parelli-not so natural.

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helen03

helen03

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How can anyone justify calling parelli natural horsemanship?I own a 15.3hh anglo arab, who after extensive back specialists and vet visits , i have been told has some kind of bad memory that makes him petrified of having his back legs picked up.my vet advised me to take him to one of these parelli demo thingys, as they connected with the horse on a natural level.I DON'T THINK SO.I personally don't call Mark Rodney beating the living crap out of my horse for 2 hours and achieving absolutley nothing 'natural horsemanship'.All the man managed to make him do is walk on a trailer, THE BLOODY HORSE WALKED ON TRAILERS FINE IN THE FIRST PLACE!My horse is a sensitive compassionate animal, and beating him up has left him with mental scars , i am now unable to lunge him or carry a whip because he is now petrified of them after that evil man got hold of him.A ex friend of mind , and someone who takes parelli as the gospel truth , filmed the events and was asked to destroy the tape of the demo.if the man has nothing to be ashamed of why does he want the tape destroyed?I promptly took my horse straight home, mark was not permitted to touch my other horse, although he did give a swift whack with the carrot stick to my boy when he hesitated to walk on the lorry , to which he very nearly lost head to my boys kick.good on him i say!the man deserves a good kicking.
to sum up:
if my horse has to beaten up and scared of me to pick his feet up , then i'd rather he never did.There's meant to be trust between horse and rider, and my horse is taking an awful long time to regain the trust that he had in people before parelli man got hold of him.Treat your horse as you expect to be treated yourself , with respect and kindness , i personally thing that pays of more than parelli unatural horsemanship.
 
My goodness that is awful.

I have seen so many articles about it and the whip has never been mentioned once. That man sounds a bit like a fraud if you ask me. I hope you horse can trust again.

I would have walked into the ring if he tried to beat up Maverick, as he can be sensitive too. My ex-boyfriend hit Maverick, and he was given a short shift!
 
But that's just the thing , he's not a fraud , he's trained and endorsed by pat parelli himself , he goes all round Britain doing demo's. Noone at this thing could see my problem!I had to stand up to about 20 people and make my point clear , but they all semmed to think that this was quite exceptable behaviour and that i was just a spoilt little brat who had evil horses , they told me my horse wasn;t fit to be ridden as he is dangerous , tommy is the sweetest most gentle horse ever , i can ride and jump him in just a head collar and i didn't need to beat him to achieve that!
 
That doesn't seem right.

I've been doin Parelli for about 2 months now, and me and my horse Shantih have come a long way. I've never gone to a demonstration, but I've heard about them and it really doesnt seem right about what this guy did. Good idea walkin out like that. Was this fella a Certified Parelli Instructor?

I do believe Parelli is almost as natural as can be. Its really about training the human, not so much the horse. I've loved every moment of it so far, and Shantih's attitude towards me has changed a lot too. I'll stop promoting Parelli now, but maybe if you want to give it a shot again you could get the home study course. That way, you can do everything with your horse, instead of someone else doing it.

Hope your horse wont be scarred for life, and that you can get his trust back.
 
That is really bad then that people thought that was ok. How can beating a horse up be ok and he seemed to have a guilty conscience if the video had to be destroyed. I'll just have to make a note never to send Mavy to someone like that.
 
I have read alot about parelli, and from what I have read, the carrot stick is used as a guiding tool, not something to beat the horse with.

I would think that you were unlucky to have taken your horse to such an person, there are good and people in all kinds of riding and horsecare. One example would be that in classical riding, there are still people that will beat the horse to get results, and other who will work with the horse.

I have also heard of some horse whisperers useing force with horses to get results, these are frauds and only in it for the money.:mad:
 
the man that did this stuff to tommy is called mark rodney , he is from australia and is supposed to be the next best thing to pat parelli himself.i think when it came down it , tommy wasn't responding to what he was trying to do to him and mark got frustrated and dealt with it in the wrong way. He was trying to get tommy to accept having the carrot stick flicked over his back as he ran around but tommy is petrified of things touching his rear end and this had been extensivley explained to him.when he would not accept this, he began to bash it over him , personally i don't see what this will achive if the horse would not even have it drapped over him,the horse is scared of his back end being touched so hitting his back end is surely going to reinforce this ide?.when he clearly wasn't getting any where with his feet and back, he then began what i felt was an atempt to 'distract' people from this by using parelli methods to get tommy to walk on the trailer , but as i said , he goes on a trailer fine anyway!He then blamed his lack of success on the horse being a 'stupid' arabian horse.this is very untrue as he does not act like an arab in the slightest, in fact quite the opposite.he is very quiet and never gets excited or wound up.
 
I disagree with you on blaming Parelli for all this - it is genuinly NOT what Pat teaches. One person doing something very un-natural does not make the whole system bad.

When did this happen? I'm sure that I saw Mark Rodney at a demo on monday night, but not as a Parelli person. He's an ex-parelli person, but I though he'd been an ex for ages?! For a whatever-star instructor, he certainly didn't read the horses body language very well. I won't elaborate - he didn't hit the horse - but it's off topic.

I hope your horse recovers from his ordeal, but don't write PNH off. I think your vet is right about choosing it, just try another instructor. They are REALLY not all like that.
 
it happened in about september time but im still enraged!I think he has now taken a different route, calling himself blue horse natural horsemanship judging from a poster put up on our yard noticeboard, but he was definately working on parelli systems when he saw tommy.
I'm afraid this incident has put me off parelli for life, I know someone else who went to see pat parelli start some young horses and also didn't like the amount of hitting with carrot sticks envolved. Tommy shall be left without having his feet picked up until he feels he can trust me to do so.He's getting along just fine without any back shoes.
 
Mark Rodney was at the Duchy Rakeli. Is that where you saw him? He's going back there to do courses from what I can see. He was listed as a PNH instructor in Australia up until 2002, so looks as though he is ex PNH and relatively recently. I don't know why the ex though. It's not off topic though. If someone is claiming to be of the natural horsemanship type of thing, it's on topic to discuss what we see I would've thought. This is a natural horsemanship forum, not just for PNH, from how I understand it.

If Mark Rodney (or Pat Parelli) hit either of my horses with a carrot stick, he would very much regret it. I'm doing the PNH programme (home) myself and have got pretty nifty with the sticks and ropes. I'm sure I could give anyone attempting to hit my horse a pretty accurate whallop with whatever came to hand. Arabs are not stupid either, so even if he was a typical arab, that would make him smart, not stupid. It sounds as though this guy was flooding your horse, something that isn't very smart. I know who'd get my vote in the smartness stakes. What happened to introducing things slowly with approach and retreat?

Now you've been soured of PNH Helen and I don't blame you, other things that might help give your horse confidence might be clicker training and/or Tellington-Touch/Team?

I'm sorry you had such a bad experience, but it is true, people can get carried away with the 'respect' issue and forget the 'partner'. :( It's down to whatever the individual makes of anything I think.

Sue
sue@eclipse.co.uk
 
I saw him at the grange (okehampton , devon), I believe he's also just about to start a new course under his new blue horse name down here in conjunction with duchy college , me and my yard crew are thinking of going and protesting (like anti-hunts protesting, only we all go hunting?!)It made no difference what I said to them last time, because i was a minority against a majority (20 to 1!) so maybe a few more voices would be better heard!
I use clicker training whilst riding for forward transitions , but i'm not aware of it's other useages , my horses do respond to it as a 'go faster aid' very well so i would be interested to hear about it?As for the other 2 you suggested, I have never heard of them??Where could I find out about these things?
 
Originally posted by helen03
.I DON'T THINK SO.I personally don't call Mark Rodney beating the living crap out of my horse for 2 hours and achieving absolutley nothing 'natural horsemanship'.All the man managed to make him do is walk on a trailer, THE BLOODY HORSE WALKED ON TRAILERS FINE IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Click to expand...
Although what you have described sounds horrific and i dont endorse natural horsemanship either.
Why on earth did you not step in and intervene earlier. If you didnt like what you saw, why didnt you jump in and tell him to stop instead of sitting there watching it happen for 2 hours?
Not jumping on you, but you did have every right to tell him to stop.
 
I thought that was his name! Yes, I saw him at Duchy and wasn't too impressed. However, he was good on the rding instruction, and he was also with a Portugese classical bloke who was quite interesting.

Basically, he was playing friendly game and really wasn't giving the poor horse a chance to do what he wanted. He went straight to very high pressure, the horse really wasn't happy, so then - bizarely - he stopped to wait for her to lick and chew! Bit strange. He was very strong with the carrot stick, which I didn't like, but no hitting. He usually went straight to phase 3 or 4. He'd actually been working with this mare for 3 days, I suspect Pat would have gotten A LOT further!

And there was the patting thing. I don't pat horses, basically PNH's reason - they don't like it. I don't think that it's a very nice way to show you're please by smacking your horse. When horses are grooming each other it's naturally a more 'stroking' movement. He was saying that patting was what you had to do to show that you were pleased.

He was quite good as a riding instructor though - not sure if I'd want a lesson from him but it was good to watch. I don't think that Blue Horses is actually his thing, he's just endorsing them at the moment. I thought Blue Horses were just a way of offering training in natural and classical horsemanship.

R
 
Clicker Training - basically click and reward desired behaviour. Say you want the horse to touch a cone. Make it easy (maybe put the cone where he has to touch it), then click and reward (food, usually) when he does. You can use it to train for all sorts!

Tellington-Touch/TTEAM are the same thing. Started by Linda Tellington-Jones, it's interesting and fun. Not sure about the website address, I know that there is one. Try Google.
 
People often ask me that , but put yourself in the situation where 20 people all think that whats happening is fantastic and your the only one who disagress , it's slightly daunting to go and confront a whip yielding maniac!mark was also supposed to do a demo with my other horse, Abu , but I refused to let him touch my baby!The only reason Mark eventually gave up with Tommy was because he saw my obvious anger and tears!I also gave him and the other parelli queens, a peice of mind afterwards, which for meek and mild me was very big!then he told me my horses were maniacs and not to be ridden to which i jumped on tommys back without a headcollar or any tack and rode him over to the trailer park, screaming oh my god please help me he's evil and dangerous!(as he plodded over like a donkey!)I was called all the names under the sun by a group of middle aged woman which is quite daunting for a hungover 18yr old, but i still stood my ground alinging foul abuse straight back
 
Thats such a shame, ive watched the Parelli team at work {like thousands of people}and far from it did you see any signs of force.They had re trained some real badly abused tb horse.

I know some people who train horse and they don't go under any 'title' or any one method, but thier horse's turn out real good:) Ive often wondered how many of these people are about, tons I would guess;)
Anyway, my next door neighber is Farrier, and often has spoken about the state horses feet and shoes get into. Some through neglegt, some through a genuine ignorance, and others because their trying to save money by leacving shoes and feet untouched for longer than 6 weeks, which he finds long enough.
Hows your farrier coping? What on earth do you do to clean out horses feet.
:)
 
http://www.tellingtontouch.com/

For info about TTouch, which is for horses and other animals and TTeam which is to do with horse-riding. Some of the work might be appropriate to help out with your problems touching his hindlegs.

http://www.theclickercenter.com/

For more info about clicker training with Alexander Kurland. I think Alex should be visiting with Heather in Devon again this year and maybe doing a clinic. It depends on whether more people want her nearer to London/Oxford IIRC. I presume you're in/near Devon if you visit the Grange and the Duchy?

You might not be interested in all of it, of course, but I don't think it hurts to look at these things and use what you find appropriate for your own circumstances. Hope this helps.

Sue
sue@eclipse.co.uk
 
I think I'd be concerned about a horse not being comfortable with having his back feet lifted, or his hind-legs handled, in case anything goes wrong really. If he bruises/abscesses a hoof, or injures his leg that sort of thing. It could possibly mean sedatives for him to be treated. This chap setting him back is absolutely unforgiveable. I hope that you find a way forward soon Helen. Good luck.

Sue
sue@eclipse.co.uk
 
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