Re: RC: "Natural Horsemanship"

[Linda Cowles <lindac@gilroy.com>]

As someone who will use whatever the different riding disciplines
have to offer, this bunch of "Natural Horsemanship" nonsense gets me a
hell of a lot farther with my endurance and dressage horses than 
anything other bunch of hooey I've tried, so you can scoff at it, 
or what it's called, all you want. It works! It doesn't matter what 
it's called if it's effective.

It's called "natural" because it's based on using the horses instinctive 
actions and reactions vs gimmicks like shanked bits, martingales and 
draw reins. That's about as deep as the term goes. When you go to these
"Natural Horsemanship" clinics, the first thing most of them tell you is 
that these ways of working horses go all the way back to the beginning, 
that it's nothing new at all. 

It's no more propaganda than any other descriptive term applied to any
other product. The term "Dressage" is just as contrived sounding. I love
dressage too, BTW. But straight dressage taught by good instructors
never got me as far as NH when it came to teaching a horse a correct
shoulder-in, haunches in, turns, bends and yields. My dressage, which
I'd studied for years, grew in leaps with the completion of a few of
these "natural" lessons. The combination is great.

"Natural Horsemanship" can be used on unstarted calves too! Gav and I
had the opportunity to work cows twice this weekend, and one of those
times was trying to get three stubborn calves off a nice wide road with
lots of green grass on the edges, through a gate into a wide expanse of
nothing interesting and lots scary - a parking lot! I've never seen a
calf head for a parking lot "naturally", so using all of my nonsense
that I learned from the propagandists, me and Gav scooted those young
ladies through the gate and back into the hills with very little effort.
We used techniques devised by our ancestors many centuries ago, which
one of these slick schiester salesmen calls "the driving game" and "the
squeeze game". We also used "the porcupine game" - of all the silly
names! Who cares? It worked great. The horses don't care about what we
call it, the cattle REALLY don't care. Does it work? It does.

"Special K" is not special, "Dairy Queen" has not royalty, there is
nothing particularly safe about "Safeway" and what do they mean by
"General Motors" anyway? It's a label. Take what works out of it, ignore
the rest. If you can ignore it all, if you have enough talent with
horses that yours are perfectly trained without using anyone else's
ideas - hell, more power to you! I'll watch you ride, watch your horses
and see if they're as good as your attitude implies! Anyone with your
attitude must be quite a good hand! If you have techniques I can use.
I'll use them. I don't care if you are called a "Sweety".

Laughingly - Linda


sweety@nni.com wrote:
> 
> LOL!  I have a lot of trouble with the catch-phrase 'natural horsemanship'
> there's no damn such thing! Horses do not naturally tote predators around on
> their backs, nor if you gave them a free choice would they care to do so. We
> 'convince' them to do so for our own benefit, employing behavioral
> conditioning...it is not natural in the least. The more effective will use
> similar techniques to manipulate their horses' behavior as another horse
> would in a herd enviornment, but a predator doing this is NOT natural...
> 'NH' is just a bunch of propaganda hooey that some one used to start selling
> their advice....

  Linda Cowles                        408.847.3531 - Office
  Lion Oaks Ranch                     408.390.0728 - Cell
  5355 Hecker Pass                    kadence@ix.netcom.com
  Gilroy CA 95020



=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net.    
Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/RideCamp   
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=