Holy crap, can this girl ride!

This is a great learning exercise for you beginners.  Watch this one.  Watch how she insists that the horses go forward, DOES NOT EVER GET ANGRY, disciplines when appropriate and then MOVES ON.  Note how soft she is with her reins!  She always gives the horse a clear “out” – he can do the right thing and the pressure will be completely off.

Watch the results.  Watch how bright and happy and relaxed the horses look in the “after” shots.  Do you think for a moment those horses don’t love her?  I know that they do.  Look at the LACK of pissy behaviors you see after she’s gotten them sorted out.

I’ve posted this numerous times before and it’s still one of my favorites.

Linda, this is how it’s done.  Maybe you can take some lessons from her, although I wouldn’t blame her if she had less patience with you than she does with these horses.

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Deal.

Now, again, this is a video of Linda Parelli working with a horse.  Which I am now going to leave up for at least one extra day just on the off chance that some asshat disciple of hers hacked me! I will note that this is also a horse who is blind in one eye.

Heck, where do I even begin? Her body’s in the wrong place most of the time. Why the fuck is she turning her back to the horse like that? And the ducking thing? If she had a longe whip and an actual longe line she wouldn’t have a horse nearly on top of her. Why do these morons do all those constant rollbacks on the longe line? Let the poor horse go forward for a while and maybe it wouldn’t be so pissed off and confused. Why is the longe line LYING on the ground like that? That is an accident waiting to happen! Why are you flapping your elbows like a brain damaged chicken, you twit?

“Humane Horseman of the Year” – sorry, HSUS, that was a HUGE fail.  HUGE.  This is nothing more than someone really fucking up a horse to the point where someone competent is going to have one hell of a time ever fixing it.

Shit, I could do a whole blog on the plague that is Parelli.  It just never ends.

Linda, you suck.  Seriously, seriously, seriously suck.  You trying to teach other people about good horsemanship is like Tiger Woods trying to teach other people about monogamy.

It just popped into my head that someone could have taken video of me longeing the VLC in public recently. And you know what, I’d be perfectly fine if that video showed up on the Internet. You would have seen a calm, well behaved young horse longeing quietly in a very crowded warm-up ring. A time or two he got distracted by all the activity and stopped. I just gave him the noise – you know the noise, the you’re-doing-something-wrong noise – stepped meaningfully toward his hip and he got going again.

Oh, wait, that’s why my horse likes me…

Really, Linda, it is not that damn hard to longe without pissing off and confusing the horse.  Did you need some lessons?  Come on by, maybe I can help you and Pat out with it! 

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Selling the Unwanted Horse

The article contains a quote from pro-slaughter veterinarian Dr. Tom Lenz: “Unwanted horses are defined as those no longer wanted by their current owner because they are old; injured; sick; unmanageable; fail to meet their owner’s expectations; or the owner can no longer afford to keep them”.

Using Dr. Lenz’s logic, everyone who is single or in the middle of a breakup is an “unwanted person.” Are you unemployed? You must be an “unwanted employee.” I can see you all rolling your eyes at those comparisons because, as we all know, having one person or one company not want us is, well, part of life and something we all experience, and those unwanted statuses can change in the blink of an eye – the next thing we know, we’re in love with someone else or going off to start a great new job.

It’s the same thing for horses, of course. Owner A cannot wait to get Horseykins out of the barn whereas the next owner acquires it and thinks Horseykins is their dream that they have been searching for all of their life.  My favorite horse of all time – my 30 year old who I still own – was literally thrown at us in 1985 because she’d just broken someone’s collarbone and had become equus non grata in that barn!  I loooooved that mare – played arena polo on her, jumped her, even ran barrels and poles on her.  To label a horse as unwanted because one single individual, the current owner doesn’t want it, is ludicrous. But as John Holland observes in the article – it’s all semantics. It’s all to avoid the word I would use, surplus horses, which is about the same thing John says with “excess” horses.

That pretty buckskin pictured is a classic example of an “unwanted” horse.  She was a broodmare, got dumped to kill, “rescued” by CBER, off to a hoarder haven (remember that picture I posted a long time ago of the trashy chick’s myspace pic with all the guns?  … that one), wound up back on the lot, re-rescued by Save A Forgotten Equine, who finally after a couple of tries found the right trainer for her and now here she is with her owner, who loves her.  Happy ending.  No longer “unwanted” but a happy, contributing member of equine society who now has a good home because of it.  The difference was simple.  Training. 

As I’ve noted hundreds of times before, the reason we have a problem is that our supply of horses exceeds the demand for horses, and a contributing factor is that the demand is for trained horses, whereas much of the oversupply is untrained horses. It is like unemployment – it’s not that all of you who are without a job suck, it’s that the supply of employees currently vastly exceeds the demand for employees in many fields. As a result, some of you are going to have to go back to school and retrain for a field there’s more demand in. I know many people doing this already. Sometimes you gotta adapt. Horse breeders, you gotta adapt. STOP OVER-PRODUCING IN A DOWN ECONOMY. Instead of having 10 foals, have 2 that you train. Or buy back some of your previously produced horses that are in trouble somewhere, put training on them and take them to the shows so that people want to buy more horses from you.

Do you know who can drive your horses’ value up to pre-recession prices? YOU! Do you know how people who are still getting awesome prices for horses get it? Well, they show up at a horseshow or other competition with a good looking horse that kicks ass. It’s like magic – people clamor around trying to find out where they can get one just like it. Stop sitting around pouting and talking about “snobby horse show people.” The show horse people aren’t snobby, they’re using common sense, proven tactics to drive up the value of their horses. If you think western pleasure is stupid, you don’t have to do it. There are a lot of other events. There’s a vast variety of equine competitions out there – something for everybody. All of them, short of crazy shit like horse tripping, drive your horse’s value UP.

Now, are there some horses I would classify as unwanted? No, but there are some horses I would classify as difficult to place. These include unsound horses, older unbroke horses, and horses with some kind of major mental issue/vice. I do not think there is anything wrong with euthanasia, as most of you know, as a solution here. That said, I have seen everything from 35 year old toothless Appaloosas to bat-shit panel-jumping BLM mustangs find fabulous homes and be very much wanted. I myself have a particular liking for old ex-broodmares and have supported quite a few for the last few years of their lives. There is a not-so-small element of the horse world that truly enjoys having old coot horses to pet and spoil, and it’s a good thing because there’s also a not-so-small element of the horse world that likes to dump those horses.

All in all, I agree with John. Unwanted is a meaningless term and a way of putting a spin on the situation without having to admit that it’s time that everybody drastically reduced the number of horses they’re creating and put more emphasis on training the ones that are already here. But fewer horses means less work for the registries and, oh yeah, the veterinarians – so that does explain some of the very self-serving opinions here! Sheesh people, we can all follow the money and see what’s driving your remarks. Not a single one of you can or has effectively argued with my logic that fewer, higher quality and better trained horses would almost completely solve the problem here. There is no reason for not supporting that solution that is not self-serving and related to your own greed. When I hear that some of these ding-dongs with the registries are still encouraging people to breed, breed, breed, or some of these pro-slaughter state Horse Councils having incentive programs to breed, breed, breed, I want to fire up that Bitchslap World Tour Bus and get it on the road.  And we’ll stop at the home of any breeder who wants to simply sit on her butt and pimp out her completely unaccomplished stallion(s) and put no training on the foals she creates.  Ridiculous. And that’s a word that does apply!

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Three horses die on Oregon highway

So, Portland, Oregon area people – who is this Marge Smith?  Has the situation always been this bad?

BTW, since we’re talking Arabians again, look at the Scapa post’s comments for an update post from his owner – who admits the horse did have a bad experience with another trainer – again NOT Matthew Gales, who has a good reputation and was the victim. I want to make it clear that no one here thought he was at fault, and also that I am very impressed at the owner’s post and believe it to be 100% truthful and that the horse’s owners did not knowingly allow him to be abused. Since I assume all of you in the Arab breed show world know exactly where this horse was last fall, now you can avoid that trainer and avoid having your horse similarly brain-fried. I feel that we did get the whole story here, and in light of that, I commend his owners for finding a more humane trainer and for that trainer’s efforts to overcome the horse’s (justified) fears.

Really, folks, I’m not the enemy some of you think I am. I just want the truth to get out in situations like these so that other horses aren’t tortured by the bad trainers – and if I don’t scream and shout, these things tend to stay under wraps and then innocent people (like poor Nicole Marr) take their horse to the Big Name Trainer without a clue of what is about to happen to it.  And sometimes those horses suffer damage that can never be fixed.

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Oh, and of course, TIER and Falcon Ridge could always use donations for this mare’s vet expenses. They’re good rescues and will do the best they can for her!

And if you’re looking to adopt, I don’t believe anyone has closed the deal on Angel Acres’ cutie-pie Tango yet…

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I can’t begin to imagine how many animals this would help! I think this is a great idea. Of course, any registry is only useful if people use it, but I do think people use the sex offender registry when checking out possible child care providers and other household employees, not to mention teachers, coaches and neighbors.

What are your thoughts on how to make this database, if it comes to pass, as efficient and useful as possible?

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