Ugh, threads like this bug me. Say I posted a thread saying, “WHY would anyone do this? My formerly-trained dressage horse is always getting behind the bit!” Despite the fact that rollkur is posted everywhere, everyone would jump on board and say that a properly trained dressage horse will not constantly be behind the bit.
First off, a properly trained Parelli horse will not just stand and face you and try to constantly stay with you. In my mind that’s passive dominance and not doing what you’re told. Parelli horses are taught that when they are sent out, they are to STAY out, at the same gait, until asked to slow down, break gait, or come in. Coming in and wanting to stay with you (and learning it’s on your terms) is actually a really useful tool when you have a flighty, spooky horse, but I’m guessing that all of the people bashing it here have never learned enough about Parelli to grasp the various applications or seen that method in action with someone that was actually skillful. Sending a horse out and keeping them out is about obedience and clear signals. I’ve encountered green horses that were never touched by Parelli and do the things you’ve described. Not saying that Parelli is perfect – it certainly isn’t – but neither is the h/j world, dressage world, eventing, etc. There are a lot of positives to the things Parelli teaches. Have you ever gone to a clinic? Been around someone knowledgeable in it but not fanatic? I do h/j but trained with an h/j trainer in high school who started working with a Parelli trainer because she had a very unsafe horse. I was exposed to it, and took lessons with my probably unsafe gelding. I didn’t agree with a number of things, but I did agree with many others, and it made a big difference. I probably wouldn’t have said gelding today if it weren’t for the methods I learned during those lessons. They were concepts that my otherwise successful h/j trainers hadn’t focused on.
Let me give you a comparison. Say you are an h/j rider and get on a well-trained dressage horse. Chances are you will piss that horse off more than once, because what you are asking for and what you get can be fairly different from dressage to h/j. The aids are different in some ways. So said h/j rider would probably do some research into the other discipline and discover what it is that they are doing that tells the horse to respond as so. Probably appropriate for this situation too. NOT SAYING that the horse is trained well, I don’t know the situation, but I’m just saying before jumping to conclusions about why a person might get involved with Parelli and bashing the practice, why not consider some of the variables at play here? Not to mention that Parelli is ONE method among many different types of “natural horsemanship”, some more effective than others. In my mind, most of them, when done well, don’t have that much difference between those principles applied in commen-sense horsemanship. So to think that Parelli teaches the horse to constantly stay by your side, even when told to go out on a circle, is not accurate.
And walking behind me - he’s learned to listen for/feel my footfalls and walk where I am.
