Re: Is the RP a more effective, longterm learning environment than any other?

["Tracey" <tracey@tbt.co.za>]

Marv,


>The challenges I issue and am perfectly willing to back up at any time are
my way of emphasizing my confidence in the techniques that I have stumbled
on during many years of dealing with horse problems..  In no way are they
defensive.  My methods will stand or fall strictly on their merits.  The
things I use simply MUST work. Period. If they don't, they either need
fixing or dumping.>

Isn't that a bit limiting : each horse, and each person is an individual -
your methods may not work with that person or that horse.  It is not the
method which is flawed (unless it is harsh : harshness is always flawed),
nor is it the horse, nor the individual, but the mix of the three.  Don't
throw out the method, try to adapt it, or use something different in that
circumstance.


>Of course there is always the human factor involved.  Just as there are
MANY people who write and tell how great everything is working for them,
there are those who write and wonder what they did wrong.
My experiences tell me that the chances of it going wrong with me using the
techniques with the same horse under the same circumstances, is so unlikely
the chances are pretty much non-existant.  Sometimes a few words is all it
takes to get those who "fail" to succeed.>

See, this is where I get a tad irritated.  People see someone using a method
and then try it and fail.  They immediately feel like failures.  Perhaps you
can succeed with their horse, using the same method, but so what?  They
might have succeeded themselves, using a different method.  It isn't about
success or failure, it's about communication and there is more than one way
of communicating.


For everyone who wrote you / phoned you about their "failure", how many have
just given up on their horse?  I've seen it happen, and I feel so sorry for
the people and horses involved.  If only someone had just said "so what?
Try something different."  And if only they'd listened, but unfortunately,
people are often too caught up in the notion that a man with a round pen, a
book, a video and a website MUST be correct, and, by implication, they and
their horse, and their instincts MUST be wrong.  If this sounds offensive to
you, Marv, and I'm pretty sure it does (I just don't know how to word it any
other way), I'm sorry.  It's not aimed at you so much as the whole mindset
people have regarding NH.


>Your question, "explain why the round pen is a more effective, long-term
learning environment than any other," may not have an answer when taken as
stated.  In many cases it is the worst learning environment.  In other cases
it is the best learning environment.  The round pen is neither inherently
bad or inherently good, its value or lack thereof depends on its use.>


Thank you.  I think you understand me perfectly.


>We also have to determine what "long-term learning environment" means.
Does that mean you use the RP for a long term or that the work performed,
however briefly, in the RP has long-term effects?>

The message which certain (not all) NHmen are giving out is that the round
pen is the answer to each and every training problem which a horse has.  For
that matter, I believe all NHmen are saying (with the possible exceptions of
Rashid and Lyons) that THEIR techniques are the answer to each and every
training problem which a horse has.  This is where I start doing the
hot-foot shuffle and where my husband starts dragging me away from
discussions on NH!  Each person and each horse is an individual, and you
must pick and choose which method works for each horse.  As long as you are
constant in your treatment and training of THAT horse, the fact that you are
using a method which differes from someone else can't make you wrong.  Can
it?  And let's accept, for the sake of the didactic nature of this
discussion, that we accept that harsh methods are wrong.


>Let's for the sake of this discussion say that it means the latter - ANY
work done in the long pen having long term effects.  If we use that meaning
and then rephrase the question slightly, "under what circumstance would the
round pen be a more effective, long-term learning environment than any
other," there may be more available answers.>

Such as?


>I recommend people use the RP for one thing and one thing only - for the
times when you absoulutley need to control the horse in the safest manner
possible.  It is possible to control any horse in the RP who is not mentally
ill WITHOUT being attached to it.>

Great.  Excellent.  We are beginning to reach some kind of consensus!

>In the case of many people who seek my help, they are simply over-horsed.
They are terrified of being attached in any manner to that thing.  When that
terror affects everything they do on the ground there is NO logical reason
to tell them to climb on it.>

No, there isn't.


>Heck, there is no logical reason to tell them, "Just grab on and don't let
him get away with anything. it'll take care of itself in time."  It may or
it may not.  It is a very hairy way of dealing with fear.>


Yes, it is.


>The ONLY cure for fear is education.  We start the education out in the
safest manner possible tailoring it to the level of fear in the human.  We
teach the human how to control the horse in a confined area (the RP) from a
convenient distance that blends minimum effort with minimum risk.  Then we
have them mimic a lead horse using herd dynamics.>


Okay, here is where we digress.  Please explain to me how you would "mimic a
lead horse" and what you mean by "herd dynamics".


>In a few minutes the horse is connected and mirroring the humans wishes at
liberty.   At that point they understand how to achieve this connection
anytime they need to with any horse.>

Are you 100% sure of that?  Are you saying that if that person and that
horse were on a trail-ride, or in the arena and something unexpected were to
happen, that the RP training would immediately come into play and everything
would fall into place?  See, my experience with nervous riders on
over-horsed horses is that, in such an instance, knee-jerk reactions kick in
and the rider grabs at the reins, grips with his knees, probably emits some
kind of panicked wail, and the horse reverts to being what he is : a prey
animal with a very frightened weight on his back.  This kind of reaction has
to be UNLEARNED before a different reaction can be LEARNED.   Some people do
unlearn it over time, others never do.  Until the behaviour of both horse
and rider is unlearned, that combination will never be safe.  I don't think
that it is unlearned in the RP, either.  Sure, some of it is, but not in 30
minutes.  It takes a lot more time than that.  And it takes exposure to more
than the RP.


If I'm wrong here, climb right in.


>From there we teach how to move this control anywhere in the round pen at
will without any physical connection to the horse.  Once they have control
movement down we teach them how to move it outside the round pen into a
trailer, pasture, what have you.>

But when you ride a horse, you are not dealing with controlling only
movement, are you.  You are also having to control instinctive, split-second
reactions on the part of horse and rider.


Let's give you a personal example : my horse rears.  He hasn't done so for a
long time, but no way do I accept that he is now "not a rearer" - there may
come a day when he'll do it, and I better be ready for it.  For months after
he started rearing, I would grab the reins, grip with my knees, yell at him,
etc, etc.  It took a long time for me to control my fear enough to be able
to watch for the signs.  They were very, very subtle - he'd get light behind
first, then light in front, then he'd do a little buck, then stand up in
front, then turn around on his back legs, land and piss off.  There was no
point reacting to the first sign, as that didn't always lead to rearing -
sometimes he'd stop after the buck.  What I realised was that if I dropped
the reins, let go with my legs, and laughed at his antics, he'd sometimes
settle.  Otherwise, I used to sit out the rear, and then, as he landed, spin
him in a circle so he couldn't piss off (which was his primary objective
anyway and when it wasn't achieved, the rearing kind of lost its appeal)
Now, this took more guts on my part than I can tell you about, and leaves
some people flummoxed, but before I could learn how to stop the rearing, or
accept it, I had to learn to stop fearing it.  That fear didn't dissipate in
the round pen, or in the school - it dissipated with time.

>Once they learn to move the control over the ground, we show them how to
move the control into the air.  We teach them this by having them put the
horse through a series of tests by attempting to recreate
the undesirable behaviors the horse had previously and then correcting any
that pop up.

Gradually the human is on the horse and then we have them control the horse
from the saddle.  Once the horse is controlled easily around the round pen,
we begin moving that control out of the round
pen into the wide open spaces.>

Then I've misjudged you, Marv.  I thought you were suggesting a 30 minute RP
answer to spooking?  Sounds like this would take a lot longer.


>Yes, it does carry over outside the pen and down the trail.  What the human
has learned to get the horse to do with the assistance of the RP works even
where there is no round pen.>

Not sure about that.  With some people / horses it would.  Not with others.

>Education has reduced the fear of the rider.  In the case of spooking,
education (learning the human has leadership abilities) reduces the fear,
very often eliminates, of the horse. >

Sometimes you are correct.  But sometimes, what this does is buries the fear
of the rider and leads to a false sense of security which, once the cracks
start to show, is a whole lot more dangerous than confidence which is built
up over a long time.  At the end of the day, that horse and rider go home
and have to face real life.  For many of them, they never have another
incident, but some of them do, and it burns me when they start thinking that
they have somehow failed because the method did not work for them.  And yes,
Marv, there are people who think that way.


>In one of the pages beginning at http://MarvWalker.com/pysch.htm tells
about Dee my all time favorite trail horse who went from a dangerous spooker
to a practically spookproof horse in less than 10 minutes.  She is still
spookproof years later.  I have on numerous occasions fallen asleep on her
and woke up way down the trail.>


It's YOU on that horse, Marv.  Not some rider who has been decked more times
than he / she cares to remember.  Dee might have reverted to spooking with a
more nervous rider.  PG doesn't spook with me anymore, either, but I watched
him spook the other day with his previous owner, even though she is now a
lot more confident than she was, as she's now on a schoolmaster.  She
herself admitted that, when she saw something which would have set PG off
before, she tensed, in a small way, and PG felt that and reacted as he
always had.  After she had been on him a while longer, she relaxed, and he
stopped spooking.  They had to "unlearn" six years of learned behaviour
first, though.


>Now, is it 100% fool proof?  Of course not.  Nothing is with horses.  If
something SHOULD happen to where the control is in danger of slipping away
or has unexpectly slipped, the human knows how to
re-establish it - the initial round pen work has "trained" the horse to
accept control (more accurately trained the human to create a set reaction
in the horse).>


I disagree that it needs to be re-established at all.  I don't see it as
control slipping away - I see it as a progressive learning curve.  Going
back to the RP / whatever is not going to establish the control which you
don't have on the trail.


>In the area of spooking, the RP, along with carefully thought out and
executed training techniques, the round pen is the most effective long-term
environment learning environment becuse it enables more control with less
danger in the shortest possible time.>

Why do you want to do it in the shortest possible time?  I have always been
suspicious of short-cuts - very often, as with gadgets, the cracks only
start showing years later.  There is no substitute for being honest with
people and saying : "this is a horse, not a motorcycle, it has a heart, mind
and soul of its own, and always will have.  If you spend enough time with
it, you and he will learn to read each other and form a partnership which
will make your time together safer and more pleasant.  I can help you get
started, but I can't guarantee that any one method will work, or tha you
won't have slip-ups.  There is no substitute for time."


>The round pen is NOT a long-term effective learning environment for lead
changes, any kind of training at the faster speeds or anything where you are
physically connected to the horse.  The round pen used for anything other
than controlling the horse in the absence of anything else is detrimental.
If you can control the horse don't take it into the RP.  After you have
reasonably lessened control worries, do all your other training on the flat,
on the trails, in the arena, what have you.



You've gone up another notch, Marv :-)

>There is no substitute for under saddle work or ground work outside the
round pen.  There are techniques that can save you a LOT of time,
frustrations and danger.  >

Let's just agree to disagree on this one, okay.  They may save time in the
here and now, but I believe that, with most horses, you'll have to invest
that time later.


Tracey "there's no greater form of education than conversation" Maidens.