Dressage & My Horsey Life

Monday, February 28, 2011

LOL

Apologies, I'm still up on my soapbox this morning.

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.

This made me laugh...

I like this. Very true. Oh yeah, and it's in reference to the other Pat Parelli stuff that I posted earlier this morning.

The man's an idjit.

And whatever person/entity came up with speed training a greenie in a busy crowded environment should be horsewhipped.

Has zero to do with horses. Has 100% to do with morons showing off doing something they know they shouldn't be doing at the expense of the horse for a crowd of dimwit sycophants. All in the chase for the almighty marketing dollar.

Morons.

Absolute Bullshit

Evidently, this is Pat Parelli's response on the "unscheduled dismount" off the colt he picked for the Road To The Horse competition. The title of this blogpost sums up my response to what he said.

Pat Parelli: On why he selected Hey Whiskey as his horse: “He looked amiable. I connected with him right away. I saw him moving around out there when they moved the horses around last night. He wasn’t the boss hoss, and he wasn’t the wimp on the bottom, either. I thought, ‘He’s a nice horse,’ and he’s the kind of horse I’d like to own.

“I really felt like that horse gave me a lot today. Again, I stick with rapport first, then I start working on respect, and then I start working on the impulsion and flexions. I’ve got some work to do now on his respect, so he understands, so he’s not afraid of me, but at the same time, I’m communicating with him, controlling him and can move his body where I need to. That’s my job tomorrow.”

On an unscheduled dismount: “Wasn’t that slick? That was a slick a dismount as a guy knows how to do at my age. I was trying to get dismounted before he got tight. And then when he kind of started to move, I just said, ‘Well let’s just twist out of here and get out of here slick and easy.’ He was hiding from me on his right side on his eye. He’d look at me real good on the left eye, but when I got up and threw that rope over, I realized, he’s not wanting to look at me over here. I’ve got a little work to do on that side.”

“I tried to do two things, to make sure that if that horse’s mom was watching, she’d be proud of what – or not ashamed of what was happening to her little horse, and I was there as if Tom Dorrance, Ronnie Willis and Ray Hunt were watching. They were sitting up in the light banks looking down, and I didn’t want to wear that colt down. I wanted to make sure he was confident, curious, still sensitive.”

I think he is a scam artist. And that man fell off. What an idiot.

Here's a link to The Original Article with Pat Parelli's Response

Parelli's Bucking Colt - Road To the Horse 2011

Pat Parelli getting bucked off. I do believe the HORSE won this round.

I'm glad he wasn't hurt, but I will say that I think this is a great example of how stupid this competition is. A competition to see who can train a horse the fastest is complete bullshit. All you accomplish by forcing a horse through all the motions that quickly is to build a poor foundation. And in the end, you get dumped. Bravo, little horse. That was humbling.