What is your opinion on Parelli?

Speaking of training Gurus riding badly --

Have you seen the introduction video of Monte Roberts on his TV show that comes on HRTV?

He is riding a professionally trained reined cowhorse in a romal and his hands are even worse than the Parelli clip. It is very obvious that this was a well trained horse trained by someone else who was cringing if they saw him put this ride on it.

I can guarantee that M.R. NEVER trained a reining or reined cowhorse in his life. One with his poor riding skills could not have trained a finished horse of any discipline.

It's good to have the attitude of, "If you have a better way, please show me!" So, if you never investigate what others are doing, you won't know if they do something better for the horse, agreed!

It's a productive attitude, for the horse; not a bashing attitude toward the trainer who doesn't know the better way.

Caveat: It's counterproductive, however, to skim over a program, (never really "get" it!), broadcast a twisted view of it, drop it due to your own trials of emotional growth (you're going to be out of your comfort zone if you're really learning!), etc. All that's what I see all too often, regarding PP, as mentioned in earlier post.

I am going to assume that the caveat in this post is aimed at me.

I would like to rebut your statement by saying that I bought all the level one "stuff" on good faith that it would set me on a course that would allow me to train my horse. I live in rural NZ and have no access to a Parelli mentor but then the products are marketed in such a way that you don't realize that you are going to need one. The DVD's were less than helpful, they were frustrating, confusing and caused me no end of self doubt. There was absolutely NO trouble shooting help, just endless images of PP with a horse seamlessly performing everything perfectly. Nowhere did he offer solutions on what to do when my horse was rearing endlessly at the end of my line - the horse in the DVD never did that! My horse of the time never even came close to behaving like the horse on the DVD but there were no solutions presented on this "instructional set of DVD's, nothing.

Was my horses behaviour my fault - you bet. Did I know any better at the time? No. Should I have? Hard to say really, I had spent several hundred dollars on instructional DVD's that offered me no instruction what so ever. Oh did I mention that I ended up feeling so frustrated that I ended up scrimping and saving so I could pay one of the few Parelli gurus in NZ to come and help me with my horse. I paid $700 to watch one hour of this guy work with my horse, doing stuff that IN NO WAY resembled anything on the DVD's. What a joke, and it was on me.

I knew that some shmuck was going to pipe up and say "you did the program wrong". Well, Northern screw you, I did the program as I paid a several hundred dollars for it. Someone give me my money back!

I haven't seen Monty's new show. Do you think there would be videos on youtube or something?

I like watching training videos on youtube. A lot of them show you with horses that aren't trained already. And they're free!!

Why oh why does this question of Parelli and the validity of his methods , program and marketing techniques get people SO hot under the collar? I mean, critisize Monty Roberts, or Cllinton Anderson or Julie Goodnight and it doesn't start a firestorm. Why PP?

'Cause they know they are wrong but don't want to admit it? LOL

Because by far PP is the one with the largest following.

My friend who does parelli came over yesterday and saw me riding about bareback with a bridle but not using the reins at all and doing all the manouvers id usually do, ie collection, extention, transitions and jumping and my mare was listening to me perfectlly and she said "I see you've finally started parelli then." as if it is the only way to achieve such a result. I said "No I havnt, this is the result of me achieving a bond with my horse via my own methods which don't involve paying silly ammounts of money on the dvds and equipment." she then said "but surely you are playing the games?" me "nope, parelli isnt the only way you know :)"

I agree completely Cessbee! And thanks for sharing!

It's probably the moustache