On Fri, Feb 01, 2008 at 07:04:36AM -0500, Karen Thomas wrote: > No, when someone says they have to have a "special trainer" for an Icelandic > pony, I immediately wonder how much REAL horse experience that person > has...it's usually not much. > > > Isn't it sad that some people are swayed by foreign accents, and the need to > feel "different", so will fall for harsh training methods.
i think this is a fairly sad overgeneralization. when i first had stjarni, we worked with a trainer who had "icelandic experience"; she had trained half a dozen icelandics before. but most of her work was with three-gaited horses (eventing and racetrack), and apparently all of the icelandics she had known had tended to be the trotty sort. when i told her i thought stjarni's tolt was getting pacier and pacier, she had no idea what i meant, and we went round and round on it without the problem getting any better :/ i emailed this list a photo of us at the time and everyone immediately went "stepping pace", a phrase that meant nothing to my instructor. i then turned to a friend of mine with a whole lot more icelandic experience (she owned one, she had trained many both in the us and in iceland) and in one hour's lesson she did more to help me understand stjarni's movement and what i was doing to affect it than my other instructor had in two months. her training methods included a lot of circling and changes of direction, and me riding in half-seat. how "harsh" is that? i now have a trainer who's ethnically icelandic, and her training methods have included bareback riding, trotting poles, hill work (and not stupid stuff like cantering downhill, but trotting up and walking down), figure 8's and similar patterns, voice commands, "give and take" rather than any steady rein pressure, laterals, and making sure stjarni stays mentally engaged and interested in what we do. how "harsh" is any of that? does her accent somehow make it worse? more to the point: should i have stuck with my whitebread american original instructor for the sake of political correctness, while my pony became more and more stiff-sided and i became more and more frustrated? not hardly. stjarni's not three-gaited, he's pacy if not properly conditioned to be flexible through his sides, and he gets bored and i get disinformed with "training" that doesn't help. just because someone is icelandic doesn't make them harsh, and just because someone's american and a good overall horse person doesn't mean they know jack about the soft gaits or the pace. --vicka
