> The most overwhelming thing I got from this, is to remember that these > horses are our partners. We should show mutual respect. We should > respect who the horse is, the horse nature, and allow them to be > themselves. Let them be free and work with their nature. Do not > subjugate them and shut them down. You get out what you put in.
Thanks for this report, Kim! It's great! I think it's so hard to describe this thing called "feel", and not-so-easy to tell someone how to be a partner to the horse, how to *consider* the horse. The video made by someone *In Honour of the Icelandic Horse* is hard to take when we can see such obvious ignoring of the horse, not because the people are trying to be mean, but because they just don't know yet. At least I hope that's the reason. >>Leslie talked about releasing the horse a lot. This is > just so opposite of conventional horse training that it was amazing. > Instead of pulling a horse to a stop and kicking a horse to go, they > were releasing a horse to stop and releasing them to go. (I can only > give a general description of this, I was just watching, not doing.) > They would actively ride the horse, with the whole body moving with > the horse's feet (just for reference I think we have seen this kind of > thing with Linda Parelli and I got some of this with a woman who had > studied Centered Riding), the reins are loose and the slobber straps > are allowed to put some weight on the mouth, then when you want to > stop, you stop riding and release the reins, the horse stops. When > they wanted the horse to move out, they lifted a leg (did not slap it > back down on the horse) and "released" the horse to move. I think this is > all tied up with > feel (yep, I'm pretty sure:) ) Yes, Parelli does say to "stop riding", and to "bring up the life" to go forward. > Of course there was much, much more. It was pretty amazing. I would > definitely go to watch Leslie's demos if she is doing one in your > area, read "True Horsemanship Through Feel", listen to the audio-book, > watch the DVD, I would do anything to get in on this. You horse will > thank you. Here's a couple of short videos of Leslie: http://iceryder.net/videoleslie.html I have more to put up, but they're not ready yet. Judy http://icehorses.net http://clickryder.com
