty fascinating. He was very specific about not ramping up. I think the first exercise I did was putting my hand between her ears and pressing slightly, to get her to lower her head. The pressure doesnāt change and if she puts her head down, my hand is gone. She controls the release as long as the person doesnāt ride down with her head. I remember being a week or so in and having a moment where she is standing next to me, Iām holding the lead rope and there is almost electricity running between us. I think we were working on her walking with me, as in, I step forward and she comes with me. I stop and she stops.
She was not a problem horse, just green, and I was only looking for something to do with her while we waited. It was remarkable how quickly we caught on to what we were doing together.
I recommend that book, but I think the main problem with the NH crowd is it is made up of a lot of novices. Iād been in horses for 30 years at that point. A novice has no frame of reference as to what to feel for to start with, yet alone understand what results to expect. Itās no different than a novice rider trying to train a horse.
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i think my ah-ha book was by his brother, Tom, (āTrue Unityā). They must have had a pretty amazing ranch if both those boys were nurtured there. Horses on that place must have been pretty lucky equines. Especially in those days, out there.
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I went to Equine Affaire years ago with some other boarders. They talked me into going to a session starring World Renowned Trainer and Dressage Rider Linda Parelli. She was going to teach a horse how to canter. Huh? So this Parelli level 1 trainer comes out and Linda asks her to demonstrate the exercise they worked in the morning. 2 big blue plastic barrels. She had to get the horse to do figure 8s around the barrels without a lead rope and standing in one spot. It sorta didnāt work out. So they ditched it and started on the canter training.
Linda demonstrated. She got the horse on the end of the longe line and started him going to the right at the trot. It didnāt take long for his head to pop up. His eyes starting to bulge. His tail was frantically swishing. She got him going at the canter. I was impressed by her physical strength: she kept him in a circle without a round pen. The horse wanted to keep going but Linda would have nothing of it. He was doing 2 laps nonstop. She fixed it by hauling him in toward the center and āaskingā for a halt. He did a great job. He figured out that he should do 1-1/2 circles and then turn to the inside and stand there watching Linda.
Thatās when I left for the Better Living center.
I liked Mark Rashidās book on softness.
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I am not sure what training they do for hide the hiney. I do face up which means the horse faces you not the hindquarters, the horse then follows you with no lead rope. The next thing you teach them is to stand still, so as you can walk around them without them trying to face you.
On the lunge if they keep turning in, add a lunge rein on the outside and through the stirrup on the highest hole and around the hindquarters to your hand. Of course make sure the horse is okay with ropes first. Now you can halt the horse without it turning in or out and halt now, not 5 strides later. If you have the inside lunge rein also through the stirrup on the highest hole, you can change direction and go straight and now you are long reining.
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https://downunderhorsemanship.com/training-rescue-horse-part-3/
This might help. When Clinton does it (in the video) you can see his intent change. But when less experienced people do it, the horse just simply learns to spin and hide the hiney when a person walks behind the drive line in any capacity.
A horse thatās been roundpenned and longed with this thought in mind and praised for the spin and face, finds it very confusing and stressful to halt straight, even on the double longe.
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Reading Mark Rashidās books was a paradigm shift for me. Itās amazing just how soft we can be with our feel and how our horses will respond. I had to get and read every single one of his books and just wish Iād ran into him in my 20s.
Now, when I see people pulling on their horses or worst yet, pulling on the bit when leading I CRINGE and feel bad for the horse.
Like others have said here, the OP ran into a bad trainer. NH (what I think of as pressure and release) isnāt abusive at allā¦if done with feel and softness. Spending time developing your feel and timing to release can be powerful with our horses.
My new horse freezes and shuts down with ANY touch (the lightest touch) of a dressage whip during in hand work. The micro second he responds and moves I release. And I DONāT DRILL. Thatās the reward. You moved. I stopped doing that.
Also need to let them dwell and process what just went right.
Love this stuff. Love the refinement. Love developing feel.
BUT NO DRILLING. Thatās what kills the seeking reflex right?
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Agreed! I just sold a sensitive, formerly pretty anxious pony and exploring Warwick Schillerās newer stuff a little bit did wonders for him and our relationship. As soon as he worked out that I was trying to hear him and be present he mellowed out a lot.
I would love if his ideas became more mainstream. Now that Iām more educated about it I really, REALLY notice how peoplesā energy impacts their horses.
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I have never participated, but got to see this up close. There was a Parelli trainer and a few of his groupies at a barn where I used to board. It seemed pretty dogmatic and yes, a bit cult-like to me. A few horses made progress through their curriculum. Most made no progress, and were never ridden, because riding comes after a lot of other stuff in their system, and it was frowned on to ride as well as do Parelli even if your horse already was pretty well trained under saddle. A few horses, like yours, rebelled and basically said NO to the program. Basically there is no flexibility to go to Plan B if Plan Parelli doesnāt work out well for a particular horse. And no flexibility to do things in a different order. Maybe this trainer was a just not a very good Parelli trainer, but he was pretty high up in their ranks. One of his own horses never progressed to being ridden over the several years he was there. If asked about that he would say he āwasnāt in a hurryā. āIn a hurryā was how he described anyone with riding goals.
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Thatās what I felt! Like having riding goals, or even expecting linear progress, was selfish and unhorsemanlike.
The other thing that seems so evident to me now is that the constant delaying and unhurried timeline does not track with how horses learn.
They learn so fast. Yes, it takes a lot of time and consistency for them to become confirmed in those behaviors, but I think there is a reason so many trainers operate on a 30-90 day timeline. Horses can be completely transformed in that time (and, yes, completely un-transformed with the wrong handling). But to spend so long repeating the same basic āgamesā without the horse catching on, cooperating, and volunteering the behavior at the slightest cue is a sign that something is wrong.
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Thank you for that. I did manage to watch the introduction and winced quite a few times. I made it to the 1234,1234,1234,1234 twice and see what you mean.
I do not do anything like that. Disengaging the hindquarters is not a dressage thing!
I do not use the whip like that. I give a signal for what I want first. Such as click for walk, halt for halt, finger on chest not pressing and the word back for back. Later a soft tug on the tail and the word back for unloading from a float and the word back and the finger waved from side to side. Always 2 signals together for back as you only want one horse to back out of a float at once.
With this method you do not even need a halter and lead rope. You can do it sitting in a chair. With his method you would always at least need the whip. Unless it eventually becomes the way he leans in and stands up.
So my horses are taught to face up, taught to stand still, taught to yield to the halter, taught to touch all over, taught spooky object training, taught to load and lunge. They are taught until they get it. My smartest horse ever got the face up in under a second.
He wet forward in the round yard and then went up. 16.2hh so pretty big on his hind feet. At the top of the rear I dropped the rope and stepped back and he turned in the rear and came to me. He was praised and that was it. After that he got it. After that I do absolutely no drilling. Just catching to lead to the tack shed and standing still to be tacked is enough.
That to me is the problem with NH and the pissed off horses. All the unnecessary drilling, and unnecessary āgamesā like that video that was just posted. I work them on the lunge and under saddle and I do not drill with those either. It is the riders who need the drilling, not the horseās. Horses learn very quickly. JMHO.
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Completely agree. Honestly, with what Schiller is doing now, itās seriously cringey for me to see his work lumped in with names like Parelli and Anderson in this thread. I wish these concepts were more mainstream too and I hope they break out from the ānatural horsemanshipā label.
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Aha! Another example of TMP: Too Much Parelli. 
Question: Whatās with the idea of the groundwork exercise where you stand facing your horse about 6-8 feet away, using a long lead rope? And then you flick the rope at the horse while you walk toward it so it backs up. And backs up. And backs up. Not a few steps, but long, repetitive backing up from the ground, before and after you actually ride? Iāve seen him back this horse all the way from his arena, out the gate and to the barn. Backing. From the ground. Flicking at the horseās face with the lead rope. Whatās the purpose or goal here?
I ask because thereās an older fellow in my neighborhood who has the cutest little ranchy AQHA gelding. Itās broke to death. But this man hauls that horse all over to NH clinics and about the only thing I ever see thatās changed in his riding/handling is the adoption of this relentless backing-up-from-the-ground routine. Iām not really a āfriendā of him or his wife, so Iād rather ask you guys than ask the man what the dealio is.
Maybe this is common knowledge to all you but I didnāt knowā¦I had a very well known trainer, gifted and kind tell me she worked for him (Clinton Anderson) years ago and he is the single most abusive trainer she has ever witnessed.
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Iāve recently heard the same unfortunately. His methods also tend to ignore the research and information that has been brought to light by equine behaviorists so they donāt always work for every horse either. I think trying to follow only one or two NH trainers is where issues start to pop up, regardless of the specific trainer(s)
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Yep, Iāve heard that too. Horrible 
