Saw that a lot in the Parelli follower barn I bought my horse from. It was supposed to “teach them respect” by “moving their feet” like “a lead horse would in the wild”. Horses would be routinely backed up for unreasonable distances if they ever put a hoof wrong, without stopping or praise.
Strange. In all my years with horses I have never seen horses backing up each other like that.
I say that all the time (i’m not in a hurry). Solid foundation through ground-work (human feet on the ground) make for a really good riding horse.
I think there’s is a middle-road here. I wish, for the horses’ sake, that more people would take the time to develop a horse’s understanding (not just obedience) of the human/horse relationship before they get mounted. It makes a huge lifelong difference.
i’d believe this. Gosh, in the mustang-world, all those western girls are soo impressed with CA…He’s “god” in that particular horse niche. There is an emerging R+ focus though, and often some pretty big discussion clashes on SM. Good news is positive training is gaining momentum and more and more people are speaking out when someone new gets a mustang and all the girls try to direct them to Clinton Anderson. It is a good thing 
Truly, all those microphone, cowboy hat and jeans men give me the creeps though. I don’t pay attention to any of them. Even WS…though it sounds like he is more aligned with how i think…
The whole guru-man thing just leaves me cold.
I have followed WS for years but you’re right, there is definitely an element of “I’m a man guru” towards people in it even though his horsemanship has evolved. I also find him a little hard to follow at times. He talks a lot.
I’ve had better luck following Katy Negranti, a sometime student of his and excellent trainer in her own right. Clear, concise, not as given to shaming those who ask questions, and a little more multi-modal since no one approach is good for every horse.
If there are no goals, you kind of have to wonder what the hell the point is anyway.
Horses do learn fast. I have never had a youngster that didn’t go from unbacked to w-t-c in 90 days.(although I never told the owners to expect it). Yes, I did lay the foundation in groundwork on the longe-- about 15 minutes 3 x per week-- and the first part of that was so slow that railbirds would wonder whether I was ever actually going to get on. But during that last week or two, those horses were w-t-c on voice command and the railbirds shut up. No pressure involved, just positive reinforcement.
And…i’m not cantering in dressage lessons even though i’ve been at-it for a year with my mare!
Yes, i know for a fact that this totally dismissable-worthy to almost every rider on earth, and yet, here i am, doing-me.
You do you and your horse, don’t worry about what “ they” think or anything you read from lord knows who pretending to be an experienced expert online. Anybody who has actually owned more then a single, dead broke, trained to death since birth horse knows better then to preach.
That said, not being in a hurry does not mean paying for years of pro handling resulting in a sour mess you cant even get on. It means going at the horses own pace making progress towards being a willing partner. Some of these over drilled NH horses strike me as just being defensive, confused and actually scared. No idea how a placid, born broke western type horse can get screwed up so much by some of these people, must be hard to teach them to be so opposite of where they started.
Far as the stop and spin in…from what I have seen, its not the same as the basic “ face up”. I learned to whoa and let the horse fully stop and stand square and relaxed, which is the only meaning of “whoa”. Then ask the horse to face you. No stop and immediately spin in…unless you like getting run over. No need to shake anything in its face here, cant remember ever using any “tools” to teach this.
Teaching one to stop, tun and face begins back in the stall or pen, expected all of mine to turn and face me in the stall/pen and lower their head for the halter then walk quietly out of the door/ gate- lunging ahead, throwing the head up or pushing into my space not acceptable. This is not hard to teach but it has to be every day, every time horse is handled by anybody and involves no waving or shaking objects to run it backwards. And does take time, lots of time.
I remember BB telling a guy with a young pushy, rude mare who was spouting NH theory “ yeah, I can spend 30 minutes with her and undo what you have taught her but then you are going to take her home and screw her up again within a week unless you learn too so what the point?” Guy had a few short words at BB and left.
Truth hurts.
I am going to look up Katy Negranti, thank you! I really like Warwick’s underlying concepts but I do struggle with his … wordiness. I like concepts to be carefully explained but I don’t need a 15 minute video of him telling a story direct to camera.
TOTALLY out of context, but it was that tiny bit of your post that made me go, “Oh yes, THAT’S what I don’t like about NH.”
What “that” is is horses that are supposedly trained through NH that are unable to cope with the daily ins and outs of a boarding barn without some bizarre special treatment and or equipment. They tend not to ‘get’ (or it’s been trained out of them) how to walk with a human by keeping pace with the human. They look at you like you’re asking them a $2K Jeopardy question when you merely wave your hand to brush a fly away, and that’s not to say that I don’t expect horses to be able to follow the command of a single finger (I do!), but they also need to be able to understand that not every gesture is a thing to get worked up about and that if the human isn’t directly engaged at that moment, there’s no need to bother because it’s not higher math, it’s just a human doing human things. And worse, some of them turn practically feral with anything other than a rope halter because they’ve been taught the only time they need to behave is while wearing their special equipment.
I don’t think the concepts of NH are necessarily bad but I absolutely think a lot of the big name NH “trainers” are a disgrace to the community. At its core I like to think that NH is less about the specific results, like nifty tricks, and more about the understanding and communication you develop with your horse along the way (this was brought up a lot in the Noelle Floyd/Tik Maynard podcast episode). Many of the trainers however market the idea they they are the magical mystical horse whisperer, they have the special touch and their talents should be put on a pedestal for all to see and follow. I have a lot more respect for trainers who are open about their methods and eager to teach others “the way” so that their horse and partnership can benefit from it - not so they can drag them down the road of buy-this-gear and subscribe-to-my-program-or-else-you’ll-never-be-successful.
the concept is to listen to the horse.
which is sadly lost in the commercial endeavor.
And as stated above somewhere, a novice seldom has the tools to do this right. they don’t know what to look for, nor have the timing to get it done.
So we are left with a product that is at conception faulty.
One size does not even fit most horses.
CA smells and acts like a reining trainer to me. Maybe it’s just who I’ve been around, but I have never met a reining trainer that doesn’t, at some points of the training, toe the line (or completely cross it) of abuse.
I think some of CA’s stuff is fine. Others of it, I could leave a mile behind me. Like any trainer/horseman - the learning is both “what to do” and “what not to do”.
I was watching a CA video one time on RFDTV and the horse he was working in the round pen was a bit rank and then it cut to a commercial. When they came back, the horse was totally exhausted and covered in sweat, sides heaving, standing there totally beaten into submission. CA is standing there all chipper and smiling talking about how the horse came around and is in a better frame of mind now. It was at that point I quit listening to anything he had to say or watching anymore of his blather.
Interesting info on Clinton A, because that’s the main clinician my neighbor guy (the horse backer-upper) follows around. So I guess that explains a lot of what I see when I go past his place, walking my dog. 
Long ago, when RFD-TV first started, one day they had a video with John Lyons.
There was this grey chubby colt in a smallish round pen, 40-45’, standing around, every so often he would walk around and nicker.
JL came in and started shooing him around.
Colt was trotting around and he was obviously lame in front, head nodding lame.
JL started talking and kept the colt moving all along, not chasing him, just shooing him when he tried to stop.
Talking and talking to his audience, the colt would get tired and even laid down several time, JL noticed and got him moving again.
After a good half an hour, colt was getting very tired, heaving and sweating and limping, but JL kept on shooing him, would not let him stop, much less lay down.
I quit watching and have not thought much of JL since then.
Still have his first books, but talk is cheap, the proof is in watching them work with horses, is it.
That is so sad. 
Macho trainers disgust me.
someone up above challenged me to say what i meant when i derisively called bad trainers ‘cowboy trainers’. This is what i mean…macho. As-in: I AM MAN. YOU WILL DO WHAT I SAY.
Wow. That’s super depressing. JL used to be one of my favorites and well known to be a “kind” trainer.
Yes, in his books he always talks like he is so nice and kind, how he was not a “cowboy type”, not with those words, he spoke nicely, no derogatory terms.
In that video, he talked and talked and didn’t pay any attention to the colt, other that to keep him moving, or he would have noticed he was lame and getting winded, or something else was wrong, for him to lay down several times in such an inappropriate place for that, maybe was trying to colic?
Colt was a yearling, best I remember.
Maybe he finally went to work with the colt and realized something was not right and called it off?
I didn’t wait that long, waited long time hoping he would do something else than talk, but no, so that was long enough for me.
Whatever, JL sure was missing that something was not right with that colt, that was surprising to experience, didn’t fit with what I read in his books and articles.
I have no experience with reiners, however I saw a demo in the next suburb which impressed me. It was a reiner trainer and he was teaching us how he teaches a horse to spin.
It was dressage, every day he would ask the horse to step over, just once or twice but just every day, eventually you ask and the horse will add more. Then later you ask more and the horse would spin. He spoke so kindly and was kind to the horse. I would have no qualms sending a horse to him, having lessons with him or working for him.
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