Again civility does not seem to be in the cards.
Inconceivable!
Fake news! Twisting narratives!
Thank you for the morning laugh!
Risky business, posting here. But I haven’t had coffee yet so here goes a tangent.
I see this type of “it takes a degree to handle broke horses in even the most basic daily task” a LOT in the Natural Horsemanship world. There’s some mystical, magical formula and 10 step certification program that makes you(g) Qualified™️ to approach a horse. Sure, body language and Energy and all that has its place, but some of these clinicians have created this aura around horses and Proper Handling. It can make the devotees feel Special, since they have seen the light or whatever and now are Better At Horses than anyone who hasn’t sat through a sermon - I mean - lesson.
Speaking generally here, y’all.
@J-Lu, did the unqualified person manage to get your horse blanketed that day despite him hitting the hot wire and spooking?
lol oh come on. This is the most ridiculous thing in this thread.
Your horse overrides nature by being extra careful of the handler after receiving an electric shock. If he’s that amazing you wouldn’t have needed to worry or text the BO or start this thread.
All horses are capable of acting in a dangerous manner. Every interaction with them could have gone another way.
What are you hoping for with this thread. At this point the rest of COTH is just wondering how long you’ll keep responding.
The horse is fine.
The handler is fine.
Presumably nothing at the barn has changed and everyone is still alive and uninjured.
You’re talking about two TOTALLY different things here. Blanketing can be taught in a couple minutes yes. It’s no more complicated than dressing oneself in the morning. I didn’t blanket a horse until a couple years ago when I had to clip my fjord. I…taught myself!! It’s not rocket science.
Now, what I highlighted in bold in your text is completely different. What happened in your case is that a kid with otherwise NO (or very little) horse handling experience was taught to blanket. The reading and reacting to horses kind of experience comes over time, a LONG time, and if you’re not happy that an inexperienced kid was taught to blanket…again, problem with your barn. Your options are to stay or to leave. If you are going to stay, it would be in your best interested to just drop this whole…thing. And I agree that some self reflecting would be helpful as well.
I don’t think you all are getting anywhere. It’s like arguing with a brick wall.
I have a coworker with nearly zero livestock handling experience who acquired a donkey this fall. When temperatures here dipped to below zero two weeks ago, I gave him an old foal/pony sized blanket I had lying around and gave him a quick tutorial in the office (no animals on hand, even!) on how it worked.
He and the donkey both managed just fine for their first blanketing experience.
WHAT?!!!? No advanced diploma required? You must have excellent teaching skills, and your coworker must be exceptionally intelligent and be the next, as yet undiscovered, Equine Whisperer Extraordinaire! Congrats!
Also, very kind of you to give the blankie to the donkey <3
It really is
Pretty sure my blanketing tutorial to my husband for our backyard pony lasted 2 minutes and gasp there was no halter either. He’s very successfully managed to blanket or un blanket her anytime I need help.
My husband was putting rugs on for a couple of years before he even got on a horse. I showed him once.
Years later I explained to him that you don’t need to touch the legs to do up the leg straps.
I think you’ve got something here. The poor daughter doesn’t have an Advanced Level VII in Blanketing.
Blanket Games Level 3 Certificate, at the least.
I’m just sitting here thinking…I’ve been blanketing horses for 36 years. My horse lives in a pasture with electric fencing, but obviously I don’t feed him right beside it because…I have common sense. If I were to decide tomorrow to put his feed pan close enough to the electric fence that he could hit it simply by raising his head, and then try to blanket him…yeah, I’m pretty sure that would get scary. I mean…I can’t blanket my horse WITHOUT asking him to raise his head either to stick it through the hole if it’s fastened or so that I can do up the buckles at his chest. Either way, he has to lift his head. And if there is a strand of hot fence in front of him, even though he’s a perfectly good boy and he doesn’t make a habit of bonking his nose on the fence, there is a really good chance he’s going to accidentally bonk his nose trying to oblige me and do what he’s asked while being blanketed. It wouldn’t be my blanketing method at fault (I’m clearly a master blanketer…I can blanket like nobody’s business…you don’t even know!). The fault would be with my STUPID decision to feed a horse next to hot wire and decide to blanket him there.
You deny that trained horses can’t override nature and will instead act like untrained horses? We don’t seem to train horses the same way. Or not their progress.
“The rest of COTH”, as you state, are not following this thread. The people who keep insulting me, like you, think I won’t respond to your insulting posts that have missed all of the important posts. But you keep doing you. I’m sure it makes you feel better to feel “right” while also complaining about people.