To start with the two most important parts of my introduction: Blacky and Sjors, two 1m high, approximately 12 year old shetland ponies, tricktraining experts, clickertraining grandmasters and very much into classical dressage and haute ecole, as long as it's trained without any kind of tack around their heads. Our road to where we are now led us through tricktraining towards clickertraining (that was about 7 years ago), and from that towards classical dressage.
First it was long-lining, with me walking behind the pony and the pony walking in front of me with two long reins attached to the side of his halter. That went okay, we got all the gaits and shoulder in at walk, but it didn't feel right to start for collection or a specific headset too, as I was the one who had that headset in my hands.It just wasn't what I was looking for. Then, approximately a year ago, I discovered the training method of Alexander Nevzorov (Nevzorov Haute Ecole), and was completely overwhelmed with it. It was exactly what I was looking for: horses collecting at liberty, with only a little rope around the neck called the cordeo. I exchanged the halter for the cordeo, and got very enthusiastic ponies in response.
I think NHE is one of the best training methods ever because it allows the horse to really talk back to you, but I don't really agree with the more extremist side of his forum. I would never ride with bit again and hate seeing horses struggle with that piece of metal in their mouth - but that doesn't mean that I will condemn all people who use bits, attack them, shame them and throw away all knowledge they have of the horse. I believe that even for NHE followers a lot can be learned from classical dressage or Haute Ecole writers - not only theoretical, but also practical.
The thing is: you need to get the basics right: stop training the horse with punishment, and start training with only a cordeo around his neck. If you keep those two things in your mind and read old masters, there will be several exercises or methods that you can learn from and that can benefit your horse. But indeed, everybody has a right to decide to see them or not. Because reading those books it mentally quite tought indeed. On the one hand I feel very honored to have a hundreds year old copy of Pluvinel in my hands, but on the other hand the parts where he suggests beating the horse disgusts me. But if I look through that, there are things that I can use when training the ponies indeed. So that's why I'm here.
So then we arrive at me.
I'm a NHEer at heart, but I don't have blinkers on. I feel that I can learn something from every method, as long as the basis - NHE - is good. So I'm learning a lot from Blacky and Sjors on what they think of training and playing and which method works for them. Next to that I'm a student, and publisher and writer of a Dutch book on tricktraining horses, written, drawn and photographed two years ago, and finally published about 8 months ago - so that's why there are still bits and halters on some pictures. But... the sequel is on the way, and that's going to make up for that!
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