The OP whoever he is just wants praise for The Master and is unable to enter into a discussion about horses in general.
The OPs claims about The Master keep shifting. First he is a gifted trainer and coach of horses and horsemen. We debunk that. Then he is a phenomena miracle worker with no comparison possible. We debunk that. Now what matters is just the first and only 20 minutes The Master films himself with a fresh horse. We debunk that. We are meanies.
The shifting ground of claims show up the fact there is no there there. Itās just inflated claims.
I agree, thereās no one out there making videos ājust like Hempfling.ā Thatās because what heās doing is something no one else thinks is a good idea because it is not effective or useful training.
if it were not for the fact this is a huge holiday weekend with parades and huge sporting events in the USA ( including watching Monaco GP from Europe) doubt there would be so much traffic on this thread, people would be too busy to devote much time to it.
āHorse Whisperersā have been recorded at least since the 2nd century CE when Plutarch wrote of the young Alexander turning Bucephalus (whose name means OxHead, clue to his trainability to that point) away from the sun to stop him spooking at his shadow some 500 years earlier around 340BC. A mosaic of that occasion was recently unearthed in the 79CE ruins of Pompeii and it is celebrated in Medieval art circa 12th century CE,
As we continue to locate and clear newly located, undamaged Egyptian tombs post 2nd intermediate period in the New Kingdom, no doubt more horse training ā secretsā will likely be revealed, they wrote everything down. They have found a reference to Rameses II ( the Great) saying he preferred to dine with his horses instead of idiot advisers.
Not meaning to be indelicate here but its a fact charismatic horse handlers attract a legion of what can only be described as middle aged groupies. 30-50 year old women. I have personally known 2 who became devout followers at the expense of other relationships and despite active fraud litigation against their choice of Master. Some of these guys know that and use the sexual attraction to develop a fan base and keep stringing them along. Their total devotion blinds them. The groupies, not their Masters who know exactly what they are doing.
What was done to/with the horse prior to the video? Have personally seen demonstration horses represented as fresh worked endlessly out back, in the dark, away from prying eyes. Unless you are physically there before that video is made, you cant know. Only by the words chosen by the Master can you gain information.
Just food for thought and reflection. After 60 years in horses, I donāt trust anybody without independent verification. Seen too much.
I think this is what you are missing, because itās really not unique. Maybe unique to you if you havenāt been exposed to decent trainers, but by no means unique.
His method of presentation is unique though. Most trainers with on line videos like WS, actually explain what they are doing instead of sharing videos that are so choppy, and in some cases show the same clip over and over and donāt make an attempt to explain anything to their viewers. Judging from the change in wardrobe in some of Hempflingās videos, the horses are definitely being worked over multiple days.
@Benv, the reason you are so frustrated with the way this thread is going is because youāre starting with a false premise. No matter how insistent you are that what heās doing is unique, the reality is that what he is doing is not unique.
And you keep demanding videos but you only seem to want to see dramatic moments with ādangerousā stallions.
The problem with that is that the best horsepeople are usually as boring as drying paint to watch. Quiet, low-key, and very rarely pressuring a horse into much drama. Even when a really good trainer is working with a dangerous horse, youāll rarely see much drama because they have the skill, feel, and timing to prevent it from happening in the first place. And you wonāt generally see many high level dressage movements because 1) if a trainer is just starting a horse, it usually doesnāt have the fitness level to do them for any length of time safely, and 2) a lot of horses arenāt built to do them easily, anyway.
So even though theyāre able to (re-)train a horse and maintain itās personality and expressiveness, the best horsepeople generally do it without much of what you mistakenly believe is necessary to demonstrate skill.
Right.
That working horses without fireworks is called knowing what you are doing and not giving the horses a chance to practice what you donāt want them to do, resisting, meaning acting up in any way, like rearing.
When someoneās horse is acting up, generally we may say they missed the signals the horse was giving it was uncomfortable, getting scared or frustrated.
If we want good citizen horses, we need to teach and practice that, not the fireworks that show an audience how wild things are yahoo style and then gloss over it all with word salads about how great the ethereal communication with the horse that ended up acting up was.
Well saidā¦and for OP, why should we take the time to dig up videos and YouTube links going back decades when you can simply google the names mentioned on here yourself? Then watch and make your own conclusions without input from the Master?
Your teachers should be helping you think for yourself, not spout their rhetoric.
As far as Hempfling goes, searches for his name and horse come up with relatively few results, other than books for sale. That does not, to me, indicate that he has millions of followers.
Again, I think some of what he says is accurate, but hardly groundbreaking.
I had the pleasure of working with two very gifted stallion handlers; people that I would help in the breeding shed with no question.
One was a very quiet and unassuming man who never got angry, never got frustrated and never yelled. He was a genius at low energy behavior and the stallions responded to it. If a stallion acted up, his energy level would come up enough to control the behavior and then drop right back down. I held mares for him for live cover and held the AV to collect stallions for AI and always felt I was as safe as I could be under the circumstances.
Another, similar man was a stallion handler as well as a racehorse groom and was absolutely great with young horses and two year olds. He had similar tact, energy and timing and I often said I would get on ANYTHING if he was holding the shank and would lead me to the track. Horses seemed to know intuitively and simultaneously that they were in safe, kind hands and that it was a bad life choice to act up.
Youāve never heard of either of them. They have no videos and no books. They were just quiet, gifted horsemen doing their jobs.
If I had to get on a fresh two year old or handle a mare in the breeding shed, I would greatly, greatly prefer either of those men to Hempfling, Parelli, Allan Buck, Monty Roberts, Clinton Anderson or any of the other carnival barkers selling 50 cents of horsemanship in a $500 marketing package.
That was the retired military cavalry officer in his later years that was the instructor in our riding center when I was a teenager.
We received 15 feral horses directly from the mountains every late June, we worked with them and by September most were wonderful school horses, gentle and trustworthy.
When we first lay hand on them, the instructor was the one to handle them directly on the longe line.
Once they were saddling well and he considered them ready, I was the test pilot.
At times I asked if one was about ready and he would tell me, watch his face, is still tight, especially around the mouth. Some he would stop the horse, let me touch him and feel how tight some still were, felt like a rock and would say, until the horse is relaxed and confident, getting on would push him too much and set him back.
We want to always have it be the horseās idea to let us do what we do with and to them.
If we force a horse, it just creates more problems to undo those resistances later, no sense on teaching them to resist our request.
As you say, if he said now get on the horse, I would, without question and practically all times it was right, horse would just walk off nicely, a feral horse that some times had just come off the mountains a few days before. In a few more days, they were gentle enough for the vet to geld them.
Our instructor used to say the equivalent of, if a horse acts up, roll a newspaper and hit yourself over the head with it, is your fault.
It is, all that rearing up and scooting around in some videos is painful to watch, so much wrong with that.
First of all, It is impossible for us to validate that these horses are untouched or dangerous or that he is handling them for the first time. Any horse can be dangerous in the right situation, so we should all learn and practice good handling skills
There is very little content in each video so it is difficult to see what is being proposed as unique or different. It looks overall very much within the realm of normal/usual skills, generally speaking. What exactly is it in these videos that you find is different?
I wonder if you are conflating the setting being ādifferentā (e.g. handling a horse for the first time or handling a breeding stallion - which by the way is a very everyday occurrence) with the technique being different? If he has a unique approach/technique, that has not at all been articulated, other than the ethical question of prerequisites one should have before handling horses.
The ethical question could be an interesting discussion on this board, considering the diversity and depth of experience here. His position seems extreme, but maybe based on personal successes? It sounds like maybe he was a talented adult beginner when he started handling horses and attributes that to his prior activities? I think a thread titled āWhat did you do before/between horses and how did that help you be a better handler/rider?ā (With "between " to include the reriders) would be well received here.
The fact that he canāt seem to explain what he is doing and relies on generic words like āholisticā and āenergyā really makes it seem like he doesnāt actually know what he is doing. Is any of it unique? It is really on him to explain that by directly contrasting with the principles and theory of things like dressage and natural horsemanship, rather than just disparaging tools used like roundpens.
Thereās no way i would be able to explain what i am doing when iām working with a horse. Pretty much everything is action/reaction. And as people above have mentioned, itās about quiet communication, rewarding approval and calmness and trust building. If this new guru dude thinks roundpenning is a crock, i agree with him there~! And lungingā¦or running a horse aroundā¦just not what i want to have happen when iām building a relationship with a horse. And forsure those flag things are stupid. I donāt need to scare a horse into ārespectā.
I have never used flags or such, that was after my time, but I think those are not to scare, but to get the horseās attention.
Granted, horses know perfectly well we are there, but I think some like more focus on them when they are working with a horse.
Different methods are not necessarily wrong, the horseās responses is what needs to be right no matter what we ask of them and that will tell us if we are on the right path for that horse.
When you have to wildly wiggle a rope in a horseās face to make them pay attention, causing them to throw their head up and wonder what is up with you, maybe that is not the response we want and is what we see so many NH clinicians go to.
Do you think longe whips are also stupid? Because I use a flag or longe whip interchangeably. I prefer the flag because it allows a more subtle, gentler communication than the longe whip, but either will work for most ground work applications.
i, personally, do not use anything. Well, my positioning, my arms, handsā¦head. Just me. and a pocketful of treats. And with them, itās just them, no rope attached. Iāve not had trouble gaining a horseās undivided attention.
