Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Equine/Horse training/Archive 1

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This page is an Archive of the discussions from WikiProject Equine/Horse training talk page (Discussion page). (2005) - Please Do not edit!

Hi there!

Just thought I could propose another name to the list of modern horse trainers. There's a russian guy, called Alexander Nevzorov. He trains horses in an absolutely new, revolutionary way. It's worth to check out his website: http://hauteecole.ru/

Shagya

Ed, hi,

I just got a nice message from a lineal descendent of the guy named Powell who is mentioned in the real horse whisperer's book, i.e., in the book by John S. Rarey. So I had a look around and discovered that the original horse whisperer article that you started and I worked on has been gutted of any real content, has links to a bunch of non-existent articles, etc. And the article had no mention of Monty Roberts.

Personally, I don't think any of the present-day crop has anything that goes beyond what Rarey said, so it's all the same to me if nobody is motivated to write anything about the other experts. Roberts had one discovery that is a true contribution. Unfortunately for my peace of mind in trying to ride herd on articles on this general subject, he is also a showman and has a lot of fame and money. So there are people that love him and people that hate him, and mostly they want to write about what a saint/devil he is. I don't have the time, and I don't have the motivation, to research the specifics of the training methods of any of these people. If we are going to have articles on them as trainers, then that kind of content ought to be the focus. If somebody wants to write another article on the fame and infamy of Monty Roberts, then it ought to be a biography -- and it still should be NPOV.

It looks like several articles that I tried to patch up have been deleted at some point and I didn't even know about it. That's a good thing, IMHO, because many of them were filled with stuff that wasn't properly cited. I didn't feel like deleting that stuff because it was at least quasi-plausible and I didn't want to spend my life reading, e.g., all of Roberts's books to prove he had at least never said some of those things in print. From now on we should insist on citations from the very beginning.

I hope everything is going well with you. Thanks again for fixing up the article titles I messed up. P0M 17:57, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm glad you're in touch with the Powell's descendant. All I know about Roberts is from watching a documentary where he demonstrates "link up" in just a few minutes. Plus reading his fascinating auto-biography where he mentions meeting actor James Dean, mentoring troubled young men, and learning how the mare disciplines stallions. Plus how he rebelled against his father's cruel methods and developed his own way of "gentling" horses instead of breaking them.

My interest is primarily in horse training, with a bias toward the most humane way of doing it. All those movies and children's books about the kid and his beloved pet horse: My friend flicka, the black stallion, national velvet, Black Beauty. I want to believe horses and people can be friends.

If you have time, let's both take a fresh look at the horse training series. It's been a couple of years, right? Uncle Ed 19:47, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Somehow we have to keep out the ad hominem aspects. Monty Roberts has become very controversial, with strong partisans on both sides. I would like to keep things pared down to who advocates what training methods if at all possible and do that in all cases.

IMHO, none of these people has done anything remarkable except for Roberts, and what he did was discover a communication modality that was totally unknown (even though even I had observed it, presumably along with millions of horse lovers from even before the time of Xenophon). The rest of what Roberts does is in line with what Xenophon taught. Powell and Rarey and the Native Americans who invented "sacking out" have explicated things that Xenophon only hinted at. Rarey had his special method, the one that is depicted in the Horse Whisperer movie. Note that both his method and the method of Roberts are really only needed in the case of horses that have been abused or for some other reason have learned very negative feelings about human beings.

If we keep our selves to high standards on what can be quoted and cited we should not get into NPOV problems. If we link websites that praise Roberts we will face a demand that we link articles that excoriate him. If somebody wants to do an article on "Monty Roberts and his conflicts with X, Y, and Z" I guess that would be o.k., but it would be of biographical interest not of horse training interest.P0M 23:43, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

POM, you wrote "IMHO, none of these people has done anything remarkable except for Roberts." As I see it, such a remark is quite foolish. Do you really believe it? --Lil Peck 23:56, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I think so. I meant that the basis of all of this stuff is all pretty much the same as far as I can tell. I haven't read all of the many sources you just put in, of course. But let's take Podhajsky for instance. I really respect that man because he never claims that he is the great innovator, nor does he write about his perfect abilities to manage any horse that comes his way. And I don't think he fails to give due credit to the people in the long tradition before him. He is (was?) a remarkable man, but I don't think he would claim to have made more than incremental improvements. There is, IMHO, nothing in Roberts's work that one couldn't find somewhere else -- except the part about horse communication. And of course now many people are probably claiming that they discovered it first. The same for Margaret Cabell Self, whose book I read when I was a teenager. It was absolutely reliable as I recall, but she was very consciously passing on a tradition in the best words that she could find to use. She makes a point of sketching out the history, good and bad, of the main trainers in history. The same for Littauer. He did have some very different ideas about what riding is for, what one should concentrate on in training riders who are not going to hunt foxes or lead cavalry charges. But he very clearly put himself in the great tradition of people who knew how to get the best out of horses without abusing them.

On the other hand, anybody who can jump a five-foot barrier is remarkable to me. So is anybody who can run a 6 minute mile, let alone a less-than-four minute mile.

I just put in some time divisions to try to make it a little clearer that there is a great tradition here. It's easy for modern adherents to think that their teacher has created the whole thing. P0M 00:35, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

One other thing. If we establish what was discovered/invented and when, then we don't need to recite the history of the wheel for each modern adherent. If they have made remarkable advancements, then those innovations ought to form the core of the account of their work. P0M 00:38, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Lil Peck 02:23, 3 October 2005 (UTC) I asked about your assertion "IMHO, none of these people has done anything remarkable except for Roberts," but from your reply I wonder if I misunderstood what you intended to say. To me, it looked as if you meant that no horse trainer other than Roberts ever contributed anything of any importance. Is that what you meant?

I have doubts that Roberts is correctly credited with having "discovered" some of the things about equine behavior that he credits himself for in his first book. It has been shown to my satisfaction that Roberts did not study mustangs in the wild. I also find some of the things that he professes about wild horse behavior to be untrue, based on what real authorities report about them. It should be easy enough to track down from whom Roberts might have learned the parts that he got correct. Tony Vargas, for example, I believe is still living.

As for what is "remarkable" in a life spent with horses: all of the trainers I added to the list have made remarkable contributions!

Let's get to work and get these things documented. P0M 03:21, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I enjoyed watching a documentary on Roberts 5 years ago, and I bought his autobiography. But my only concern about him is that he brought Gentle Training to the public's attention. I'm not concerned with getting to the bottom of issues like (1) Did he originate the ideas he takes credit for? (2) Was he really as nice a guy as he says?

This project is about horses, and how people can learn to have good relationships with them. It is only peripherally about any one person. I will propose some avenues for us writers to explore, on the project page. Uncle Ed 14:12, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Problem is, Ed, that other trainers had already brought "Gentle Training to the public's attention". Gentle training was never a new or novel concept. The vaquero tradition, for example, has been around for centuries and is based, like classical dressage (also around for centuries) on preparing the horse in small increments and phases that make training easy for the horse to understand and achieve.

Modern communication methods seem to give folks the impression that some of this stuff is new, when in fact it is only new to them personally. Nothing of any importance existed until they watched their first horse training video.

Patrick is familiar with the work of Powell and Rarey. I am more familiar with the work of Professor Beery, because when I was a kid, his horse training courses were still being advertised and sold in horse publications at that time. Pat Parelli and John Lyons were the first, as I recall, to take advantage of modern media as a way to get their methods before an international audience. They were both already "superstars" before Monty Roberts saw how successful they were and decided to follow suit.

Monte Foreman's articles of the 50's and 60's were extremely influential and all had to do with how to co-opt the natural abilities of the horse for his cooperation in training. His articles were organized into a book. I read the book while babysitting for a cowboy-vet student and then purchased my own copy and used it to become a local champion rider with my mare Dawna. Today, the book is available in a version that was cowritten with Patrick Wyse. Monte Foreman used movie photography to analyze equine movement and then drew beautiful illustrations from them. Many of his articles had a graphic novel appearance because of his effective use of the illustrations.

--Lil Peck 14:43, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Gentlemen, how are we to proceed with this project? What is the protocol? --Lil

Our debate about whether MR should be credited for discovering hooking-on led me to do some cursory research about Dr. William Linfoot. I will go ahead and start a Linfoot wiki page as a place to store what I've found so fair and y'all can help organize it better later.Lil Peck

A rancher friend of mine told me >Linfoot was the first I ever heard of to put on clinics like Ray Hunt, Clinton Anderson, John Lyons, Craig Cameron, (and others) do today. Linfoot would put on demonstrations where he would ride an unbroke horse in 30 minutes as I recall. ... I think I remember him saying he was part American Indian (forget which tribe) and he was using methods taught to him by that side of his family. Personally, I think that Beery is probably the source of information for most modern horse clinicians. Tom Dorrance said he learned a lot of what he did from the Beery books... and, of course, he strongly influenced Ray Hunt... who influenced everyone else we have today.> Lil Peck