Posts Tagged ‘training’
This is almost too easy
This is a video of Linda Parelli working with a horse. 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! 
How Not to Long-Line or Longe
And now they are free on Craigslist. NO! REALLY? I can’t imagine they’re not worth a million, zillion dollars after all the high quality training shown in your video. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing ALL THE TIME!
My head hurts.
Riding Q & A Day!
I just had a fun idea for a post. We have quite a few people reading here who are professionals or very experienced amateur riders. We also have quite a few people reading here who are beginner riders, or re-riders struggling with regaining their skills. So today I want to have a total free for all Q & A session. If you’re struggling with a riding issue, post it here. Swinging lower leg? Elbows sticking out like a chicken? Or just a bad case of show nerves? Tell us what you need to fix, and maybe someone here can share exactly how they fixed it for themselves or a student of theirs.
When I was a little kid, I always got pulled forward by the lesson horses. They’d yank their head down and right down the neck I’d flop. Then they’d swerve into the middle or into the hay storage area with me. They were having a great time – I was not. Fortunately, our barn briefly got a very talented instructor. She stood in front of my horse and pulled the reins forward. I flopped as usual. Then she stood next to me and tipped my shoulders back behind my hip bones. She told me to stay there and returned to the front of the horse, where she gave the reins a good yank forward. My seat bones connected with the saddle but my upper body stayed upright. It was a total light-bulb moment for me, and I applied it and started to get the better of those fed-up old school horses. I will bet a lot of people have a story like that – of an instructor who found a way to say something or do something differently, so that you finally GOT it. Maybe you can share those stories today and help someone else!
I want this one to be about your riding issues, so I’m not going to post any questions about your horse’s issues or training problems – those’ll disappear so don’t write them up. This one is about how to fix those pesky riding issues that are making riding more uncomfortable for you and/or your horse, or keeping you in the green ribbons instead of the blue ones!
P.S. If you are the person in the picture, please continue upon your quest to remove yourself from the gene pool without that poor palomino horse, who jumps like a drunken deer, and who is apparently about to cut his feet off on your scary wire fence.
One of these days I will learn that looking for pictures of riding faults on the Internet always results in finding something that scares the living hell out of me…
Cheap out — and you’ll pay the price!
Once upon a time, there was a young stallion. He was a perlino tobiano, so of course his owner thought that alone made him testicle-worthy, despite the fact that his pedigree was many generations of Ain’t Dun Shit crossed upon Won’t Spot Me Showing. Yes, you had to go back to the fourth generation to find a horse who had accomplished anything more than being a pretty color. But hey, pedigree be damned, Proud Owner believed Perlino Tobiano was the best thing ever and wanted the world to know it. So she registered him with the usual parade of goofy pointless shit like the International Cream Horse Registry and started advertising him everywhere as a Krazy Kolor Breeder’s dream stallion.
Proud Owner, apparently having some recognition of the fact that her horse had accomplished less in life than Kevin Federline, considered her options. She could send Perlino Tobiano out to a professional trainer with a proven record of success and references and a nice barn for $700 – $1000 per month. Ouch. Proud Owner, who claims to looooove her horse like crazy, apparently did not love him QUITE enough to part with that kind of cash, so like many people who shouldn’t be breeding horses throughout the world, she looked for a way to cheap out — and she thought she found it in her acquaintance. We’ll call her Idiot Twentysomething Bitch.
ITB had all the stereotypical hallmarks of her kind. She thought she was a trainer (but couldn’t point to a single successfully trained horse, much less a show horse). She claimed to “rescue” from the auction (and then bred damn near every mare she ever dragged home). She couldn’t be bothered to groom, treat injuries or clean stalls reliably. But HEY – she was free! She offered to take Perlino Tobiano over to her place and train and show him in exchange for keeping the stud fees. Off he went.
(Allow me to note, at this point, that ITB’s place is a whopping one-hour drive from PO’s place)
PO, though she looooooves her horsie, could not apparently be bothered to drive over and check on his welfare, so he sat at ITB’s for 8 months while ITB proceeded to:
(a) brag about him a lot on the Internet;
(b) advertise him like crazy;
(c) breed him to every shitter mare she dragged home from the Enumclaw auction; and
(d) otherwise, do nothing with him.
ITB also tried to promote herself on various local message boards, like the SAFE one, where she wound up getting her ass handed to her for standing a stallion at stud that hadn’t done shit and therefore backyard breeding while claiming to rescue. But when the auctionhorses board arrived, hey, now she had a playground! A wonderful place where snarky posts were deleted and no one was allowed to question her good intentions! This further emboldened the ITB and, despite the fact that she had NO FREAKING PLAN for how to support the horses she already had, she “adopted” a cheap Arabian stallion called Exxtra Perception off of Craigslist and dragged him home too. Then she whined to the board for gelding money and I’m pretty sure she got it.
Alas, cheapy Arab stallion (who was actually a cute little sucker for an unbroke 14 year old and I admit my friend and I thought really hard about rescuing him ourselves – unfortunately for him, we didn’t go for it) didn’t live long enough to have his brain surgery. At ITB’s shithole farm, Perlino Tobiano got loose one night and the stallions fought. Cheapy Arab broke a leg and had to be put to sleep. Perlino Tobiano was injured. ITB ran around the auctionhorses board making excuses for being a shitty excuse for a human being and a pathetic excuse for a horse caretaker. I have problems, I’m on Prozac, I have family drama, I don’t have any money, wah, wah, whine, whine.
Allow me to insert: HORSES DO NOT WANT TO BE OWNED OR CARED FOR BY PEOPLE WITH MAJOR PROBLEMS WHO CANNOT EVEN TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES! If you are f’ed up, and many people are at some point in their life for a variety of reasons, RESCUE YOURSELF FIRST! I have nothing but respect for people who admit, hey, I have X issue and I need to get help. I have zero respect for people who self-medicate their emotional black hole by rescuing animals they cannot care for.
Anyway…so NOW, finally, Proud Owner figures out that it might be time to go check on her horse. And – shocker of all shockers! – he looks like shit. He’s crusty and muddy, he’s infested with lice, his eyelid is gone from the fight with the other stud and he’s got an oozing infected abscess on his tail. So now Proud Owner is running all over the Internet outing the ITB, which of course I fully support because god knows nobody else needs to give her a horse…
“The top part of his eye lid was gone .. so there was nothing to stitch .. but why wasnt a known vicious stallion not in a better secure stall?? What about the condition of the rest on him?? The months its going to take to get him healthy again and back to proper weight and condition and worming him and getting rid of the lice?? NOT ONCE HAS SHE SAID SHE WAS EVEN SORRY!! Just excuses!”
Proud Owner is justifiably upset. I’d have a shit fit if a horse I owned looked like this, However, Proud Owner needs to look in the mirror and recognize her part in this. She is the one who cheaped out and allowed herself to believe that somehow a totally unqualified individual was going to get her stallion trained and shown. Oh, and this was going to cost her nothing. That’s cute. What’s next, Robert Pattinson shows up on your doorstep and proposes out of the blue because you came to him in a dream? IF IT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE…DUH! It’s not that the most expensive trainer is the best trainer, far from it, but talented people who can do the job just do NOT do it for free. If Proud Owner had simply spent the money, by now her horse could easily have a ROM or better on him, and she would have a reason to be proud. Instead she is paying vet bills, the horse has suffered permanent cosmetic damage, and on top of that he’s going to have a ton of fugly 2010 foals running around because of the crap mares ITB bred to him. At this point she might as well geld him, send him to a decent trainer to turn him into a riding horse for her, and be grateful she got him back alive.
What a clusterfuck, on all sides. The only one I really feel sorry for is the horse, because months of suffering could have been avoided if P.O. could have put her butt in her car and driven one lousy hour to check up on him. (Or, you know, put him in training with any of the various trainers who DO take exceptional care of their training horses) I will never in a million years understand people who send their horse off to training and don’t visit. I am typing this on the plane on the way home from just such a visit — one where I found a happy, healthy, sane horse in perfect weight and without a mark on him. Do I get it for free? Hell no. But it’s money well spent and it’s worth every damn penny.
Seriously – has ANYBODY out there ever gotten quality, breed-show level training and showing accomplished without cash up front? Does not count if the person is your spouse or significant other, ha ha. Proud Owner’s excuse is that she had two little boys and a husband in boot camp. Do you think that might not be the optimum time in your life to embark upon ownership of a young stallion that needs to be shown and promoted, perhaps? You know, if you want a stallion, there are plenty of totally finished ones that already have their show record up for grabs these days, at fabulously affordable prices. Doing it from scratch is expensive, and short-cuts and penny-pinching lead to bad results — whether you’re rushing your trainer in an attempt to save money, cheaping out on unqualified training, or using a trainer who employs illegal or unethical methods to get your horse into the show ring more quickly. Do it right, or please don’t do it at all. I’m pretty sure that’s what Blu would say right now.
Part 461 of the blind leading the blind!
We all come across scary trainers all day – people who don’t even know what they are doing themselves and are doing a bang-up job of passing their ignorance on. If I put up every one, this blog would be about nothing else, but this one, Crystal Rivers, is special in that she has made a real project of documenting her poor training online. Yes, youtube is full of her students – who have not mastered riding on the flat – flying over jumps and careening around corners on the wrong leads.
I don’t know if these riders are youths or adults but I’m sharing this solely to illustrate the abysmal quality of the training. Any of these riders could be a good riders with a competent trainer, but sadly they are wasting their money on someone who…
doesn’t appear to know leads (that’s her yelling at the student) and
is letting this person jump SO far beyond her ability that a bad accident seems inevitable
It’s the Flying Nun without her habit!
There was a video of someone jumping an oxer backwards, but apparently that got removed already. However, she left the still on her web site. How scary is it that someone who claims to be a professional trainer put this picture on her own web site and does not know it is wrong? I’m endlessly amazed at how people memorialize all their oopses on the web – and NOT by saying “hey, look at me having a dumbass moment, ha ha, I jumped the jump backwards.” No, I’m pretty sure this student thinks she is doing the right thing and that it’s exactly what her trainer told her to do. Eeek.
But hey, she can break a “rouge stallion.” What is that, a stallion who tries to dig into your purse and pull out your makeup?
Oh, and in case you thought she was limited to being a crappy trainer, she’s also standing a stallion called Kid’s Fascination with NO mention of his HYPP status. His daddy was N/H. He’s got Mr. Impressive on his dam’s side, who was N/H. Anybody want to make a bet he might be N/H too? Gee, why is his status never mentioned anywhere? For a $1250 stud fee, I’d like to know what I’m breeding to. For that matter, I’d like to know has this horse ever accomplished anything (someone on APHA want to look him up?) The only mention of him online is when he sold at auction for $2300 as a yearling. Lady, for $1250, a person can breed to nice N/N world champion and AQHA/APHA champion stallions all day. I could make a list a mile long. Yours seems to have accomplished “being ridden in the same arena with mares.” Woo hoo.
Classy choices for broodmares too…what exactly is this straight shouldered, long backed, funky hipped thing and why did we make more of it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgD16hj_QEs
You knew there was going to be foal jumping if I looked long enough, didn’t you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3bwOpPoH-w
*sigh*
And now she apparently thinks she is a reining trainer.
The person who sent me this was miffed that Ms. Rivers had, of all people, been selected to teach the equestrian program at Liberty University. To that I say: good grief, isn’t that Jerry Falwell’s pet university? They probably think the Lord will protect them as they fly merrily over fences, miles above the tack…good luck with that.
Anyway, this just leads me into a bigger rant, and one that I’ve had before: STOP RUSHING YOUR STUDENTS! Here’s a simple guide for learning to ride hunt seat:
1. Learn to walk and trot with correct position and quiet hands. Learn to steer, to look ahead, to execute maneuvers like circles and figure 8’s. Learn your diagonals reliably.
THEN…
2. Learn to canter and learn your leads reliably.
THEN
3. Refine your position to the point where you can be competitive in a flat equitation class; learn to pick up diagonals and leads by feel alone. Learn to trot and canter without stirrups and maintain your position. Master a quiet and efficient simple lead change. Learn to ride in a half seat position without losing your balance.
THEN
4. Start jumping cross rails and learning flying lead changes and move up from there.
If trainers actually followed this progression, the way they used to, we would see an exponential decrease in the number of hunt seat riding accidents. I do not understand, nor will I ever, why or how you would consider permitting someone to jump who cannot post without their stirrups. How do you think they will stay on when the horse chips in and pops and they lose a stirrup? The answer is that they won’t. If one of your MAJOR goals when teaching someone to ride is NOT “keeping them on the horse and injury free,” please stop teaching. Now.
Yes, I have heard the complaints that the parents push you into it, and that if people do not see progress fast enough, they will go to another trainer. So what? Let them go. For every student you lose because you aren’t pushing fast enough, you can get five more who appreciate your commitment to safety. And when your students whip the butts of the pushed-along-too-fast students, you will have a waiting list! Slow and steady really does win THIS race. Peppering youtube with dozens of videos of riders who have been pushed too far for their abilities doesn’t make you look cool. It makes you look like someone from a Jackass movie, except that the neck you are risking isn’t your own — and that’s about as uncool as it gets.
Chase Community Giving has a new program on Facebook where they will donate to a deserving charity this Christmas. Nominate your favorite horse rescue – just do a search for “Chase Community Giving” and you’ll find the app. Click on the tab for “Chase Giving” to search for your favorite nonprofits. The BEST part is that you have TWENTY votes so you do not have to pick just one rescue to help. You can spread your votes around for different animal rescues or you can also use some to help other types of nonprofits. How great not to have to make just one choice – KUDOS to the Chase people for that!
It’s Churchill Downs, not the wheelchair races!
But then Ms. Costello, who is probably as qualified to retrain a horse for dressage as I am to translate Farsi at a U.N. conference, did something positively insane. She put the horse back into race training. One poster on the Thorougbred Champions forum said it best, so I will simply requote Intelligent Male: “This is some silly person who wants to play horse trainer (they’ve never had a starter) and since no one would dare give them a horse to train they took a free giveaway failed broodmare (slipped ‘02, no report ‘03 and ‘04, dead foal ‘05, ‘06, and ‘07, no report ‘08 and ‘09) and are going to run her so they can say they’re a trainer.”
Ms. Costello is not the only moron in the world, to be sure. Just two years ago, Ellis Park track President Ron Geary purchased a 17 year old gelding in disgust to keep him from being entered in any more races. Story here. What’s that saying, common sense isn’t so common?
I was dying to find a pic of this ding-dong. Anybody who was actually at CD, is this her myspace? It’s her name and age in Lexington…love to have a pic of the mare, too, did anyone snap one?)
On a happy note, if you’re holiday shopping for your horsey friends and want to help ex-racehorses, click below for a very fun gift idea!
