Your opinion on Parelli

I think you are taking my post a little far personally...

How would you feel if you were pegasus and you had a training method you liked and no one had anything good to say about it [pretty much]. She nicely tried to steer the conversation in a positive direction and was immediately met with negativity.

Every thread on here that is about parelli always ends up 100 pages long and constant bickering. It would be nice if it wasnt like that. I feel bad for pegasus that she can't talk about a training method she likes and have it be kept civil. I read from her posts that that is how she's feeling.

Honestly, I don't have strong feeling about parelli one way or another. I just feel bad for pegasus and I can relate with her situation and empathize with her.

BTW - Pegaus1 is a guy.



Hopefully he'll stick around. Not a lot of guys on the forum.

Whoops my bad ! I assume everyone is a female !

If you read through the thread, I got a lot of negativity on my training method. There are two sides to every situation.. And maybe if PP was a decent horseman and a decent rider, there would be some much negativity about bit. He honestly couldn't ride a stick horse to the well...

Wow, I've just caught up on this thread and all I can say is....Holy Shinoly!

Unfortunately, folks who think that loping their horse along in a straight line down a beach is something that's impressive and exhibits phenomenal training if they can do it with nothing more than a string around their neck don't expect much of their horses.

Sure, the horse may (or may not) be perfectly content to plod around with zero expectations put on them, but that doesn't mean that everyone who actually uses their horse is mistreating them.

I can take any one of my broke horses and lope them around with a string around their neck...no problem at all. THEN, I can take any one of them and go accomplish something and do it at mach 3 if needed.

That little girl in the video of the horse on the beach looks like she's having fun, but can she stop that horse, spin him around, and ask for a lope the other direction and get it accomplished in less than 3 strides? I seriously doubt it.


Anyway, I could comment on a couple hundred posts in this thread, but this one really kind of stuck in my craw so I felt the need to address it.

Actually, no real cowboy wants a horse that is a robot. Around cattle or riding in rough country, a robotic horse will get you killed.

Do not mistake willingness and obedience in a horse as being robotic.

Folks who do actual work with their horses need a horse with a mind of it's own that is capable (and can be trusted) to make their own decisions regarding a lot of stuff. I require my horses to pick their own way across a pasture if I'm looking at cattle, even if we're running full out. If I'm working the rope, I need the horse to know where they need to be so that I don't have to take the time to tell them and break my concentration.

If you're running as fast as a horse can run behind a cow and trying to rope it, you need a horse that will stay on that cow's hip on their own with no input from you. It makes the whole thing harder on everyone involved; horses, cattle, and riders, if the cowboy has to actually cue the horse to stay on the cow's hip.

Dame, unfortunately, Hollywood does a very poor job of copying the actual life of a cowboy. I can watch any movie or TV show, no matter how great and "factual" the general public thinks it is, and pick it completely apart and point out about a million things that they are doing wrong. That, to me, is a true tragedy because much of the rest of the world bases their "knowledge" of the western way of life on what they see in movies.

Unless you've lived in the cowboy lifestyle or ridden a vaquero bridle horse, then you really have no idea about much of anything regarding that subject and are in no position to judge.

However, many of us have watched enough of Parelli and his teachings (or, in some cases, handled enough Parelli trained horses) to have enough of an idea to make an educated judgment on that subject. Thankfully, I've only had 3 horses come through my barn whose owners were Parelli "followers". All 3 of them were ill-mannered, sour, and spiteful horses who were supremely unhappy when they arrived. However, when they left, they were very nice, responsive, and HAPPY.

The amazing thing is, all 3 of them were ridden in bits while they were here, they were used to work cattle, and they enjoyed their jobs so much that they would stick their own head in the halter when I would go to catch them in the dark mornings where their owner had to crowd them into a small pen just to catch them before.


Where they had to be herded into the trailer with fence panels or have whips/ropes used on them to get them loaded when they came here, by the time they left, they would eagerly jump into the trailer because they knew that they had a day of work ahead of them.

Yet, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, you believe that those horses were being abused because they were ridden in a bit and actually had responsibilities to live up to.

Whoop whoop!!! Good post smrobs! The little clicker only lets me "like", but I "love" it :)

Smrobs - I see you have run into the exact same thing I have. PP followers' horses that were so mad and kept ears back and 2 even ground their teeth around people. They had been picked at and pecked at until they were so pissed at anyone on the end of the lead-rope that they must have wanted to kill them.

I used to hunt down a lot of horses for beginners and 4-H kids, etc. -- kinda like a cattle order buyer. I was not a 'trader' and did not want to turn over horses, but always had a order or two for a gentle horse or a 'project' horse. I got to the point that I would not even go look at one that people said were PP followers or had done the 7 games with them. I knew they were sour and mad and not willing and just plain had a Piss-poor attitude. I did not want to retrain them and I sure did not want to stick some poor beginners with an ill-tempered horse. I just said "No thank you" when someone told me they were PP horses. On top of that, most of them did not ride worth a nickle. I guess they had mostly just 'played games'. And for all them to be ground games, their actual ground manners were horrible. Any ranch horse has better ground manners than those pigs did.

I just thought it was maybe just me or the horses I had run into. I'm sort of glad you've run into the same thing.

Oh well. I'll get off of my soap-box now.
Cherie

You can add me to the list, I too have dealt with and or seen resentful PP trained horses.

EDIT, PP and the other "unmentionable" on this forum I can not even attempt to be open minded about....
Even in horse training where there are so many variables and methods there is still such a thing as wrong.

I have no use for PP or his methods and the product that is turned out as a result of his methods. It's a HUGELY flawed system and I'm in agreement with Robs, Cherie and Cowchick.

I have run into quite a few horses that Clinton Anderson methods have been used on and have not seen any problems with them. [Some of them may be a little 'punchy' from being over-stimulated maybe.] But, they were not 'ill' from being 'over picked' at. As a whole, I would sure not avoid them like I do the PP trained horses.

On another note, I have run into quite a few horses that 'join up' had been done and the owners thought they were following Monty Roberts. They followed you around, but they they weren't broke to ride. When does he teach people to actually teach a horse something under saddle?