Hempfling - Different approach to being with horses

According to Wikipedia (not a authorative source, but a good starting point) the pre-requisites for becoming a medieval knight were

riding, swimming and diving, shooting different types of weapons, climbing, participation in tournaments, wrestling, fencing, long jumping, and dancing

No mention of

body awareness, mental alertness, judgment, personal development, patience, and empathy

Medieval knights were certainly no known for their “empathy”. Quite the opposite.

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Like, 3 days ago, post #28 OP posted this.

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Wikipedia is perfectly valid source for the purpose. I would have been happy to discuss it further some days ago. At the momnet I will refrain from it simple to avoid the impression I am convincing you of anything.
I do appreciate the time you have put into checking it.

Thank you for your opinion.
I choose to not discuss my perosonal experience, as I do not feel this a safe place to discuss anything especially personal. I hope for your understanding. I have to problem with your conclusion based on lack of my input. Thank you again for your time.

Nobody knows anything about “Celts.” I live in Scotland, a ‘Celtic’ country. Hell, I play ‘Celtic music,’ which is really Irish/Scottish dance tunes that can be actually dated back to the 18th century, at most. Many are far, far more modern than that and have composers who are still alive and well. The most ‘Celtic’ of bagpipes, on the soundtrack of everything labeled Celtic, the uilleann pipes (which I play), were invented in the mid-to-late 18th century.

They’ve found a lot of cool Iron age artefacts in Ireland and Scotland, but people know jack sh1t about Iron age ‘Celtic’ culture. Some of the earliest written texts in Irish are translations of the Bible, and I am well aware of sagas like the Ulster Cycle and so on, but that stuff has all been translated in the early modern era, and it doesn’t exactly tell you how people learned horsemanship. Given you needed horses to move yourself and your sh1t from A to B or deal with some other fella’s army, the answer is most likely, however you could.

But we know so little about the Iron/Bronze Age cultures of Ireland and the UK that we can mythologise to our heart’s content.

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It doesn’t need to be personal.

Here’s what Ive learned in various ground work clinics.

How to get a horse relaxed on the ground. How to work with scary stimuli. How to get a horse on a circus box. Etc

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What are Kights?

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Nothing here about preliminary physical training being required of Celts before they were allowed to interact with horses. But i imagine it might come in handy when fighting a grieving horse capable of killing 80 men with teeth and hooves.

No Kights mentioned here.

https://westcorkpeople.ie/columnists/horses-hold-a-special-place-in-irish-folklore/#:~:text=Ownership%20of%20horses%20was%20a,and%20those%20who%20could%20not.

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Oh you sweet summer child.

People are being nice here. You just don’t like what they are saying.

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Right now Cyril Bertheau is also known worldwide. Infamy is not always because you are good.

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Just out of curiosity, since this has been brought up a couple of times, has anyone here ever heard of him before now? Besides the one member who had a copy of his book at one time?

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I had a copy of his book, too. I just checked my bookshelf and it didn’t make the cut when I moved. [But speaking of books that did make the cut, @Benv, can I recommend “True Horsemanship through Feel” by Bill Dorrance to you? It might give you an idea about how learning feel can also have practical applications, not just spiritual.]

Pretty pictures and I think it sounded like the guy is actually a pretty skilled handler who does the liberty-type stuff well (though I’m not sure he’d be able to get horses to perform consistently enough to do choreographed stuff like Cavalia or circus work). I enjoyed the book.

But alas, the heavens didn’t open and the angels didn’t sing for me. Thank goodness the horses I know in person are generally pretty tolerant of human foibles and usually like us non-enlightened horsepeople anyway.

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I’ve never heard of him, despite being very involved with horses for 50+ years and being an avid reader of a wide range of training philosophies.

But I’m not on Instagram or Tiktok so maybe I missed him. :woman_shrugging:t2:

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I am on Insta and Facebook and haven’t heard of him; been actively involved in the horse world going on 40 years.

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The name rings some kind of bell. Someone may have posted this to FB years ago. There are so many OMG I saw a video of liberty work posts out there.

Yes, I had the book and have known about him for some 25 years I guess?
He was quite a “big thing” over here for five minutes. Didn’t have as much of a hold as the cowboys and their systems did, primarily because it was just him and his method was about him, the cowboys sucked hordes in to do what they did.
He moved away from the horse stuff ages ago, that’s why you wouldn’t have heard of him unless you caught him back in the late 90’s early 2000’s.
He’s a personal coach marketing himself to the elite and famous now. I guess Joe Public didn’t stroke his ego enough?

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“It was generally believed that horses had the power to see spirits and that they would stop on the road at haunted places and could not be persuaded to move on.”

This explains so much about my horses. :rofl:

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Many of you are saying that his work with horses is not anything special, and that his audience is beginner riders, that videos are with music and effects to cover things up etc…
I am wondering what would you think about this video here? It has zero effects and shows a short scene in one piece 1min12sec - should not take a lot of your time. How do you percieve this?

snork

I saw about a minute of a pissed off horse wringing its tail and pinning its ears, and then walking forward for about 10 seconds.

What is this exactly supposed to prove? What exactly has this horse been trained to do?

I have seen a LOT of liberty acts that are more impressive, where the horses are happy willing partners, and do more than walk 10 yards.

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I think Elisa Wallace could do the same thing. But better. Lots of liberty trainers could do the same thing. Like Dan Whatshisname with DoubleD Horsemanship. Nothing in that video would make me want to spend time or money learning his system. Sorry if I am not impressed with the video but I am being honest here.

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