Holy F&^%*&&^*

And I JUST now heard about this bullshit:

Hi Patti,

Thank you for taking the time to write us. We understand your views and concerns. As quoted by the faculty at our ranch:

"You are quite right - helmets are fabulous things and they save many lives. Tragically though, people who ARE wearing helmets also die or suffer serious head injuries in accidents with horses.

Our program is intended to address the safety problem at its root - which is behavioral - rather than address the symptoms of it. Our message is about developing the relationship with the horse, and the savvy level of the rider, so that unsafe behavior is addressed long before the rider gets on the horse - rather than allowing the unsafe situations to continue to occur and hope that the helmet, body protector, etc, will protect us from the consequences.

The reason you do not see our people wearing helmets is because we try to teach people that rather than be brave because they are wearing a a helmet to protect them, they would be better off not riding until their horse is behaving safely.

People have called us brave for not wearing helmets, but we say they are a lot braver than we are. We would not get on their horse until we had addressed the issues that cause it to behave in unsafe ways.

We hope this helps,

From the Faculty, Parelli Centers"

WTF????????????? What morons!!!!! Morons, I tell you, MORONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My mare slipped on wet grass and went down just before Thanksgiving a year ago, and I was lucky to be wearing my helmet. Ivan slipped and went down just at the end of January, not when either of us were doing anything dumb, he just hit some turf that looked dry but wasn't, and if he had tossed me just a couple of feet farther I would have smacked headfirst into the roundpen! This is just another example of why I don't endorse the Parelli nincompoops, Linda or Pat.