I've been guesting here for about a week and I have many questions. First I should say that I probably would not be here if the Nezvorov forum had accepted me. Here is my letter to them requesting access to their forum:
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My name is John Edwards, I've been working with the Washington State horse rescue
Hope For Horses for 15+ years now. My wife Jenny is a criminologist working with local law enforcement and the FBI on
Bestiality issues.
As you can imagine we have been traveling the horse training path for many years. Sometimes dealing with the effects of certain disciplines, sometimes learning new ways to work with strange and troubled horses (lately focused on sexually abused stallions). Primarily, however. my greatest long term problem has been formulating an approach that could be communicated to volunteers so that we would have some semblance of consistent and non-destructive interaction with our horses. Our latest and most successful attempt was to use the training approach of
Frank Bell . Small, simple, supportive, harder to mess up than some.
Call that background. Recently we have come to a place where we need to step up the training of an orphaned filly named Autumn's Hope who has been with us from 4 days old to now (28 months). It's a long story, chronicled on the
HFH Facebook page. I am effectively her mother and now have a very easy relationship which does not translate to many other people. It certainly does not transfer to new people). We specifically raised money for her training and should have had many options. So far most of them bad.
For at least 2 years I have been pretty hard core that we do not hit horses here. No bonks with the handle of the whip, no snaps to drive them off, and even no overt smacks when a horse "invades" personal space and bites. As you and I know there are other ways, they may take longer, require self control, but a better horse results. This is almost impossible to communicate to volunteers and is not normal, accepted practice by almost anyone within the state.
My latest attempt at finding a trainer was to ask Carolyn Resnick and Robin Gates (Liberty training) for a local reference. I had watched a couple of Liberty DVD's and it seemed like a gentle, positive approach. The ubiquitous whip with a 4 foot snapper should have given me an idea that this also was not so. Net the trainer came to our barn, Our young Autumn tried to nibble and she hit her 5 times with the lead end (16mm Anchor line). Two and a half years and no one had ever done anything like that to her. I was too shocked to react. So, no Liberty training.
I should have talked to
Cynthia Royal who has elements of Liberty training in her program but uses only a grass reed as a horse que. Sadly she has had some bad luck and was not available.
Frustration and Google then led me to Hempfling then Mitzlaff then Bevilacqua (reading his book) then
Maksida Vogt at
Academia Liberti then Nezvorov (Watched the NHE Principles DVD and reading the magazines) and now to this forum.
Its fair to say that I'm getting it. In many ways what Nevzorov espouses is a place I've been close to for many years. But the problem is a practical application to today's reality. Many horses, many people and no where near enough time or money.
To be frank, I like what Nezvorov says and has done very much. But he is like all the other horse Guru types except even more radical. Very passionate, very erudite, very philosophical, very impenetrable. What I see is one guy, his wife and 10 or 12 people around the world who have studied with him. That's great for religion but how do I use this on a daily basis. Can you help us?
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So that was my note, It still stands and I would still like very much to engage with Nezvorov's followers.
I'm sure you can understand how happy I was to discover this forum (AND)