Hi, sorry, just have to slide in to be petty… I HATE the word “uncouple.” You are getting a divorce. You are not unhooking a train or a trailer. You do not need a new word when one already exists. It’s not some natural segue into new language, which I think is actually cool. It’s just rich people pretending they’re smarter or more enlightened than the rest of us, because us commoners don’t meditate in moonbeams shipped from Fiji prior to telling our soon-to-be-ex-significant-other to walk into traffic. Pettiness delivered. Sliding out again.
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I was sent a green horse who needed miles. She was trained Parelli, which I had never paid attention to. So I watched a ton of videos and read a couple books to understand how the mare worked. None of it made any sense to me and I was not getting anywhere with her so I “started” the mare from scratch (even though the owner insisted I follow the Parelli bible). The owner was delighted with how well the mare turned out and didn’t seem to notice that we were not doing Parelli when she came to watch the sessions. That was the last time I took on a client with a Parelli background. Like any fad, I have no doubt that there are aspects that work well but I think it’s best to take your lessons from diverse buffet of approaches.
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From my understanding, Pat has always been a womanizer. That trickled down to his training events (him and other men and women). He and Linda have been living apart for YEARS, maybe she’s in a strong enough position/Pat is in a weak enough position to finally divorce. I wonder why despite of years of living apart this divorce is occurring now. I don’t doubt that it is finance related on someone’s part. They both seem all about money.
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I forgot about the O’Connors hooking up with Parelli. I bought my horse in June 2001 and started the annual trek to Equine Affaire in Massachusetts with a good friend. I was pretty impressed when we headed into the coliseum for Pat Parelli and David O’Connor who was fresh from the 2000 Olympics. I knew who David was, of course, and enjoyed watching him train like his good friend Pat. I figured Parelli must be a pretty good trainer. Fortunately I escaped before I got sold the bill of goods complete with a carrot stick. I’ve watched some people doing the “games.” You have to feel sorry for the horses. Most of his devoted followers never got beyond playing the 7 games. They didn’t have the wherewithal to mount up, let alone ride. I wonder what the pitch to the O’Connors was but it lasted maybe a couple of years.
I attended a few John Lyons clinic sessions at EA and he remains my favorite trainer… John, Buck and others come from the Ray Hunt/Dorrance brothers tradition. None of them should be called “NH” - it’s insulting. Parelli claims the Hunt/Dorrance connection but you if you watch him it can’t be true… He claims to have invented the term “Natural Horsemanship” in 1991. His book was called “Natural Horse-Man-Ship.” He didn’t do a “Natural Horse-Woman-Ship” book. The original 3-day “Road to the Horse” colt-starting competition was called “In a Whisper.” It was around 2003 in Fort Worth. I should watch the DVD again. Parelli, Craig Cameron, and Josh Lyons - John’s son who was young and now is running the family business since John retired. When Pat met up with his colt in the round pen he declared “I can train this horse so my grandmother could ride him.” Insert uproarious laughter. Josh won. He refused to canter because the horse was too young and they didn’t have enough time together. Craig was okay but nothing stands out in my memory. Pat finished dead last, well behind Josh and Craig and well deserved. The promotion for the event was “watch 2 guys compete with Pat Parelli!!!” Insert more laughter. No way anybody’s grandmother would have gone near that colt, let alone ride him.
The more I watched the Parelli-ites play their 7 games the more relieved I was that I avoided him. For years there were mile-long contentious threads on COTH and other boards excoriating Parelli while his defenders claimed he was the first coming of the horse-training deity. If you could pass their Level 1 test - the games - you became a “certified Parelli trainer.” At some point Linda was declared a dressage expert and a top-level certified Parelli instructor. I think she got the certificate before she learned how to train horses and she didn’t make an impression in the dressage world. Hence my post #8.
John Lyons is still my favorite. I finally watched Mark Rashid a few years ago. Love him and his books. I don’t like CA at all having watched him several times. I think it is his accent that pulls them in.
Life is quieter now without arguing about the Parelli’s, which is probably a good thing. We can always reminisce.
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I have never experienced this in just NH circles. It seems to be prevalent in any discipline circles and is something people with that type of mentality feel on any subject.
Sad about the Parelli marriage . They seemed to have a good thing going and I am not into Parelli.
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Linda Parelli’s entrance into dressage was memorable. She apparently had had some lessons and was extremely impressed with herself. She decided that she, too, was now a master at teaching dressage and giving dressage clinics. You could sign up. She had never been to a dressage show, had very little background in the discipline, but she was going all in delivering spendy dressage weekends to her followers. :winkgrin:
If I had time I would look up the COTH thread and link it – you can imagine how that went. :lol:
Apparently you can sell anything, as far as Linda is concerned, if you just package it all up with huge hype and enthusiasm. She may have proved that she’s right, too.
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Oh gosh. Many years ago I sold a nice three-year-old gelding who was quiet and easy to ride to a lady who ended up doing Parelli and was devout in her dedication to him. She had the horse for about three years and then decided to sell when I had a client who was looking for a nice quiet easy horse. I hadn’t seen the horse in three years and went down to see him. She started showing me the games. Gelding was bored and annoyed. Then she got on, walked and trotted a bit and that was it. I was surprised…he knew a lot more when I sold him. So I hopped on and he rode off just like the last time I sat on him a few years before. We loped figure 8s, lead changes, etc. and then I dropped the reins on his neck and did it all again, without reins. Owner was in shock…she said he wasn’t ready for anything like that according to Pat Parelli. I told her he knew all that before she bought him. The guy is an expert…at convincing people to pay him crazy amounts of money for nothing.
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Like the extra special fluidity dressage saddle? I will never forget watching a video from one of her dressage presentations and her elbows were out and just flapping away with each stride.
Sheilah
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Yes, Linda is so good at the dressage. Enjoy this little gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnxBDsHI6cA&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR3zWa92vZoqb7-rjguG5YmtaONfjy9N2uJWDMv_mGRqwYInnxPChxjYjU8. I challenge you not to think “WTF?” watching it.
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they decided to “uncouple”…lol
omg
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I’m waiting for the dressage…
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One handed and holding onto the pommel…
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“I may not be a dressage rider, but I slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night” 🤣🤣🤣🤣
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At least she wasn’t wearing spurs :lol:
yup, WTF pretty much sums that up.
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Good god, what was that supposed to prove? 
It looked like what we did as unsupervised 8 year olds on ponies.:lol:
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This is a real question…what is going on in that video? What are they trying to…do?
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My biggest gripe with the commercialized “natural horsemanship” Parelli stuff is that is tricks thinking absolute beginners into believing they have all the tools and knowledge to train a horse up from the ground. I saw it happen to one of my friends. She was given a free, very sweet but basically unhandled pasture pet by a couple of Parelli-ites and was totally gungho about training her own horse with the Parelli method. The horse would barely accept a halter and was terrified of the spray bottle. Both her and the horse ended up traumatized and he was given away again.
Another friend of mine who is just getting back into horses in her 40s having only ridden as a kid was invited to ride with a friend whose family was heavily into Parelli. I warned her to be prepared for some weirdness because they have these rituals they simply must follow before they ride or their horses will devolve into wild ill mannered beasts. The owner that invited her also said she ONLY rides bareback, even on long trail rides and the owner is quite heavy to put it politely. I had to explain later to my friend that riding bareback for long periods of time isn’t healthy for horse’s backs and the purpose of the saddle, besides providing support/structure for the rider, is to distribute the rider’s weight across the strong muscle structures of the back because we are technically sitting on the weakest part of the horse. My friend is taking formal lessons with a good trainer so I’m not worried at all about her falling into the woo-woo horse community.
My friend said she enjoyed her time and the horses were well cared for but they were oddly particular about handling the horses. Ironically enough, she said that the horses were very pushy and mouthy because the owners were constantly hand feeding them treats :lol:
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The woman tells you at the beginning of the video what they are attempting to do. I’m sorry, I really can’t look at that thing more than once to quote her for you.
