Welcome Anne,
Great questions! It sure made me think, and these are my own answers.
Anne wrote:
How does this forum define "force"? I wonder, as I might think of some of the things described here as having some resemblance to what I associate with the word "force" (however, being an Academian, maybe I am over-sensitive here, I don't know...) What if a horse tells you "no" to something? How would you go about it?
Well, I do use force and throw everything I have into battle in order steer a pony away from the middle of the road if a truck is approaching. If we’re in a situation that puts my horse, myself or our environment under a direct threat, I will do anything I can to prevent harm.
However, in safe training situations, for me force and ‘upping the pressure’ aren’t tools I use.
I feel that they actually are quite similar because in both cases the horse knows that a ‘no’ is not an option as eventually the pressure will be too hard to resist.
A couple of days ago one of our members (sorry, forgot the name!) posted a topic on the difference between pressure and feel, and for me that really hit the nail on the head: for me the difference between soft pressure and feel, is that soft pressure will be followed by harder pressure until the horse gives in.
For me that’s not really an option on our training, because in that system your cues become inherent correction, always reinforcing the thought in your horse that he shouldn’t break the rules or do other things than you ask for. And with that you take away his imagination and his own ideas and the energy connected to that. I would want a horse who is not afraid to say no in order to protect his own body, or to suggest a better idea. And I also want him to feel safe enough to experiment with the things that I ask. When I ask for a pesade and Blacky does it too low, it’s not wrong – it’s the first step to a levade!
So instead of pressure-release, I work with feel-release: there’s no upping the pressure; I just ask for something with my voice, bodylanguage or by placing a finger against his body. If he ignores that, I might repeat the same cue with the same lightness, and then do something else if he still doesn’t respond. After all, for an exercise is only worth something if it’s done with enthusiasm. If the horse doesn’t feel good about it, it’s worthless!
So why would an Academian (I’ve never heard of that word before actually in this context, do you mean a member of the school of Maksida?) be more over-sensitive about this than people who roam here?
Anne wrote:
Do all on this forum use treats for teaching the horse things? Or do some of you not?
Some of us do, some of us don’t. I myself work with treats a lot (well, all the time would be more accurate
) but I think it’s great that others experiment with training horses without treats as well and see where that leads to.
The fact that I use treats
now, doesn’t mean that I’m against using treats or that I will never stop using treats in the future either. The only reason for me to work with treats is that Blacky and Sjors love it, and the only reason why I train them is because I want them to enjoy our sessions and let those sessions really enrich their lives (not just in terms of getting fatter, but also mentally
). So if stimulating with food equals a happy pony, then I will use food.
Anne wrote:
How are your views on riding horses? About collection/no collection? And how do you define a horse to be "ready to ride"?
I don’t ride Blacky and Sjors (even if they were highly collected I still would think it would be bad of me to ride them, considering their .99 height at the withers
) and I do think that collection is very important for horses in order to be able to sustain the weight of the rider in a healthy way. However, I don’t believe in absolutisms like ‘you should never ride your horse if he’s not collected’. Simply because collection isn’t a bow. For me collection is not a trick that you can put on or off, it’s a living process.
Even the king of these statements himself, Alexander Nevzorov, has quite to very uncollected moments in his videos when he is riding his horses. Just as that you should never lunge your horse uncollected. In one of his movies you will see him talking to the camera while Lipisina is being lunged in a very uncollected trot by Lydia. I think a horse will only more really collected for a maximum of 2-5 minutes on end and have frequent uncollected stretching down pauses in between – that’s also part of the process of learning to deal with the weight of a human, something that you can never prepare him totally for from the ground.
So if you ride your advanced horse naturally collected at liberty for five minutes, he will still have more and less collected moments. And if you ride a green horse in natural liberty, then he will probably shift between collected-uncollected every minute. And of course a piaffe is more collected than a collected trot. And if you can only ride a collected horse – does that mean that you can only ride collected exercises also? So where does that lead the extended trot, or the regular canter versus the collected canter?
So my real answer to your question would be: what is you definition of collection? Because only then it will be possible to answer this.
Anne wrote:
What about natural living conditions and shoeing/barefoot? I hope these things are important to you too?
Well, Blacky and Sjors have always been barefooted and 24/7 in the pasture or paddock. For me that’s so normal that it’s not really an issue either. To me it’s not important, it’s just natural.
A question back in return, because I’m always curious about how people have found our site: how did you find us? From your first post you seemed to have a somewhat negative idea about what this site would be – why did you feel like that, or how did you get that idea?
It’s not meant as criticism, I’m just really interested in how outsiders view our forum. The intriguing thing for me about our forum is that traditional NH trainers seem to think we’re total softies who have completely out of control, dominant horses because we don’t use pressure and corrections – while I got the idea that NHE’ers generally have the idea that over here we’re all controlfreaks who only go for results and not for a real relationship, simply because we publish the methods with how we train our horses on the site instead of keeping them secret. So what on earth are we???