WHY would anyone do this??? Or how to un-parelli a horse?

[LessonLearned]

I probably shouldn’t blame JUST parelli, but we know for a fact that the horse had some sort of “natural horsemanship” training.

A friend and I are working with a young QH that another friend wanted to sell. He is sweet and willing, but knows nothing. EXCEPT the whole “turn and face” thing in response to any stimulus. Now we are eventers but really think this guy will be a low level kids horse or even trail buddy, but since he knows nothing we wanted to start working on lunging to make him learn about going forward. No dice. All he wants to do is stay with you and after about a 1/2 circle he turns to face you.

How do you undo this kind of training???

[CoolMeadows]

If he’s young he’s got a good chance of being normal again. The best you can do for him right now is give him time off to be a horse with limited interaction. Groom him casually and ignore the weird staring at you. Try to hand graze him and ignore him at the end of the rope. I had a 3 year old come in who wouldn’t even handgraze because she was SO intent on having both eyes on me at all times… creepy! She had no idea how to just be a horse around humans and was way over stimulated.

I gave her several months of turnout with limited interaction other than some basic grooming a couple times a week, handgrazing and scritchies. She was so bad that if the wind blew the lead rope she’d run backwards and even flipped once (that STUPID jiggle the rope trick to make them back!) :mad:

And the “hide the hiney” game. GAH! Just wonderful for trying to get on one. Such fun when they keep spinning their butt away so they’ve got both eyes on you. Why anyone would want a horse so ready to react to the tiniest move is beyond me. Just dangerous.

To address the lunging issue: if you have to do it right away, I wouldn’t do it more than once or twice a week and while I’m not the biggest fan of side reins they help in this situation to keep the horse straight on the circle and discourage turning in. If you get a sense that he’s about to try it, use the lunge whip to drive him forward and praise him.

Give him some let down time and then treat him as a regular horse and allow him to decompress. Good luck. The ones who have had bad NH “training” are a nightmare.

[Bluey]

Not defending NH at all, there is much to it I don’t like either, but we started many feral horses, that had never been touched before and they too were like that, overly watchy, would only face you and needed to be taught to go on on the line.

I would not blame NH for that, as it is really a normal way many not or little handled horses react to the people around them, until taught differently.

A few horses, that is the way they are and they rarely get over being a little bit watchy.
Most anyone I know avoids buying those kinds of touchy, more complicated horses, as today, we want a good, steady, kind, forgiving and teachable disposition in our horses.

That is not saying that every horse that acts like that is inherently broncy.
Some have been made that way and come around right away, once they learn the situation has changed.
Horses thrive when the handler is clear in what it demands of them, consistent, predictable and they can relax and don’t have to be on hyper alert any more.
Around horses, routine is the horse’s friend.

[DLee]

My horses are all taught to turn and face me, if they turn and face me when I don’t want, I just send them on again. I would think if you want to UNteach that, lunging with a rider might be a good plan, who could keep the horse straight.
I actually really like the turn and face.

[Samantha37]

I don’t have any advise, but I SO know what you are talking about. Especially freaking out when a rope jiggles, or moves at all. It makes them so incredibly dangerous to be that oversensitive to things as simple as a rope.

[Saidapal]

I’ve done a lot of work with my horses in NH - painted with a very broad brush (don’t even mention the P’s to me and I don’t jiggle no darn ropes).

Very smart horses learn to turn and face you to get out of work and will use it as an evasion. Push him on. Don’t be afraid to let him know the rules have changed. He might be a little confused at first but as long as your consistent he’ll get it. He might even get mad and have a temper tantrum. Oh well.

[Swampskeeter]

Round pen

You could try free lunging in a round pen. Just keep getting beside and tapping butt with lunge whip until he goes forward. Then keep working on getting him to move away from the whip and your body movement. You might have to chase him a few times:yes: I have worked with some youngsters that had no training but to lead and groom. If they are insecure, they do not what to move away from you, when you teach them to lunge. You are their friend:)

[pines4equines]

Hay

Agree with the previous poster about evasion, just get behind his shoulder even if you’re in the middle of the arena and point or look at his hip with the lunge whip.

Some NH horses are taught to turn and face when you’re body language is “in front” of the shoulder. Maintain your body language behind the shoulder and point to the hip with whip or eye and he’ll keep going. Give a wee reminder when he starts to look inward.

[bethechangexx]

From what I’ve heard, Parelli uses the whip behind the shoulder instead of behind the rear end. The whip behind the rear end means turn towards me, while the whip behind the shoulder is supposed to mean move out (as per regular lunging).

…It didn’t make sense to me, either. A trainer (not mine) explained all this in great detail when I was lunging one of her horses, in the -GASP- non-parelli way. :lol:

[Minerva_Louise]

Not much advice here but I do so know what you mean. My horse is difficult to lunge because if I look down AT ALL, he turns around and goes the other way…

You might have some luck lunging with the line pretty short and you walking a fair bit so the circles aren’t too tiny. Don’t look down… and make sure you don’t get “ahead” of the horse. Keep pushing forward and be firm about no turning in. Be careful, my horse has gotten frustrated with this and gave a nice kick toward my head. He was angry that the rules were different.

[mvp]

To undo it: Understand how it was done

There is good news, bad news, a short rant, and a solution here.

The bad news and rant. It seems to me that a horse who will do nothing but turn and face you, or who will flip over at a jiggled rope has PTSD created by NH shite overdone. This is what bugs me about training by trademarked linguistic terms, video tapes and majik equipment. It says nothing about how to make a horse versatile, or when to a training game as served its purpose and ought to be over.

The good news: Your horse many not have been tortured, but is a really, really quick learner and eager to please. I wouldn’t put this past a young, kind QH. So he, not some wannebe trainer with a book in one hand and a gadget in the other overdid the game.

If this is the case, the same good student can be retaught.

I’d suggest abandoning the situations that make him think turning and facing you is the only right answer. Bail on lunging for a while and do something else. If you know how, you might try long-lining this horse. Do it slowly, asking him to turn, turn away from you, stop, etc. This gives him a chance to relate to you on the ground in a way that provides many “right answers” other than turn and face you.

Best of luck with him!

[MelantheLLC]

I don’t care about P one way or the other, never saw any of it, but for pete’s sake do people think horses don’t learn this on their own?

Many many horses will do this if they haven’t been trained to lunge properly, they turn in, they turn out, spin on their forehand or haunches or whatever. Turning in is sure safer than turning out and bolting away, so be happy that’s your problem.

Go back to basics with ground work. Teach the horse Stop and Go with light lead signals and a voice cue, teach it to move past you when your feet are planted. Do it in smaller increments, working closer to you until he is confirmed in your cues for going forward and stopping.

Don’t expect the horse to know things when he walks off the trailer. Teach him your way. Horses are whole lot smarter than we give them credit for, but we are always talking to them in Swahili and expecting them to understand what we want without teaching them the basic grammar.

Sorry, rant, but I’m getting tired of every lack of basic ground training being blamed on Parelli, jeez.

[Gloria]

It’s nice to have a horse who is “willing” to turn and face you. Because now there is a door wide oepn for you to do many cool things with your horses. Many horses cannot even look at their humans.

Now the question is he is turning and facing you without your permission. On days when I feel quite generous, I will smile and scratch his face and ask him to move out again. If I don’t feel too generous that day, simply growl and ask him to move out again. Believe me they are not dumb. They will figure out what you mean. Parelli or not, horses are horses and they will do things to see your reactions.

It’s very likely he is asking you whether he can stop and rest. I personally much prefer a horse that will “ask” questions and “interact” with their humans than one that just trots around mindlessly. All you need to do is show them what you want. Simple.

[lorilu]

NOw that my horse is learning that lunging is not torture (see a long thread on that recently), he is using this as an evasion to going right (his right hind is weaker, …)

It is really hard to get him started right, as he keeps turning to me.
So, I walk up to him and make him move his shoulders away (do a ToH). Sometimes for almost 90 degrees - not just one step. That gets him thinking “out” and then I send him off again.

It seems to be working.

He also turns in when I stop him; we will work on that next. Right now he is learning to stop coming in when I put my palm up (talk to the hand). I don’t wiggle the rope, that’s too scary.

L

[PhoenixFarm]

[QUOTE=MelantheLLC;3961899]
Turning in is sure safer than turning out and bolting away, so be happy that’s your problem.[/QUOTE]

Really? Cause in my experience it’s not a very far walk from turning and facing you to turning and coming AT you. I’d much rather the horse exit stage left and get loose, than get trampled by a horse that wants to get up close and personal face first. I’ve been injured or nearly injured far more frequently by horse coming at me than horses leaving.

We’ve had to rehab severl of these parelli’d of horses, and the basic advice here of “send them on” is what we do. They MUST go forward until we say other wise. At first you may have to accept that they may be cantering or otherwise running around like ninnys on the end of the lunge while they try to figure out what is expected of them in this new world.

When you do try to halt and they try to turn in, we then slowly approach them, staying even with their shoulder at all time. They will keep trying to turn towards you, so you will have to have a lot of patience as you sort of dance/spin around. But stay focused on their shoulder, and keeping yourself square to the shoulder, and keep saying whatever halt word you use (Whoa, stand, halt, whatever). eventually they will get that the turning in isn’t the answer you want, and when they finally stop and wait, go up to their shoulder and praise and praise and praise. NEVER approach or praise these horses from the front, as it reinforces the turn in position. It can take MONTHS to work through this, and initially each time you go to halt, it may take 20 minutes of spinning around the ring before they stop trying to turn in and allow you to approach them at the shoulder. But patience does usually pay off.

GOod luck!

[CoolMeadows]

Everyone knows green horses will try that out on the lunge, but there’s a huge difference between a basic act of green evasion/confusion/curiosity and one that’s been NHd to the point it has no clue what people want but knows it can’t ever take its eyes off you in case you are about to give another stupid order. If you haven’t had one of these, you’re lucky.

My 3 year old is a normal mare now. Some novice decided she wanted to train a big beautiful Wb the “kind” way, bought a bunch of DVDs and blew the horses mind. Lucky me, the horse is spectacular.

The other NH mess was so PTSD (whoever said that is dead on!) and angry over the mixed signals and pointless exercises that she turned aggressive and would come at you on the lunge striking with teeth bared. She came around too but will never be an amateurs horse.

I’m sure there’s some good to NH but overdone or done the wrong way it seems to confuse the horses and ruin their minds.

OP, maybe you could just sell him to another Parellite? Apparently they love that turning in shite. :rolleyes:

[CoolMeadows]

@PhoenixFarm;3961982

Really? Cause in my experience it’s not a very far walk from turning and facing you to turning and coming AT you. I’d much rather the horse exit stage left and get loose, than get trampled by a horse that wants to get up close and personal face first. I’ve been injured or nearly injured far more frequently by horse coming at me than horses leaving.

We posted at the same time but this is exactly right! It’s a scary thing to have one come at you on the lunge and mean it because the last owner tweaked its head. If you’re so close to a lunging horses rear that you get kicked, you failed Basic Lunging Principles 101. I’d way rather have one try to get away going forwards. Wear gloves, use the right equipment - set the horse up to be good, correct quickly when wrong and praise even more quickly when right. No tricks, no games, no magic formulas… it’s not rocket science.

[wehrlegirl]

wow-- Im so glad Im reading this… we bought a mare last year with this type of training. My daughter went to lunge her with side reins and she flipped over backwards… called out a driving trainer we knew… she spent 45 mins with this mare flipping herself over in the long lines we finally just gave up… no one is allowed on this mare!

[Lifting_Chickk]

[QUOTE=LessonLearned;3961353]
I probably shouldn’t blame JUST parelli, but we know for a fact that the horse had some sort of “natural horsemanship” training.

A friend and I are working with a young QH that another friend wanted to sell. He is sweet and willing, but knows nothing. EXCEPT the whole “turn and face” thing in response to any stimulus. Now we are eventers but really think this guy will be a low level kids horse or even trail buddy, but since he knows nothing we wanted to start working on lunging to make him learn about going forward. No dice. All he wants to do is stay with you and after about a 1/2 circle he turns to face you.

How do you undo this kind of training???[/QUOTE]

Oy vey…I really dislike trying to lunge a “Parelli” trained horse! It’s most annoying!

They can be taught to lunge properly…I’ve done it, but it takes a LOT of patience and understanding that the horse is going to have to learn exactly what you are asking him to do, and that it’s much different from what he was previously asked to do.

Keep trying to look at things from this little guys perspective and try to make things very clear to him in a kind way. He’s only doing what he has learned to be the “correct” response. It takes care, but this kind of training can be un-learned.

Good luck.

[LuvMyTB]

[QUOTE=wehrlegirl;3962041]
wow-- Im so glad Im reading this… we bought a mare last year with this type of training. My daughter went to lunge her with side reins and she flipped over backwards… called out a driving trainer we knew… she spent 45 mins with this mare flipping herself over in the long lines we finally just gave up… no one is allowed on this mare![/QUOTE]

Sounds like the mare just didn’t know how to go with side reins on, or didn’t like them. A lot of horses, NH or not, can be very clausterphobic about having their heads restricted/tied down.

I wonder why your driving trainer allowed the horse to repeatedly fllip itself over. Doesn’t sound like a great training method. :no:

Back to the OT…I agree that the OP’s horse was clearly NH-ed to death. My mare has 3 years of Parelli training, which I did myself, and she will only turn to face me a) when she’s tired or b) when I ask. By no means does she need to have her eyes on me all the time. In fact, I’d be thrilled if she looked at more often. :lol: