we do is pressure and release of so the horse knows that's what we want isn't it?
Glad you have seen this NF. It has been around for some time. I think it came to me via Facebook.
Join up and lunging are not in fact alternatives as some trainers dislike both of them - no, better to say, some trainers have reasons for avoiding both -
The title of the John Lyons book that helped me so much as a new rider is Communicating with Cues. It isnt just what we are explaining to the horse but what the horse is explaining back to us.
I have just read reading the online free e-book Ozzie the training of a young horse by Elaine Heney and trying to identify the trainers she had liked. One I recognised from the backong competition in texas as John Lyons (or his son)
I then got quite excited yesterday to see that I could now buy John Lyons on horses for Kindle and later that I could get the paper book even cheaper second hand via Amazon and I ordered it. It isnt clear to me whether this is a new compilation. But I will see.
I havent seen his videos as they cost a lot and last time I enquired are in USA format only.
Back to your original post - This research replaced a living person with a toy car. I dont think that it matters much what gives the physical cue to a horse - carrot stick, whip, visual cue, spooky new notice in the park -
However in this case there is still a human being there, involved with devising the car, notice, tractor and in observing or managing the horse.
For me - quite a big problem is that communication for humans is usually about language. So both Lyons and Rashid put me in a position where I am conversing with the horse - anthropomorphising. But one could see that ongoing conversation with a horse as like using radio telescopes - it is an intermediate lens through which we can receive information in terms which make it possible for us to assess it and respond?
And the positive or negative feedback to us from the horse enables us to adjust and send clearer messages to the horse. Who interprets our touch or absense of restraint as signals of the type it would receive from its mother or in the herd.
The danger is not that the horse reacts to the car, but that we should then react to the horse as if it were also a toy machine. Or a flight animal of which we are terrified.
In the early days of riding my fav. She did indeed communicate with em. I knew she was happy that I was riding her and that I rode her better, with more consideration and interest than most of the beginners she carried. But she isnt like that now. She has forgotten absolutely nothing that I have asked of her - she will do all I ask and more - but when I mount and ride her out to wait to hack, all she does is turn her head and look at me as if to check I am there. The messages I get from her now are only through her movement, how she feels under me on a particular morning. Impersonnal - and that is what is shown by the car perhaps. That we interpret messages from the horse as being personal. But they are not.
