[QUOTE=hum;3485571]
I rode my modem to school, barefoot, in the snow, uphill both ways, with my tape drive dragging behind me.
Of course there was internet. There has been internet since the 1960’s.
However, there was little to no discussion of international or other riders in that time, nor was there the audience and resultant impact which exists today.[/QUOTE]
hmmm I think SLC and EGON are just playing like you must have been when you wrote this;)
Oh, of course, how silly of me not to notice. Was that with or without horseshoes in the gloves?
:yes:
[QUOTE=slc2;3495761]
No, nobody hit a nerve. If I don’t reply, I’m a hypocrit and a coward and can’t stand to be proven wrong, if I do reply, someone ‘hit a nerve’ and I am some sort of virtual catfish that got speared.
Egon, are you not feeling well? That was real weak. Where’s the personal insults, accusations of lying and hypocrisy?:lol::lol:[/QUOTE]
HUM and Slc2:
an environment in which people are not really committed to the same thing- everyday AND actively doing so- does not foster an equal and fair and open exchange of information.
If that is attempted- as I have in the past- it quickly gets cut down and twisted by those that are not willing to read, ride and experience.
I am not a snob by any means but I have found that my energies are better spent on other things than trying to educate the anonymous masses on the internet about books that are to say the least ‘tough’ to read and even tougher to understand and use in your daily training.
I do believe and stand by my post that both Baucher and Fillis have TREMENDOUSLY contributed and elevated certain elements of horse training- even if their bios don’t aspire you to train and use your horses as they did. There was tremendous innovation in their work and valid improvement in the way horses were understood - if you see it in the context of their time and the types of horses they were riding.
Sjef could be fitting into that category in that he was and is courageous enough to plow his own path and follow what he believes a recipe that leads him to success.
There will always be horses that don’t fit into that program - and they suffer or get destroyed…so do kids in the wrong schools, wives with the wrong husbands …countries with the wrong leaders…
If someone reads a book and doesn’t like it as much as you, if someone reads a different book instead, they are not committed to working at something?
This has nothing to do with me not being well read or me not being committed to something, or you being better read and more committed. Why is it that you have to get personal and insulting just because someone wants to train a horse differently from something in a book?
I read Baucher. I don’t have a different opinion from you because I haven’t read him - I HAVE.
The thing I can’t fathom is how anyone could be logically for Baucher and against Rollkur:
“His method of severe bending of the horse’s neck towards his chest and torso has also has had great criticism, many people believing that it is exceptionally harsh and uncomfortable for the animal. It is still employed today, however, with the methods of rollkur showing great similarities.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francois_Baucher)
There are other sides to the Baucher business, such as:
Louis Seeger actually observed first hand Baucher’s horses, and rode them. His description of this is a devastating condemnation of the methods, both the technical evaluation and the cruelty, especially in the severe and constant use of the whip, as Seeger described it.
Karl Mikolka’s wonderful article:
http://www.angelfire.com/sports/dressage/pages/Karl.html
This article is a must read for those who want to hear the other side. Karl Mikolka is one of the greatest people to come out of the Spanish Riding School, in so far as giving a great deal of knowledge to the community over many years (Rochowansky and many others also).
“Among the public, a great majority of admirers celebrated the successes of the master with a truly feverish enthusiasm, but the ‘experts’, on the other hand, were almost exclusively on the side of his opponents.”
– De Carpentry
“…he most basic tenets of Baucher’s beliefs were that (a) work at a standstill, through the use of flexions, would lift the horse’s forehand, and that (b) this lifting of the forehand would cause the lowering of the haunches…”
–Jessica Jahiel
"Francois Baucher was not a nobleman nor an officer. He hadn’t even learned to ride as a child (??? i think he was at least working in a stable when he was 14…), but came into the dressage world as an antrepreneur. He published “Méthode d’Equitation basée sur de nouveax Principes” in 1842, and created havoc. His methods were unorthodox, and he claimed to train a horse to high-school in a matter of months. He promised to make rideable horses that were untrainable, and all kinds of things that at the time seemed insulting to the few defenders of the old school, mostly a man named D’aure. A war broke out, and people took sides, and countless pamphlets were published where the two tried to grind the other to dust. There was a lot of politics involved, since D’aure was a nobleman and Baucher bourgeois. Also, Baucher rode at the circus to support himself, and this was popular with the general public. The uneducated on the matter were amazed.
The educated on the matter, foremost Louis Seeger also wrote and published several criticisms, most known is “An honest word to Germany’s riders”. (http://www.angelfire.com/sports/dressage/pages/sumbaucher.html) The taking sides in this dispute has continued to this day, and some riders boast themselves to be “baucherists” while yet others use the expression derogatorily."
–Theresa Sandin
Slc is now quoting the sustainable dressage lady as an authority,:eek:
Pigs have learned to fly and hell hath frozen over.
Slc, there is plenty of disagreement here about EVERYTHING. It’s a discussion board. You are one of the sad few who go off the deep end and delivers a google lecture every time someone dares to contradict you.
Relax. Get a thicker skin , stop trying to shut everyone else down and enjoy the discussion.
Relax yourself. I’m not upset about any of this, I’m doing this to put off bleaching socks.
I am going to respond though, when someone tells me if i don’t agree with them, I’m not ‘committed’ or it must be that i haven’t read him.
The only thing silly about these discussions is your ridiculous picking, and on demanding posts and then ripping them apart. and that some here think there is only one way to view Baucher, as a kind of God. He has always had followers and non followers. to pretend this is not true, to ignore the facts, to discuss only one side of it, is not a realistic discussion.
As for the sustainable dressage lady, she says the same as others have - well, not really others have been much, much more severe in their condemnation of baucher…besides, even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes.
SLC2 - I am not attacking you in the least. The quotes you have produced are from folks that have a reason to see just ONE side of what he produced. Read his 2nd book- read it and TRY it ON A HORSE!
There are many valid points to it- there are realizations that are far reaching- they are used as part in many current competitors riding… and get over the fact that everything has to be soo emotional.
Seeger might as well have carved the german flag on his forehead…you don’t seem to understand history- this was a fierce hatred at the time between the camps…
no more comment- it is fruitless…
SLC2, this last sentance shows you’ve not actually read Sabine’s post or understand the history of dressage training. What a condescending sentance (“even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes” - you’ve got to be kidding!!!). Your post said that you don’t see Baucher and Fillis as positive influences on the sport. That’s a pretty strong statement given their places in history. You went on to uniformly condemn Baucher. I would love to see you compare and contrast his first and second methods and then explain how his overall influence was negative in your own words - not quotes by others. Wikopedia does not count. I would love to see evidence of your ability as a rider/trainer as well.
Sabine reads and rides. She rides with an excellent trainer (who rode for the US) on very nice horses she brings along herself. I’ve seen pictures of her competently riding her very nice horses. Her money is where her mouth is. Your experience is… ???
My point is not to pick a fight, but to wonder why you leap to conclusions about classical trainers and then argue with people who actually read and successfully practice the methods to understand the theory of training horses for dressage…under the guidance of very accomplished trainers. It is beyond the sometimes difficult semantics of people like Baucher and Muller and more into the practice of the ideas they tried to describe. You, me, all of us have a lot to learn from each other here. You are foolish to discount Sabine’s posts. And you are, in my opinion, naive to think that baucher was nothing but a negative influence.
Just my naive and foolish opinion.
… have an opinion as naive as you like, knock yourself out. Just stay within forum rules 1, 2, and 3: http://www.chronicleforums.com/Forum/announcement.php?f=96&a=23
Unless Sabine is attacking her horse with the spur and cantering backwards and doing a whole lot of other things, she isn’t really ‘training like Baucher’, even his second manner. Seeger’s description of Baucher’s methods and results are horrendous - horses on the forehand, stiff, just awful. I don’t think that was entirely politics. There are images and other descriptions of baucher. I don’t really think Sabine rides like that. More likely, she is interested in Baucher academically, as just about every horse person is, and has done what just about evee ryone else has - borrowed bits and pieces of Baucher’s practices, as most training systems do, to one degree or another.
J-Lu, it’s popular on these BB’s to adore certain horse people and to believe certain things about equine history. Deb Bennet is regarded on most BB’s as THE authority on early horses and many horsey subjects. She isn’t regarded as the sole authority in other circles.
I can an assure you, there are other places where the feelings about issues of history, trainers, Baucher, others, is very different. This is one place, one set of popular beliefs, that’s all it is.
It’s completely OK for me to be in a “I don’t like Baucher’s whole ball of wax” camp. And if you recall, if you read what I said, I didn’t say everything he did was wrong, I said I didn’t like the whole overall picture, and a whole lot of other people don’t like it iether.
There isn’t any reason I have to agree with his methods as a whole. There are quite a few people who aren’t Baucher fans and there were vitriolic condemnations of him to this day, even eye witness accounts that are horrifying.
At the same time, I do know that there’s plenty that all riders do bits and pieces that Baucher did. Much of what he did has a much longer tradition than his use of it. He’s credited with inventing one time changes, I know. I don’t think he did, actually - largely because dozens of people take credit for each of those things from the double bridle to the piaffe. I think most of those things developed over time and no one person invented them.
Like most things, this is an opinion, you have your opinion, I have mine. And as far as ‘justifying’ my opinion, I don’t see you doing what you’re telling me I have to do.
Which is prove to me why you shoiuld be allowed to have your opinion.
You say I’m not doing that - I say, why are you asking me to do somethign you haven’t done? How do YOU justify holding someone up as a genius when he got the kind of eye witness reports Seeger provided us with, about him using the whip with an endless, relentless force and intensity the entire time he was on the horse?
You want to get all bent out of shape because I don’t completely agree with something that was in a book printed 158 years ago - go right ahead. I don’t want to teach my horses to canter backwards, or use ‘l’attaque’ of the spurs, or many of the things Baucher did, or to the extent and intensity he did. I have a way I like to train my horses that to me produces a calmer, more balanced result. I like it.
Why so defensive,slc? If you were so confident in your views you would not need to always bludgeon anyone who dares to have a different opinion with yet another of your strident lectures.
Calm down. You seem to be very easily upset by differing opinions. People are allowed to have different opinions. I don’t see Sabine telling people they must canter backwards. Is that like back pedaling? :lol:
[QUOTE=sm;3506060]
… have an opinion as naive as you like, knock yourself out. Just stay within forum rules 1, 2, and 3: http://www.chronicleforums.com/Forum/announcement.php?f=96&a=23[/QUOTE]
SM-you are not a moderator. SLC2 attacked me and quoted my post as singling her out and attacking her- which I didn’t do- I just defended my view that Baucher has contributed greatly through his books (2nd manner specifically) in modern riding.
J-Lu felt compelled to defend me- after Slc2 again took it personal. I am only asking for a fair consideration of the man’s contribution. Anyone who has spent at least a couple of hours studying the history and the riding styles of those times will find that Fillis specifically and Baucher in this second manner greatly contributed in thought and technique to the views that until then where only based on pure german traditionalists. That yet another German took to fiercely defending the ‘german style’ was to be expected. However if you can read all those books (which anyone truly interested should do-if you only read the ‘short’ version) you will find that this was more than just about training techniques. At the times this was a highly popular pasttime- an important part of life as horses were still heavily used for utilitarian purposes and because training and the idealization of the beauty of the horse combined with the possiblities and added beauty of a highly trained horse was considered a social achievement, an upgrade in social standing.
There is no war to be fought here and no points to be gained. As mentioned previously it is completely futile as long as noone else has read these books and understands the context.
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