Clinton V.S. Pat

The snag with Pat is that his voice does send me to sleep, but nearly everything he says on a DVD is important, though at first I didn't realise this. It was only when James kept saying "everything you need for now is in the level 1 to 4 packs". I would challenge him occasionally and he would just say "watch them again". He would be right, it was in there, but as what initially just appeared to be a throw away remark through which I had probably dozed off . The more I learn the more information I find is in the packs.

Sorry this is of topic but the above quote brought it to mind.

That's why I like to watch his bloopers!! Best show ever!! He should make a DVD of just Bloopers, to keep us all Entertained!!

I always assumed that it was made out of carrots.

aahahaha!!

It's a bribe thing!..Now it all Makes sense!

They had an hour long Clinton film on tv last night. First time I have seen him in action. Generally very impressed he seemed to use all the Pat Parelli games and taught them the same way. They had different names of course Sending Exercise = Squeeze Game, Desensitising = Friendly Game (though Clintons name for it does not convey its purpose which is confidence and reading of human neutral body language not desensitising), Sidepass = Sideways Game.
I did pick up a few idea that I have never seen in Parelli, but felt that he was a little firmer than Pat. He seemed to expect more from the horse on a first attempt at a new exercise. Sideways (I mean Sidepass) went on for ages, where Pat would teach to release at the first "thought" of sideways and then slowly build on it.
Surprised he made a big thing about there being no use for "sideways towards the handler". I use it all the time to mount from a fence or mounting block, getting the horse to come to me, at liberty, rather than lead them into position. The idea is to make them a part of the process. You can tell a lot if your horse suddenly does not sidepass to you to be mounted. They know this is the step before riding, and if they don't want to be ridden it is a gentle way of letting you know. Maybe best to check on the ground as to why before mounting and finding out !
All in all I can see why folks like Clintons' teachings and I suspect that choosing Pat or Clinton is mostly a personal thing not a technical one. Maybe to do with the accent , though I did get a bit fed up with the number of times he said "OK" .
I would think that studying both would be the best as both systems seem to be very compatible and one clinician cannot cover the entire topic, its' too big.

I've never heard it put like that before, but that is exactly what I have in mind when I'm working with the flag. Is that Pat's explanation? It's a good way to think of it.

A large part of the purpose of the freindly game is to get the horse a) confident with whatever the human happens to want to do around him and b) understand what the neutral body language of the human is when the human is after no response other than to maintain its responsibilities. Maintain gait, maintain direction and look where you are going. Maintain gait could mean stand still of course.
So by switching to friendly game after each other game (all of which require a response) then the horse learns the change in body language as the release is given.

This translates into riding. Having given the cue to walk on and had it obeyed the human switches into neutral and expects the horse to keep its' responsibilities. That neutral does not mean I can't do other things, just I am not talking to the horse at the moment. After all you may be working a cow off that horse.

Friendly game does not mean you have to have low energy, as I would have the walk energy still in my body when riding, but it does mean that I'm expecting nothing further from the horse at this moment, just keep doing what you are doing.
What it teaches the horse is the difference in body language, not body energy, that means neutral.

The way Friendly game is taught in Parelli level one with all that rope and stick swinging etc is not to desensitise the horse to the rope, (heaven forbid, they need to be sensitive to the rope) but to teach the human to be active but have no intention towards the horse in their body. If they have intention then the horse will react to the rope and the human gets feedback that their body language is not good enough yet.

It also has the effect of getting the horse confident with the rope, stick etc. Confident but not desensitised. Once the horse is confident it will remain in a learning state of mind when the tools are used, not a fearful instinctive state of mind where nothing is learnt.

I cannot imagine why we would want to desensitise the horse to the rope, stick or anything else. It would mean they became dull to their use.

Desensitize is usually used to mean "not afraid of", not "unaware of"...

I guess it depends which version of desensitised - definition of desensitised by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia. you take. I prefer not to use it as some of the definitions are most definitely not what we want to achieve and so using the phrase "make confident with" avoids folks picking up on the wrong one. I guess James banned its' use as he wanted no possibility of such an important concept to be misconstrued by his students.

I like your thinking on this! I think it would be so perfect for my girl. I'm not too well-versed in Parelli (have his book and done the level 1 stuff, vintage 1999) so I don't know if and how (or where) he goes about teaching sideways towards the handler, but would LOVE to hear & learn about it! Can you tell me more?

(Sorry to take the thread on a tangent.)