Restarting a Horse

Wow Jimmy, being compared to Parelli, ouch.

I will make one distinction. I think the jumping jacks and the Eddy Murphy routine are forms of human affect modulation and not essentially threatening, just attention getting. The Parelli video use of the whip is essentially threatening in response to the horse showing "fight" by facing the trainer. The use of the whip turns the "fight" to "flight".

I think in these partially trained/partially abandoned horses we don't want to threaten them. They have been on their own learning from the life they have in the pasture. If they have learned anything about humans, it probably is they are not a threat. Most likely humans show up, feed and leave. What these horses don't understand is that humans will ask them to do certain things. I have found that they find this aspect of humans puzzling when, later in life and all of a sudden, something is expected of them. This, I think, is the underlying general dynamic of this kind of horse. When trained later, they get puzzled very easily.

Some might challenge like the horse in the Parelli video, but my experience is most of this kind of let-go horse shows more puzzlement than objection. If one stood and faced me like in the video, I'd believe it's because they are confused not obstinate or threatening. Rather that shake the whip like Parelli, I would walk up to them, turn them in the direction of the circle, lead them a few feet and then snap my fingers to motivate them into the circle.

This is why cook book DVDs are not so useful. These mass media offerings cannot teach a horse owner judgment. How can a DVD tell you if a horse stands and faces you on a lunge line whether it is being obstinate or confused?

Rarely is the level and quality of energy that Parelli demonstrates necessary to achieve the goal he is attempting. I will however explain an experience I had nearly 50 years ago at my first paid training job.

The place that hired me as an assistant trainer was run by a couple. Big place 40 mares, 3 studs. The husband was a skilled insightful horse trainer ahead of his time and I learned a lot from him. His wife not so much. She was a ride-the-buck-out-of-em, beat-the-crap-out-of-em type (kinda messes with my gender stereotypes). They had the nicest round pen I ever saw before or since. It had solid timber walls maybe 8 feet high with a solid door. A horse in there was very alone with a trainer and not distracted. The acoustics helped too, you could almost whisper and the horse could hear you. I was in there almost every day working young horses, some days for six hours. I learned to work a lunge line and whip in there. There was a ladder attached to the outside wall of the pen. The owners could use it to peek over the wall and watch you work a horse. Sometimes I'd look up and see the husband's head silently watching me.

One day I got a new young horse less than 2 years old to work. This colt had never been in the round pen before. The note on the chalk board told me to teach him how to lunge. He was a handful. Getting him through the heavy door and closing it wasn't easy. I remember this horse after 50 years, he was a gray. He faced me like the horse in the Parelli video. I tried to turn him and start him in a circle several times and he kept resisting. I was young and not very experienced but thought, how difficult can this be? He started rearing, swinging his butt, making trouble. I could have sworn he tried to bump me and run over me a few times, but I just kept at him. Eventually I got him doing a circle but only by constantly cracking my long lunge whip up by his face. Later in my career, I might have put some side reins on him to make it easier. He kept turning in on me and constantly trying to face me but my whip skills keep him moving.

Then from above, I heard the wife yelling at me. She'd climbed the ladder and didn't like how I was cracking the whip by his head. Either did I. She came through the door and took over. I was told to stand behind her. She got him going in a circle and he kept threatening, then he lunged into the center at us both. I bolted toward the wall with the intention of scaling it. When I got there I couldn't climb it and I looked back. She was laying there in the dirt. He had run her over. The horse was running around dragging the line. She swore a streak all the way to and out the door.

I never met a young horse like that ever again. I met some aggressive older horses, but never such a young one so bent on flattening me. My point is Parelli seemed to be working that horse in the video. Maybe that horse was one of those one-in-a-thousand that will run you over, but I don't think it was. Parelli was in overkill mode, something I don't generally associate with him.

Jimmy is always questioning whether horses are prey animals. Ever since I watched the Cloud, Stallion of the Rockies series on PBS I have come to doubt that old standard myth. Stallion behavior is not prey behavior, and there are degrees of that energy in geldings and mares too.

The young horse I described in my last post is very unusual, in my experience. His aggression could not have been in reaction to humans. A that farm the mares with their fouls were left very much to themselves. The young ones were weaned in groups and I don't see how a single horse could get that way about people from people. At around 16-18 months we got them out of their large paddocks and began handling them, training them in a systematic way. That interaction of him trying to run me over and then running over that woman was one of his earliest sessions.

Like you say, maybe he was just born with tremendous fear and was over the top in protecting himself. At that time I had worked some horses but was really a beginner trainer, and I thought from that experience that he might be typical of young horses. The years went by and I never encountered another young horse quite like him and I was looking, believe me. He scared me. I can't say what it was, fear, predator aggression, something to the nth degree.

I'm not convinced fear aggression has anything to do with a prey/predator situation. It happens across species that are both. Its very complex.

I feel like it has a lot to do with thethe degree to which an animal feels vulnerabilities. In the case of that colt, he was out of the environment he was used to, with a person who was acting in a manner inconsistent with his experiences and then there was another person who changed the situation further.

Speaking of her manner with horses, she's not the only woman Ive seen act like that. I feel like that is also due to insecurities and vulnerabilities.