>>>> Thanks for making the video for us! We appreciate it! It's so good to see the horses having such success being trained at home.
Thanks, Judy. I do give credit to my best friend Shirley who we've worked with for many years now. She's a professional trainer/instructor and a true "horseman"...and a wonderfully generous friend. She's taught us a lot, and with all the young (and rehab and project) horses we have here, I still get her to come help us about once a week. Beyond that, we do most of our training here on our own, and we certainly are NOT professional trainers, by any stretch of the imagination. For anyone who wants to give it a shot - training a young horse - a good, calm and unspoiled Icelandic can certainly be the easiest way to start out. Shirley is quite generous about letting me make tapes of her working with my horses - and after all, it's almost impossible for me to make videos of myself working with my own horses. For those of you who don't have a Shirley, feel free to learn from the little video snippets she lets me make and post. Also be aware that as long as she's been doing this professionally, 25+ years, she still reads every book she can get her hands on, and watches every video she can. She's pulled - and continues to pull - her very effective methods from her classical education, as well as from local sources, and international trainers and clinicians of all disciplines and breed. She's not a member of any trainer/clinician's "cult" nor does she expect her clients to follow her in a cult-ish way. She freely recommends that many of her students buy and use Parelli's Level 1 program for ground work, or at least attend some of his local seminars, even though her own sport is dressage. She apprenticed with Dave Seay (a Natural Horseman) when he was in this area, and she also studied with George Morris for a while when she was in college, and she also attends and rides with Liz Graves when she comes here... If it's anything we can all learn from someone like her, it's that there is something to be learned from studying horsemanship from every angle we can find. Recently, she surprised me a little by mentioning a little nugget she'd learned from Richard Shrake's book - and he is, of all things, a western pleasure trainer/clinician. And, btw, she doesn't see any resemblance of "classical" riding in the show-type Icelandic riding. When I showed her that infamous, supposed "Spanish Walk" picture that's on the cover of Jolli's video, she was puzzled and didn't even recognize that's what he was trying to show...Ouch. Karen Thomas, NC No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.6/1193 - Release Date: 12/22/2007 2:02 PM
