A woman on my facebook emailed me and asked me who I 'followed' when it comes to Horse Training. Amused and pretty certain of the outcome I told the truth - I don't follow any one trainer, I told her, but I learn from them all, and thus, I am me. The woman was a Parelli follower and deleted me from Facebook as her friend. This has happened on 3 occasions. Each time these women happened to be Parelli followers, and they owned one horse that did well with the Parelli plan. Since I have put training on hundreds of horses I can tell you this - I love to hear what ALL trainers have to say. Do I have most of the Parelli DVD's? Yes, I do - in addition to an amazing library of information from all sorts of Horse Trainers. That doesn't mean that I apply everything I hear, see, or learn, but I sure do want to know what is out there. No matter who the trainer is, you can always learn at least one thing from them that you are glad you know. I'm certainly not a parrot of Pat Parelli, nor Chris Cox, or Clinton Anderson, or anyone else in the industry of horse training, but I'll never close my mind or any door to the possibility of making a positive difference in a horses life. Forgetting the judgemental side of it, I really think that the women who deleted me from facebook were simply being sincere in their support of the Parelli's and what they believe them capable of. But perhaps they walked away from learning one interesting aspect of horse knowledge from a nobody like me that could have taken them to a higher level of communication with horses...
Very well said! There is so much out there and one can learn something from everyone, good or bad. We are all individuals as are our horses. We cannot become someone else. Yes, we may be able to incorporate some of their methods in our training. You sure said it well. Jim Frank
Thank you, Jim. People tend to think that horses are all the same. All Horses learn from pressure and the release of pressure, but the TYPE OF PRESSURE, HOW MUCH PRESSURE, and WHEN TO PUT ON THAT PRESSURE will totally depend on the horse that you are working with because they are so different. If you can't 'read' a horse you can't train a horse.
