Post by Elaine on Jan 15, 2009 11:14:30 GMT
esiforum.mywowbb.com/forum1/238-2.html
extract from page 2. please see above link for full thread.
Christie, even the most skillful person, even the most talented person, can be WEAK where it comes to independent thinking. People are taught as children to conform socially. The vast majority are extremely uncomfortable as adults if they're asked or required to do anything different than what they see their neighbors doing, or "what my daddy always did".
A very wise older colleague of mine once tried to explain this to me, because you better believe that this WEAKNESS observable in people -- WEAK to where they'll even hurt their animals if that's what the "social norm" calls for -- does bother me. It's difficult for me to understand it. My senior colleague said: "Debbie, you just don't understand how this works: there are two kinds of people, so far as what they do is concerned. There is one group, that learned to do whatever they're doing by being taught -- by logic and reason. And with that group, if they learned it by logic and reason, you can talk them into doing it a better way by using logic and reason.
"YOUR problem", he said to me, "is that you're assuming that everyone learns everything by logic and reason. But they don't. A lot of people learn to do what they do by AUTHORITY -- such as that's what their daddy always did, or that's what they learned at the Suchandso School of Riding, or that's what International Prizewinner Herr Hindender does. And if they learned it by authority, Deb, you can't talk them out of it with logic and reason. What you need in that case is a bigger club."
So Christie, and everybody else, here's my best advice -- you need to not care what anyone else is doing. You need to not be on a campaign. You need to not be trying to teach them anything, unless they have signed up ahead of time to be your students. They are not going to listen to you, I guarantee you, if they haven't signed up; and even if they HAVE signed up it isn't going to be that easy. But if you will admit it, you will find that 99% of them have not signed up, they have not given you PERMISSION to teach them.
And, unless you are very clearly more skillful and/or a greater prizewinner than they are themselves, your chances of having them sign up to be your student are going to be nil. Because they do not get their validation from logic and reason. They do not get their validation from you. They get it from the prize they won, or from associating themselves with Herr Hindender and basking in his reflected glow. This is because, in yielding to the societal pressure to give up their ability to think and act independently, they sacrifice all hope of having their OWN glow to bask in: in other words, they are utter and literal nobodies.
The only question that then remains, that will be worth your time to ask, is: who are YOU?
The only judge I pay any attention to is my horse. His opinion matters, and that will be expressed primarily by the level of his contented obedience. The only criterion that I pay any attention to is this: what in the last five minutes of my ride would I have kept? What in that same period would I like to see change? It is my responsibility to recognize that the only one in control of that is -- me.
There are some folks at my barn, too, Christie, that I rather enjoy. They're professional horsepeople too, and we have shared some similar experiences as it turns out. I've enjoyed getting to know them. They don't ride my way. They do look, and I can see them looking, when I am riding Ollie. Sometimes they even ask me a question about why I do some particular thing. And we do talk sometimes also about different approaches to common training problems, for example getting a horse to take his less-than-favorite lead, or which horse is the 'boss' in the pasture that all our horses share, etc. One of the people is younger and I will sometimes ask her how she did at the last show, and VERY slowly it has become possible for her to say 'well my filly blew a lead' or 'we need to do better in the pleasure class', and my replies to this are always rather on the philosophical than the practical end, because I think in her case it is thoughtfulness, rather than technique, that is actually the missing part.
But beyond this sort of subtlety, or you might say directness about my own philosophy, I make no effort to teach them, because they have not signed up. The only thing I can do for them really, is to set an example by my own practice of horsemanship, and if that's not sufficient, nothing else will ever be.
I'll tell you a quick story to illustrate this. At one stable where I used to board, the owner, who also functioned as the resident riding instructor, had really no qualifications beyond the fact that she owned the property. Oh, yes, she had 'certificates' from one or another place that offers them, but in 11 years of residence at that farm, I never saw this lady make one positive change in any horse -- i.e. teaching one to pick up its feet that didn't know how, overcoming a tendency to shy, barn-sourness, whirling when releasing to turnout, and other common problems ad nauseam. In particular, this lady did not understand how to longe a horse, either on the level of technique nor on the level of theoretically what are the important purposes for longeing.
As a result, none of her students knew or knows how to longe, either. So one day I was out on Painty Horse in the work arena, which was separated by two fences from the indoor hall (the covered arena at this place does not have side walls, just rail panels that form a fence). Inside the hall was a young teenaged girl with her longe strap and her long whip attempting to flog an Arabian mare into going around in a circle. The mare, an ex-halter horse, varied between whirling, snorting, and bolting. The child kept yanking on the longe while simultaneously waving her whip. Finally, with one more crack of the whip, the mare bolted straight away, the line got tangled around the child's arm, the mare yanked her off her feet, and then dragged her around the arena.
Not like she didn't deserve it really. However, what you really would have liked to have seen was me vaulting off my horse and clearing both those fences in about three seconds. When I got the mare stopped, and cleared the dirt out of the kid's mouth and helped her get up and shake off, I sent her to take the horse back to the stall and think it over again, and I also said, "you go see your teacher and you tell her all about how you think this happened."
Now this child's mother was standing right there the whole time. The parents are sometimes idiots: they think 'well horses are just that way, and my kid has to be tough enough to handle them.' What they don't realize is that it NEVER has to be that way -- at this farm, they were being given totally incompetent instruction, and yet they continued to pay for it, because they believe 'horses are just that way.'
Now all this time, Painty is just tooling around in the work pen where I left him, waiting for me to get back to him. So I said to the mother, 'come over here for a minute if you will, there is something I want to show you.' And she came.
Then I climbed back in the work pen, and I set Painty up off my right side, and I said to him, 'Painty would you please go out on the 20-meter circle to the right at a walk.' And he did -- I mean, totally at liberty, in a pen that is 200 ft. X 400 ft. And then after he was on the circle, I said to him, 'Painty if you would please trot the circle now.' And then 'canter the circle now.' And then, 'please come in to me.' And then 'now reverse and trot.' And 'canter left please.' And 'halt'. And then finally, 'walk in to me.'
And this lady watched all this. And I said to her at the end of it, 'See, there doesn't have to be any jerking on any line. And there doesn't have to be any whip at all. The horse just has to be TAUGHT what's expected, and set it up so he enjoys it -- his intelligence will take care of a lot of it.'
And do you know what the lady said to me? She said, "Well, that's all well and good Deb -- but we don't want a trick horse."
So this is my point: she is not capable. What the lady in the story is not capable of, specifically, is seeing any underlying principle. This is what horsemanship is: the body of underlying principles, that are related to the biology of the equine animal. So long as the person you are working with is tied to METHOD -- this method vs. that method, this 'seat' vs. that 'seat', this set of show rules vs. that set of show rules -- they will never grasp horsemanship.
At one's home barn, for this reason, I have learned that it is necessary to keep a polite distance, because until somebody else sees horsemanship just your way, and starts riding with the same teachers you do, they will (from their own point of view) just have to be polite to you, too, because just as much as you think they are doing it 'wrong', they also think you are doing it 'wrong'. And unless you happen to BE a bigger 'club', don't figure on converting them. -- Dr. Deb
extract from page 2. please see above link for full thread.
Christie, even the most skillful person, even the most talented person, can be WEAK where it comes to independent thinking. People are taught as children to conform socially. The vast majority are extremely uncomfortable as adults if they're asked or required to do anything different than what they see their neighbors doing, or "what my daddy always did".
A very wise older colleague of mine once tried to explain this to me, because you better believe that this WEAKNESS observable in people -- WEAK to where they'll even hurt their animals if that's what the "social norm" calls for -- does bother me. It's difficult for me to understand it. My senior colleague said: "Debbie, you just don't understand how this works: there are two kinds of people, so far as what they do is concerned. There is one group, that learned to do whatever they're doing by being taught -- by logic and reason. And with that group, if they learned it by logic and reason, you can talk them into doing it a better way by using logic and reason.
"YOUR problem", he said to me, "is that you're assuming that everyone learns everything by logic and reason. But they don't. A lot of people learn to do what they do by AUTHORITY -- such as that's what their daddy always did, or that's what they learned at the Suchandso School of Riding, or that's what International Prizewinner Herr Hindender does. And if they learned it by authority, Deb, you can't talk them out of it with logic and reason. What you need in that case is a bigger club."
So Christie, and everybody else, here's my best advice -- you need to not care what anyone else is doing. You need to not be on a campaign. You need to not be trying to teach them anything, unless they have signed up ahead of time to be your students. They are not going to listen to you, I guarantee you, if they haven't signed up; and even if they HAVE signed up it isn't going to be that easy. But if you will admit it, you will find that 99% of them have not signed up, they have not given you PERMISSION to teach them.
And, unless you are very clearly more skillful and/or a greater prizewinner than they are themselves, your chances of having them sign up to be your student are going to be nil. Because they do not get their validation from logic and reason. They do not get their validation from you. They get it from the prize they won, or from associating themselves with Herr Hindender and basking in his reflected glow. This is because, in yielding to the societal pressure to give up their ability to think and act independently, they sacrifice all hope of having their OWN glow to bask in: in other words, they are utter and literal nobodies.
The only question that then remains, that will be worth your time to ask, is: who are YOU?
The only judge I pay any attention to is my horse. His opinion matters, and that will be expressed primarily by the level of his contented obedience. The only criterion that I pay any attention to is this: what in the last five minutes of my ride would I have kept? What in that same period would I like to see change? It is my responsibility to recognize that the only one in control of that is -- me.
There are some folks at my barn, too, Christie, that I rather enjoy. They're professional horsepeople too, and we have shared some similar experiences as it turns out. I've enjoyed getting to know them. They don't ride my way. They do look, and I can see them looking, when I am riding Ollie. Sometimes they even ask me a question about why I do some particular thing. And we do talk sometimes also about different approaches to common training problems, for example getting a horse to take his less-than-favorite lead, or which horse is the 'boss' in the pasture that all our horses share, etc. One of the people is younger and I will sometimes ask her how she did at the last show, and VERY slowly it has become possible for her to say 'well my filly blew a lead' or 'we need to do better in the pleasure class', and my replies to this are always rather on the philosophical than the practical end, because I think in her case it is thoughtfulness, rather than technique, that is actually the missing part.
But beyond this sort of subtlety, or you might say directness about my own philosophy, I make no effort to teach them, because they have not signed up. The only thing I can do for them really, is to set an example by my own practice of horsemanship, and if that's not sufficient, nothing else will ever be.
I'll tell you a quick story to illustrate this. At one stable where I used to board, the owner, who also functioned as the resident riding instructor, had really no qualifications beyond the fact that she owned the property. Oh, yes, she had 'certificates' from one or another place that offers them, but in 11 years of residence at that farm, I never saw this lady make one positive change in any horse -- i.e. teaching one to pick up its feet that didn't know how, overcoming a tendency to shy, barn-sourness, whirling when releasing to turnout, and other common problems ad nauseam. In particular, this lady did not understand how to longe a horse, either on the level of technique nor on the level of theoretically what are the important purposes for longeing.
As a result, none of her students knew or knows how to longe, either. So one day I was out on Painty Horse in the work arena, which was separated by two fences from the indoor hall (the covered arena at this place does not have side walls, just rail panels that form a fence). Inside the hall was a young teenaged girl with her longe strap and her long whip attempting to flog an Arabian mare into going around in a circle. The mare, an ex-halter horse, varied between whirling, snorting, and bolting. The child kept yanking on the longe while simultaneously waving her whip. Finally, with one more crack of the whip, the mare bolted straight away, the line got tangled around the child's arm, the mare yanked her off her feet, and then dragged her around the arena.
Not like she didn't deserve it really. However, what you really would have liked to have seen was me vaulting off my horse and clearing both those fences in about three seconds. When I got the mare stopped, and cleared the dirt out of the kid's mouth and helped her get up and shake off, I sent her to take the horse back to the stall and think it over again, and I also said, "you go see your teacher and you tell her all about how you think this happened."
Now this child's mother was standing right there the whole time. The parents are sometimes idiots: they think 'well horses are just that way, and my kid has to be tough enough to handle them.' What they don't realize is that it NEVER has to be that way -- at this farm, they were being given totally incompetent instruction, and yet they continued to pay for it, because they believe 'horses are just that way.'
Now all this time, Painty is just tooling around in the work pen where I left him, waiting for me to get back to him. So I said to the mother, 'come over here for a minute if you will, there is something I want to show you.' And she came.
Then I climbed back in the work pen, and I set Painty up off my right side, and I said to him, 'Painty would you please go out on the 20-meter circle to the right at a walk.' And he did -- I mean, totally at liberty, in a pen that is 200 ft. X 400 ft. And then after he was on the circle, I said to him, 'Painty if you would please trot the circle now.' And then 'canter the circle now.' And then, 'please come in to me.' And then 'now reverse and trot.' And 'canter left please.' And 'halt'. And then finally, 'walk in to me.'
And this lady watched all this. And I said to her at the end of it, 'See, there doesn't have to be any jerking on any line. And there doesn't have to be any whip at all. The horse just has to be TAUGHT what's expected, and set it up so he enjoys it -- his intelligence will take care of a lot of it.'
And do you know what the lady said to me? She said, "Well, that's all well and good Deb -- but we don't want a trick horse."
So this is my point: she is not capable. What the lady in the story is not capable of, specifically, is seeing any underlying principle. This is what horsemanship is: the body of underlying principles, that are related to the biology of the equine animal. So long as the person you are working with is tied to METHOD -- this method vs. that method, this 'seat' vs. that 'seat', this set of show rules vs. that set of show rules -- they will never grasp horsemanship.
At one's home barn, for this reason, I have learned that it is necessary to keep a polite distance, because until somebody else sees horsemanship just your way, and starts riding with the same teachers you do, they will (from their own point of view) just have to be polite to you, too, because just as much as you think they are doing it 'wrong', they also think you are doing it 'wrong'. And unless you happen to BE a bigger 'club', don't figure on converting them. -- Dr. Deb