[QUOTE=Kwill;7789762]
Natural horsemanship says you can work with the basic natural behaviors and responses of a horse and achieve your goals through a willing partnership.
Now, how that happens is where the fun starts.[/QUOTE]
When NH practitioners say that, those of us that train in traditional ways laugh, because that is what any good horseman already does and did, for centuries.
When they start twirling ropes all over and bopping horses to move AND make that their standard way of handling horses and keep it up as a training method, then traditional training has a bone to pick with them.
In traditional training, you are considered a good horseman when the horse, from the first time you start working with it, just works with you, without needing to resist any you ask of it.
There are no fireworks, the horse is being helped to understand what you want and if taught properly, it seems so simple and the horse so smart.
If you are working with a horse and the horse acts up, it is the trainer’s fault for either doing too much or not enough, because the horse is just reacting to what the trainer is doing.
When you start by having a horse overreact by throwing it’s head up and running around discombobulated, when you have to keep snatching at the lead rope or bit in it’s mouth, when you have to scare the horse to stand off you, when you saddle a horse for the first time and let him take off bucking, unless it is bucking stock for a rodeo, you are already behind the teaching curve if you want to have a sensible riding horse.
Then, if you are giving a clinic and nothing happens, if a colt you start is looking like he was already handled and started as he is doing what you ask so easily, if there are no fireworks for the audience to enjoy, if starting that colt is like watching water boil or paint dry, many clinicians would not have a show.
Ever seen the colt starting Road to the Horse video where Stacy Wesfall won?
Her colt was very reactive and spooky, but you would not notice it, because she took her time to explain to him as they went along to where he was not set off, so she could do more with him, even if he was not broke, than some with a broke horse they don’t watch and listen to carefully and have resisting here and there and so learning to resist not to listen and that you are wanting something off it and learning to cooperate.
Very different than those that flood the colts with a million things until the colt shuts down worn out, mentally and physically and so can be manhandled and a first ride stolen.
Both kinds of start will still give you a colt you have much work to do with later, but why not start the easy way for the horse, where it learns without extra stress of feeling defensive about working with humans?
While I like some that NH practitioners do, there are some very basics they either don’t know about or are ignoring and that I don’t like, for the sake of the horses.
