Vicka, possibly you have misread something, or misinterpreted something? This is the original post from the thread (with link included at the end):
"From "A Good Horse Hath No Color, The Search for the Perfect Horse" by Nancy Marie Brown: In America there are few half-wild herds of Icelandic foals with fire under their feet. "We have predators," points out Elwell. Coyotes roam the wooded edges of her Hudson Valley farm; California and Canada, home to other breeding herds, have mountain lions; in Iceland, the only wild carnivores are minks and foxes, much too small to tackle a healthy foal. But with that caveat, Elwell and some others still manage to "keep the culture in" their horses by leaving them loose in well-fenced ten-to-twenty-acre pastures and resisting the urge to play with the adorable, cuddly foals. Other American breeders are not so careful. "I saw one foal, two months old, that was so boring it was unbelievable," Elwell told me. It was kept alone with its mother in a small paddock beside the house, where it had frequent visitors. "I said to the owners, 'This foal is going to grow up to be a turnip.' " It had no spirit and, worse, no respect for humans. Elwell offered to set it straight. Approaching the "turnip foal," she told me, "I walked out quietly into the field, and, when I was within five feet of the foal, I jumped into the air and screamed. He jumped four feet in the air and took off. I chased after him and, when he stopped, I jumped again. Within two days he was starting to act like a horse again. "Icelandics are so inherently bonding," Elwell warned. "One of these foals will get up a few minutes after it's born and crawl into your lap. And the mare will say, 'Go ahead, take it.' You need to make them always alert to people, not quite sure what a person will do."" http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/IceHorses/message/95269 ______________________ A followup post: "I think it's a great book. The author is a very nice person. The book gives a pretty true picture of the horse culture in Iceland. In it's naivete and innocence, it lends support and validation to many topics of interest that come up on the list." http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/IceHorses/message/95397 _____________________ >From another thread (about Stigandi tolting) which actually preceded the "Scare the Foals" thread: "Sometimes trainers use this "tension" to get the horse to gait. This is probably why we see the tight nosebands. It makes the horse tense, almost like drowning or being choked. The rush of adrenalin is used for gait. It's probably why "don't touch the foals" came into being. If the horses are too friendly and not "properly afraid" of people, they will be too lazy to gait, or not *respect* the trainer enough to gait without the icelandic saddle, or tight noseband, or heavy contact, or whips, etc." http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/IceHorses/message/95164 _______________________ And from the cloning topic: " We can tie this thread into the cloning thread: Dr. Money and his "experiment" of raising one of identical twin boys, as a girl." _______________________ You recently said: "if you took judy's insinuations for it, my pony would be afraid of people and not tolt unless high on adrenaline. (in fact when he's at his most excited, as at the beach, he resists *trotting*.) i don't think these are matters of "perfect"; they're just observations. (i love stjarni's trot.) i am not impressed with judy's recent comments about john money, but then again i knew him and worked in his lab, and she didn't." "in which judy claims it's a "pretty true picture of the horse culture in Iceland", despite the fact that the section she quoted at the beginning of the thread was about horse-raising as practiced by an american." ______________________ It appears that maybe you took several big jumps to conclusions; or misread; or misinterpreted the posts above. My statement about Dr. Money was one statement which included no opinion either way; no "comment". No comment was made about your pony, just the fact that sometimes trainers use tension to get gait. The practice of keeping the foals "always alert to people, not quite sure what a person will do" is something that that person learned from Icelanders and wanted perpetuated here in the states as part of the horses' culture; part of the book, written about Iceland. Facts, ma'am; just the facts. :-) Judy http://icehorses.net http://clickryder.com
