Horsemanship hasn't evolved very far, and Danny Thomas provided a glowing demonstration of that fact with these self-posted videos on Facebook.
Bragging that he was able to break a Mustang in 30 minutes…
Why are we still basing our training decisions on the brevity of time?
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I've been riding since I was 9, and in love with horses from the day I was born. Living in Washington with my horse and 5 dogs.
No, I haven’t been kicked in the face – thankfully and knock on wood!
But I want to pay tribute to the opportunities that may exist in the seemingly terrible, unfortunate, miserable or frustrating moments that we can all get stuck staring at and shaking our heads over.
Heads up, this post contains foul language. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. More often than you’d expect, I receive comments that are .. displeased with my writing. But the majority of them always come…
I have a broken neck and still go to the gym every day. What’s your excuse? If you’re asking your horse to do any kind of formal work (i.e. you aren’t just hacking down the…
This brief German documentary is worth a watch – last about 30 minutes. Interviews with Ludger Beerbaum, Princess Haya, Gerd Heuschmann.
The emotional kind. Good horsemanship isn’t just about conditioning your horse and riding in the proper position, it also involves self-control. But there is one principle that should never be abandoned, namely, that the rider…
I know I’ve said before, but this likely will not be the last time I will remark that it is a small world… in more ways than one.
Another winner, Erica. Thanks for posting the tough ones. Too many horse people would prefer to say nothing. I have had several posts about “30 day wonders” or even “90 day wonders”. There is no possible way for a horse to be properly gymnacized in that short amount of time. I fully disagree with the competition of “Road to the Horse” for this reason – it leads people to believe that they can produce a fully trained horse in a couple of days. They may know a few cues, but have had almost NO time to develop the soft poll, strong back and strong haunches needed to balance and carry a rider.
Some years ago there was a show on cable called “Cowboy U”. Usually it was city slickers competing doing cowboy stuff, but one season it was actual cowboys. There was a horse trainer from Oklahoma–when they competed in “colt breaking”, he was gentle and persuasive. Once he was on the horse’s back, he rode a slow walk once around the round pen, dismounted, and said “That’s enough for a first ride.” The guy that won, on the other hand, had the horse cantering wildly around the pen. The judges said that he got better action out of the horse. I’d much rather have a horse started by the first guy. “It’s easy to break a horse. It’s a lot harder to fix one.”
I don’t think he by any means broke a horse in a half hour but i won’t argue with the fact that he was calm and consistent and it worked for what he was doing that day
One seriously stressed and tormented horse. But, she will eventually fall into learned helplessness, with continued treatment like that, and people will think he has trained her well. Sad to see, but all too common.