I think Linda Parelli is frightened of horses.
Perhaps if she hadn't met old Pat, and had continued with what she did before, which was ride fairly well, she wouldn't have been in the spotlight today. She has set herself up as a trainer of horses in the Parelli school and I don't think she is up to it.
The priciples of love, language and leadership may well be the the foundation of Parelli Horsemanship, but they are certainly not to the fore in some of their practice.
These clips are causing a furore across the world. All the horse forums are carrying pages and pages of debate and argument about them. As usual, the Parelli stance is that these clips are only part of a whole which should be looked at in its entirety before judgement is passed. They say the context cannot be realised unless the whole story is known.
Many people are incensed that a huge establishment which set itself up as an educational body, does demos, and makes mega-millions on sales of equipment and training aids, can use this sort of example to influence novice horse-trainers, and defend themselves by suggesting that complainants are incapable of understanding their methods.
Personally, I find it disgusting that anyone would treat a horse in some of the ways Linda Parelli does. She would appear to be punishment-oriented in her approach to handling horses, probably because she is afraid of them, and she is very short on encouragement, reward and praise, three things which are essential to successful training of horses. On occasion, she seems to be almost causing the horses to make mistakes so that she can demonstrate her methods of correction to her bemused students.
Unfortunately, many genuinely caring people who are novice horse-owners and trainers find themselves sucked into the machine which is Parelli, and find their dreams shattered by the reactions of their horses to the over-complicated methodology.
Horses easily become confused if the trainer does not provide simple cues which, by repetition, allow the horse to find the required response. If the horse gives an incorrect response, and is met with a totally different cue, or an increase in pressure, rather than a repeat of the initial cue, he will become stressed and will quickly begin to resist such efforts to train him. Intimidation will only serve to increase his resistance and, in the absence of the ability to flee, the horse may become dangerous as he tries to find relief from the situation.
Horses instinctively lean into physical pressure applied to parts of their body. They have to be taught to yield to physical pressure before they can be expected to respond to the refinement from physical cues into visual or spoken ones. That's why Parelli students find it so difficult to teach a horse to back-up by using a wiggly rope. The horse fails to understand the cue and, instead of helping him with another aid, such as halter pressure or a hand on his face, the student is taught to increase the speed and activity of the wiggle on the rope. When the horse fails to understand that, the student again increases the activity until, at 'phase 4', the rope is being swung so violently that the horse is bound to throw his head up in response. At this point he is hollow-backed, with his head up and, because he finds it difficult to step back in such a position, he is likely to come forward and will probably run right over the student. That is a prime example of a horse becoming dangerous through resistance caused by improper handling.
Linda Parelli seems oblivious to the fact that, in order to step back, a horse needs to be able to drop his head, thereby lifting his spine, and this allows him to use his hind legs comfortably to make the manoeuvre. If he is thus accommodated, he will be more inclined to offer a response to the cue rather than resist. The correct way to introduce a horse to stepping back on cue is to apply firm pressure to his face just where a noseband would lie, and allow him to work out how to respond favourably. This should be done either with the flat hand placed there, or by use of a halter. Throwing wobblies in front of a horse whilst lashing a rope around is no way to teach a horse to back-up or to stand off.
The essence of horse-training is to use only enough pressure to solicit a response without causing resistance. If resistance is met, the handler must immediately acknowledge this by decreasing, or ceasing altogether, the pressure so that greater resistance by the horse is discouraged. When the horse settles, the original cue must be offered again to allow the horse to choose another response which may, this time, be the correct one.
Once the horse has given the correct response to a cue, he must be relieved of the cue, and any pressure associated with it, and praised verbally so that he can immediately associate his response as being correct for that particular cue.
Constantly harassment, without an eye for effort from the horse, and without praise where due, is no way to train a horse to be trustful and compliant.
