Posts Tagged ‘natural horsemanship
Equine Massage
So my hulk muscles have come with a price it seems. While stretching my aching muscles yesterday (yes just stretching) I seem to have pulled or torn a muscle in my shoulders/back. Oh it was horrible, I felt like someone had stabbed me. I somehow managed to get myself and the dogs to work (while hobbling down the street to my store very hunched over). I spent pretty much the entire day sitting at my desk in agonizing pain. When it was finally time to leave I went straight home and slept until my husband was very kindly able to give me a very long massage, which actually helped some. I am definitely much better today (I can atleast stand up straight) but I still can’t turn my head without agonizing pain. I guess it was bound to happen with all the heavy (man) lifting I have been doing lately – but stretching? What am I 50 years old? Hardly, atleast not yet…..this should not be happening to me at 25.
But anyway, my sore muscles got me thinking about my ponies sore muscles – which I’m sure they have. So I searched youtube and came across a video that goes into a pretty good short description of message techniques that you can use on your own horse at home. Maybe I can talk someone into using these techniques on me later tonight. 🙂
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
Can’t we all just get along?
So lately I have become obsessed with learning more and more about training horses and the different techniques that are out there. Honestly I like to use a little bit of everything when I train my ponies, which is great because there seems to be thousands and thousands of horse training “groups” and methods to subscribe to. The ever-popular Natural Horsemanship method – which I’m sure all horse owners have heard of is defined by Wikipedia as:
The philosophy of working with horses by appealing to their instincts and herd mentality. It involves communication techniques derived from wild horse observation in order to build a partnership that closely resembles the relationships that exist between horses.
Lately I feel like there has become this cult of horse lovers out there that are convinced that there is only one way to do things – their own personal “natural horsemanship method”. Now I mean no disrespect by any of this, because if I had to peg myself as some sort of trainer I would have to say I was a natural horsemanship trainer as well. But I’ve noticed that the blogs, youtube vidoes, and horse groups have become flooded by comments from people who say things like “you’re being cruel to your animal”, “I don’t like the tone of voice you use to train your animal”, and the ever popular “the way you train your animal is all wrong”. And the interesting thing is these comments are being added to video’s and posts where I can detect no actual cruelty. For example I watched a video of a trainer working with an elephant in which he used a stern voice to tell the elephant to back up, turn around, and so on. There was no cruelty involved what-so-ever, no beating, no physical pain, the trainer simply had a stern tone in his voice. But this video is now getting comments like this is cruel – “I can’t believe someone would train an animal this way”. So I looked a little further and discovered that the trainer uses clicker training, and positive reinforcement methods to train the elephants – so maybe he did have a stern tone in his voice – he didn’t beat the animal did he? Sorry but this kind of stuff is just really getting my blood to boil, because shouldn’t we all be using our energy to chastise the real animal beaters?
(as a little side note I can’t stand when people give trainers flack for using the word “no” – its utterly ridiculous, that word no doesn’t do any harm but tell your animal that thats not the behavior you want. “No” doesn’t mean it comes entangled with a beating! Sorry just one of my pet peeves.)
I’m hearing the “positive reinforcement trainers” chastise the Parelli people, and so on and so on. Its just simply ridiculous because the way I see it, its all Natural Horsemanship (if you want to put a term to it). No one is beating their animal, maybe some sort of pressure is involved (for example asking your horse to move over by pressing on his flank), but is this animal cruelty? I think not!
I’m just tired of seeing everyone turn on eachother when we all have the same end goal – a positive training method that leaves our horses happy and willing to work with us. Anyway thats my rant for today – I just couldn’t hold it in any longer. 🙂
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
