Patience Post

[old_woman]

Can anyone provide me with any links on this, or any information on how it is likely to be used? It is apparently some sort of PNH system tool.

I believe that its earlier use may be the key to some of my little mare's problem behaviour.

I've googled until I'm blue in the face and found nothing but a few brief (and fairly horrific) references to it and its use on a couple of forums. Any information on the food and water deprivation techniques might also be helpful in solving another of her problems.

Her problems don't really bother me as it is easy enough to avoid their triggers, but all the same I would like - for her sake - to be able to deal with them more pro-actively, or at least have a more thorough understanding of their likely origin in her recent past.

 

[wonkeywoody]

It is apparently some sort of PNH system tool.

Not come across this in my PP learning.....

...not heard of them using the deprivation of food or water either....

Sorry that doesnt help your question! but I could well understand a horse having problems after that kind of treatment.

 

[ilovemyboys]

is that kinda like when they tied spirit to that big pole when nobody could handle him??they left him without food and water for 3 days!!! idk thats all i can give sorry but good question i'm curious about this as well!

 

[Yann]

I'm not aware it's specifically part of PNH, but tying horses to solid objects to teach them to tie up is or was widely practiced both in the US (eg. discussion of it in Mark Rashid's books) and here too. I know it's done in the New Forest, where it's known as 'swinging'.

Something like that doesn't belong in NH, IMHO there are much more humane and less potentially damaging ways to teach horses to yield to pressure. PP wouldn't need to do it.

 

[happyhacker101]

Same as Yann, I was once told to tie one of mine to a tree and leave him there to teach him a lesson all because he hates being tied up and pulls back until something breaks - the fence post the twine is tied to in many cases. (crap fence post and strong twine me thinks) Needless to say, i didn't take their advice - this was from a someone who trained trotters.

 

[wonkeywoody]

The only vid I've seen of P teaching to tie up involved a 22 ft rope that was wrapped around a horizontal pole so it would 'slide' as the horse pulled back and he held the other end to control the tension while the horse pulled back. ie he let the horse initially pull then he applied pressure to his end so it didnt let the horse go back as fast. He was watching the horse so knew when to apply the slowing of the pull back. Each time the horse didnt go as far from the tie up pole.

A friend of mine regularly practised 'the tie up in the stable for a day'. She swore by it .....

 

[old_woman]

Teaching a 'recalcitrant' horse to tie using a snubbing post and a certain degree of skill, when the alternative is losing one's means of transport in the steppes, outback, bush, pampas or prairie, is one thing. I do not have a problem with this in the conditions prevailing when the practice was at its height.

BayMare mentioned the term as a Parelli practice. In googling "Patience Post"+Parelli I found only 13 results, one of them being in Russian and one in Japanese. Tom Widdecombe uses HIMSELF as a 'Patience Post' (I don't like the terminology, but I don't have a problem with that sort o procedure AT ALL) but when I read in the Irish Draught Horse Society forum
that

"I've had a couple of horses in for re-training in the last year who'd been subjected to these forms of 'training'. One, a lovely sensitive young mare, had been tied to a 'patience post' for more than 20 hours because she got stressed about horses coming and going - this was apparently meant to teach her 'self reliance'!!!!!!"

I do rather start to wonder what on earth is going on.

in addition, when I google "food deprivation"+Parelli, I get seven results, including this one where I read (my italics and my bold)

Bonzo didn’t obviously get the right support from us no matter what we tried and he didn’t have the choice to simply walk away. We tried sedating him and then leaving his head collar on to desensitise him. We tried food deprivation as recommended by Parelli and food as a bribery and reward system. We were never rough, always patient and always defeated. The only thing we did achieve was to make matters worse.

I believe that practices of these natures might well have been done on Rosie, who when acquired as a 3yo by me, had been intensively 'Parellied' and then declared 'a failure' due to her 'vices'. If anyonecan shed any light on these practices as (apparently) recommended by Mr Parelli, I would be very grateful.

 

[wonkeywoody]

Why not email this Dan person thro that website and ask?

 

[Keket]

BayMare mentioned the term as a Parelli practice. In googling "Patience Post"+Parelli I found only 13 results, one of them being in Russian and one in Japanese. Tom Widdecombe uses HIMSELF as a 'Patience Post'

I found the same thing, and none of the links led to anything written by Parelli himself. Gods know I'm the last one to defend the man, but it seemed a bit hearsay to me.

 

[india]

Not heard anything about Pat Parelli using a Patience Post or about actually depriving horses of food and/or water.

The only thing I've read about the so called "water deprivation" was on another forum regarding one of the newer PNH DVD packages. Apparently, there's a section on one where PP suggests that filling a water tub with just enough water to last untill the next visit will help break down the barrier of a horse that's totally fearfull of humans by associating each arrival with a pleasant experience.

As far as I know, there's nothing mentioned of depriving a horse of food and/or water.

Maybe the member who posted these accusations on the other thread can provide some reliable links?

 

[old_woman]

Why not email this Dan person thro that website and ask?

If you read the website, you would have seen that the reference to food deprivation was made by a client, not by this Dan person himself. There are no contact details for Susan Tron of Consett, the client of this Dan person and the owner of Bonzo.

I am more than prepared to believe, as Keket suggests, that it is merely hearsay and nothing to do with that Pat person, but would like to hear this from a knowledgeable student of that Pat person's learning systems.

 

[old_woman]

Not heard anything about Pat Parelli using a Patience Post or about actually depriving horses of food and/or water.
...
As far as I know, there's nothing mentioned of depriving a horse of food and/or water.
...
Maybe the member who posted these accusations on the other thread can provide some reliable links?

Thank you; I was indeed hoping to hear from the original poster on the other thread.

 

[india]

Quote from the poster who made the accusations on the other thread. Considering this person has never studied or even had any dealings with PNH, I think it only fair she at least provides some reliable links to back up this information.

Horses are tied to a 'Patience Post' to make, sorry teach, them to be patient. This isn't for a few minutes, this has been known to be hours on end. This can also involve withholding food and water for long periods of time. The theory being that they become reliant on the human for their basic needs. Parelli followers will tell you that this is built up from a few minutes but from what I've heard that isn't always the case.

 

[Crystal Fire]

Will this help? I was a Parelli student for about 6 years I think, have worked in the organisation and met Pat on several occasions. I've never heard him advocate tying a horse to a post and leaving it, or depriving it of food and water. I know of the use in Parelli of a 22ft line and letting the line out and back to teach to tie, although it's not taught in the first 3 levels I think, wasn't then anyway. IH people teach similar, threading a lunge line through a metal ring.
I think the deprivation of food and water is a small number of people misinterpreting something that Pat would do. With a horse that is very difficult to get to know he would arrange for the owner/trainer to bring all the food and water by hand. Not letting them go without for any length of time, but trying to judge it so that the horse is looking for the owner to arrive with sustenance. I've ended up doing that myself with a very disturbed horse that came to me, I took him everything he needed for nearly the first two weeks he was with me. I have to say it certainly seemed to work, and the bond I now have with that horse is incredible.
I think Andy Booth was told to do this by Pat when he was getting to know Stormy the Zorse, and he even had to sleep by her pen.
Why doesn't someone just email Pat and ask him about this? I'm sure you'd get a reply.
While doing it, why not also ask him about the In A Whisper competition? He took part in it a very long time ago, and it might even be an experience he wouldn't repeat, but as far as I can work out, none of the critics have actually asked him.
It's wrong to leave a horse in dire need, but they don't always need food and water available on-tap as it were. Some stables on the continent with very healthy horses just lead them to drink at intervals in the day. I guess this mimics how things might happen when they were roaming for forage and maybe wouldn't always have water available beside their grazing. Most people will take their horse out on a long hack without feeling he needs to be able to stop to drink any time he wants, and they are right, horses are designed to be OK if they don't have water available every time they want to dip their head.

 

[Iron Maiden]

Quote from the poster who made the accusations on the other thread. Considering this person has never studied or even had any dealings with PNH, I think it only fair she at least provides some reliable links to back up this information.

I must admit that I'm rather curious about this too. Obviously I'm not the greatest fan of the man but that rant rather took me aback, it's way beyond anything I've heard. If you're going to libel someone on a public forum, however well you think it's going to go down, it's a good idea to have some first hand testimony to back it up. So where is the evidence?

 

[Yann]

Maybe the member who posted these accusations on the other thread can provide some reliable links?

I doubt it, but letting her own horse go hungry is something she does know about

 

[Zingy]

Quote from the poster who made the accusations on the other thread. Considering this person has never studied or even had any dealings with PNH, I think it only fair she at least provides some reliable links to back up this information.

Another quote from said poster - I thought this was quite clear myself

Whether or not this has been advocated by the Ps I can't say but it is a method used by some of their trainers in the Parelli name

To my knowledge the Parellis themselves have not been accused of promoting this kind of treatment. Agreed that it would be interesting to know who has and how it's known that they have, but lets not interpret that as something being said that wasn't

 

[india]

Another quote from said poster - I thought this was quite clear myself

Whether or not this has been advocated by the Ps I can't say but it is a method used by some of their trainers in the Parelli name.

To my knowledge the Parellis themselves have not been accused of promoting this kind of treatment. Agreed that it would be interesting to know who has and how it's known that they have, but lets not interpret that as something being said that wasn't

The thread Bay_Mare, posted the accusations on was with regard to why people don't like Parelli. Now whether Bay_Mare decided to add the above sentence as an afterthought because she couldn't provide any evidence to back up what she claimed is another story....but as far as I can see, it was, and still is quite obvious that post was made to discredit the PNH training method and it's organisation.

The Patience Post. It's existence is denied by many Parelli devotees but, as I said earlier, there are many things that happen at the higher levels that aren't ever seens by the Level 1s. My friends left after their Level 3 because they just couldn't tolerate what they saw as increasing aggression towards the horses. They started Parelli looking for a kinder way of training, they started to become uncomfortable at L2 but couldn't tolerate it any more after L3.

Also, considering the poster is very anti-Parelli, I find it odd that she even knows, let alone has friends that actually studied up to and through L3.
I'm sure there could be a logical explanation, but untill she can provide reliable evidence to back up these accusations, as far as I'm concerned..it's just ear say.

ETA: Another snippet from Bay_Mares post...

Withholding food and water is also used as a punishment. A horse refuses to load, they're put in their stable without their food.

Now unless things have changed considerably from when I studied PNH, trailer loading problems where dealt with in L1 and definately achieved without the method described above by Bay_Mare.

 

[chev]

I'm not aware it's specifically part of PNH, but tying horses to solid objects to teach them to tie up is or was widely practiced both in the US (eg. discussion of it in Mark Rashid's books) and here too. I know it's done in the New Forest, where it's known as 'swinging'.

Something like that doesn't belong in NH, IMHO there are much more humane and less potentially damaging ways to teach horses to yield to pressure. PP wouldn't need to do it.

It goes on here too. I bought a mare who had quite severe damage to her neck and poll as a result of it. Took a while to sort out not just the pain issues but also her then inherent fear of halters.

I don't know much about Parelli but I haven't heard him advocate swinging.

And the people who practice it round here are definitely not NH or PNH followers. It's more a case of ignorant tradition.

 

[Wally]

Yann, was that absolutely necessary?