Your opinion on Parelli

I have a friend who is basically obsessed with Parelli right now. I gave it a try, did the basic seven games one day with my mare. I'd dabbled in them before a few years ago, so it wasn't like it was brand new to me. I mean, it was fun, but I definitely didnt want to do it again the next day. I just wanted to ride.

I tried watching the level one dvds, and I could hardly get past the introduction. I liked the seven games (that's all I really know about his methods), but something about him just rubbed me the wrong way. I wasn't crazy about the way he worked with the horse, and I couldn't get through all the fluff with his wife and that other lady.

My friend is an experenced horsewomen with a lot of success under her belt. And now she's saying things like "don't do that, you don't want the mto think you're a predator", ok maybe I could see that being relevant to the two year old we are working with, but not my five year old mare. Trust me, she knows I'm not going to eat her.

So my opinion on Parelli is pretty indifferent, if not slightly annoyed by it.

Now when I watched Buck Brannaman's documentary, that was something else. So I'm not anti-NH, but I'm not going to follow one trainer religiously.

Bsms, I was going by your quote here. Thanks for the further quotes using the word, "revolutionary" as applying to the horsemanship coming out of PNH. In fact, I was wondering if they'd gone to doing that, since I've been out of the loop for a while, (figured you'd set me straight if I was wrong) & my worst fears have been confirmed.

Yet, I must point out that this is another change: Pat himself has always maintained that his horsemanship is "so old, it's new again!" Can't get much clearer than that, that he's not claiming to have invented it. As Pegasus said, he's also always been careful to publicly credit his mentors (Dorrances, Troy Henry, etc.) for teaching him horsemanship. He's also said that PNH is just "vaquero" horsemanship.

I also point out that, rather than Pat, it's LINDA advertising her "epiphanies" & her "revolutionary approach". This is an example of the "Linda point" on my list.

I listed the issues to be of help to those trying to decide which way to go.

Here are a couple more issues that people may not want to deal with:

1. Whether or not the student's questions, from working through the home study program, will get answered correctly, will get answered without requirement that student join online discussion at a fee, will get answered even if student pays & joins.

2. Whether or not the student wants to spend a lot of time online, as PNH seems to have morphed into a strong online community, with several websites, participation in which seems to have become essential to success in the program. Buck Brannaman has no such pressure to be online, as an example of the other way to live.

You can put socks in the oven but that don't make them biscuits.....

Whether PNH IS vaquero hms is a separate issue, & not the point PP was making; the point he was making is that PNH is nothing NEW, nothing he invented.

Yet he calls it PNH. Why is that?

That's the farthest thing from vaquero horsemanship I've ever seen...

Of course it's not that vaquero stuff!
Or nobody would pay attention to PP!
Who would want to ride vaquero when you know how to do better?

I don't know, maybe because he coined the phrase "Natural Horsemanship" in the first place ?

Source "The Revolution in Horsemanship" by Robert M Miller and Rick Lamb. Page 35. Quote "In the 1980s, Pat Parelli coined the term "natural horsemanship" and gave the name to an entire movement"

On the subject of Linda I tend to agree that she is not a good rider. Her epiphanies annoy me and many other Parelli students as well. Especially the "Game of Contact".
I think the major mistake was allowing Linda onto videos before she was ready (marital pressure ?). She seemed to be barely level 3 when she made some of the earlier videos. That was a mistake.
However I have to say that the recent batch of monthly DVDs have Linda teaching a student on them and they are very good. But in general I pay more attention to Pat than Linda. Fortunately on the website you can filter out videos from Linda when searching for a particular subject :) .
But I am not throwing out an entire program because they have made mistakes. I think most folks have enough intelligence to filter the wheat from the chaff, as is shown on this forum by the number of poor videos that antis can find and recognise them as such. Or do you all think that you are so far above my standard that only you can see that the videos are bad and I need protecting from them ?
As for poor hands my I remind you that former Paralympic Gold medallist Lauren Barwick was living and studying on the Parelli ranch prior to winning gold. I guess some of the students aren't no-hopers after all. She even came on tour with Parelli to the UK after her win and gave a very moving half hour talk on her progress to Beijing in front of 6000 people. There were 12000 eyes crying after that.

Somewhere else than in the Unites States? Show me...