More on Clinton Anderson

[PeanutButterPony]

But you see this isn’t about dressage, is it? It was about CA, and since he’s big into reining and western performance horses, we all talked about the sport of reining and why it’s sad that the goal seems to be a horse that has been intimidated into plowing a furrow with his muzzle as he walks to the center of the pen.

I offered Shawn Flarida’s run as an example of what I think it should look like, no?
So I don’t hate reining, I don’t ‘hate on’ reining. I feel bad for horses snatched and spurred and wadded up into a knot in the name of a fashionable style in pursuit of a ribbon- that crosses all disciplines. And if you follow dressage you know there is massive attention paid to its issues. The sport acknowledges the issues. Reining? Not so much.

As for your rock and a hard place- you elected to insert your non-reiner into a reining thread, Beau. You made this thread about you, and now you’re sulking about the attention you received. There’s a way to avoid that in the future. Talk about the sport, not about yourself.

[beowulf]

[QUOTE=PeanutButterPony;8179421]

As for your rock and a hard place- you elected to insert your non-reiner into a reining thread, Beau. You made this thread about you, and now you’re sulking about the attention you received. There’s a way to avoid that in the future. Talk about the sport, not about yourself.[/QUOTE]

RE: horses looking happy… Beau, around the 1m mark your horse doesn’t look very pleased (is he threatening to go up?). No snark or insult to your riding or your horse, just commenting that I stand by what I said about horses looking thrilled to perform reining patterns.

[Attack]

I love this thread. If you have thin skin you should not join in though.

[mvp]

[QUOTE=beau159;8176894]
Never said those methods were good. As I said above, there are trainers who over-do it on the “flexing and bending”. I’ll even pick on my horse from time to time, and over-bend him and over-flex him just to mess with him, but I don’t do it every ride and don’t do it for prolonged periods or to the extent those videos show.[/QUOTE]

Why do you do that-- “just mess with him”?

I speak that way when I describe some of the stuff I do with a horse. But it is never casual or physically hard for the horse. It is usually something physically easy, slow but mentally hard. I can think of things like teaching the horse to let me mount from the right, or spending time making him lead with a loop in the rope so that he’s mentally really focused even though the horse leads OK.

But I don’t see any benefit or ethics in making a horse’s life hard without a distinct reasons for doing that.

[Mosey_2003]

Speaking to the original topic…

When I was younger, I was very interested in Clinton Anderson. Watched his shows on RFD-TV, got one of his three VHS tape sets, even bought his halter and lead (which I rarely ever use, in fact it’s the set I keep in my car in case I ever come across a loose animal).

When he first started putting stuff out over here he wasn’t nearly as forceful with the horses as he is now. He did work them for too long, in my opinion, even back then.

The basic premises of moving the horse’s body, teaching the horse to give to pressure, and making the ‘wrong answer’ more work are sound, in my opinion. I’ve used a slower, gentler version of a number of his ground work exercises with all three horses I’ve owned, and found them effective.

It appears that nowadays he has just gone way too far. He’s harsh, overly-demanding, and works horses very hard - especially considering most of the time they’re two year olds and/or unfit problem horses. Would I attend or enter a horse of mine into one of his clinics now? No.

[shiloh]

Somebody at my job gave me a stack of Horse and Rider mags and after I looked through a few of them I threw them away. All the horses in the CA articles looked either terrified or dead-eyed. And his ideas? I mean, they SOUND all reasonable but then you start thinking about them and then they stop making sense. At least to me. My response to anyone considering his tactics - “Run away! Run away!”