Rachel is having a hard time switching her email program to plain text and her posts are getting caught in the spam filter, so I will copy / paste them to the list.
>>>> http://icehorses.net For fun, check out my wonderful Icelandic mare, Cookie: http://iceryder.net/cookieyawn.html <<<< Thanks for the link and the information! I guess I just have to try out all the Icelandics I can, and especially any I'm considering buying. Still, it seems that most people are very happy with their Icelandic horses. I was thinking, if, or when, we buy some Icelandics, we should also buy "bitless bridles" and CorrecTor saddle pads to make certain the horses are always comfortable. I noticed that my sensitive skinnedTennessee Walker, Banjo, becomes noticably more relaxed when I ride bareback. Besides, I don't use the reins anyway, except for correction. When I was little, I read that American Indians cued their horses with weight shifts alone, so I tried it on my mustang, Lightning, and it worked, so that's the way I've trained my horses from then on. The idea is, to avoid my putting pressure on them, all the horses have to do is keep my center of balance directly over theirs. In other words, I simply "act out" what I want them to do. For instance, if I want to go left, I lean in that direction and the horse also swings in that direction to keep my weight balance over his. Strangely, horses and even mules seem to pick this up almost at once, so that even if I ride a strange horse for a short while, the horse will be responding to weight shift cues by the time we return from the ride. If I want to slow or stop, I lean back and brace as though anticipating the horse doing it, and the horse learns to immediately slow or stop, or whatever it takes to keep my weight exactly centered. If I continue to lean back even after the horse has stopped, the horse will back up. Teaching horses to do this only requires a short session of John Lyon-esque pressure and releases, to show them what is desired. Soon, I can knot the reins and throw them down on the horse's neck. After awhile, the cues can grow so subtle, the horse seems to be an extension of my thoughts. Or maybe he really is reading my mind. Horses seem eager to do anything to avoid having their mouths pulled by a bit or their sides kicked. Rachel from E. KY
