Re: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect / Slow Down
other horse (my own stjarni) he tucked his head and went faster. on the other hand, after i mentioned this to my american-in-iceland friend, she suggeted alternating reins or squeeze-and-release, squeeze-and-release -- which worked perfectly. i'm told this is also how tb's are trained, so it's not a solely icelandic practice, either. No, of course it's not a solely icelandic practice. It's relatively new to Iceland. You don't have to go there, or go to icelandic trainers, or to Americans in Iceland to get advice on slowing down a horse. They are just learning these things, so it seems to me that it would be easier to get it from someone here first-hand who has long-time experience, than going there to get it from someone who has just recently learned it second-hand. That's just logical to me. Judy http://icehorses.net http://clickryder.com
Re: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect / Slow Down
On Tue, Apr 03, 2007 at 09:43:37PM -0700, Judy Ryder wrote: You don't have to go there, or go to icelandic trainers, or to Americans in Iceland to get advice on slowing down a horse. They are just learning these things, so it seems to me that it would be easier to get it from someone here first-hand who has long-time experience, than going there to get it from someone who has just recently learned it second-hand. That's just logical to me. we all learn things second (or third, or n-th) hand, except on the rare occasions where we create new knowledge. (i've done that a few times, probably never about horses though :) i did have better luck with my american-in-iceland friend (who had previously worked with stjarni, which may be the more crucial element) than with an american i ride with. she's a genuinely excellent horse person in my opinion, but her suggestion on slowing stjarni down was to sit back and pull on both reins. pulling on both reins and sitting back both seem to be cues to him for more speed or work, or a gait transition (say upward from walk to tolt, which i ask for with an increase in rein contact and a deep seat -- if i want a loose-rein tolt i just use the voice command up up! but he doesn't seem to step under himself as well with that). my american friend is sixty-three years old and has been a professional with horses for most of her life. my american-in-iceland friend is in her twenties and has been a horse professional for about ten years. i don't think either of them is just learning about slowing horses down, but i kind of am, at least with stjarni. and the advice i got from the a-in-i worked, whereas the advice i got from a didn't. mind, this is on just one particular thing; in general i'd ask both of them for advice (probably the american first, since she's handier :) as they both know far more than i do, and i'd try what either of them advised, since i trust them to do their best by me. but sometimes one approach works better with some horse than another, and as stjarni was trained by an icelander, it makes sense to me that someone with some experience in that tradition got him right. hope this post makes sense; i'm really tired and using some horribly non-ergonomic equipment :/ --vicka
Re: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect
From A Good Horse Hath No Color, The Search for the Perfect Horse by Nancy Marie Brown: Never touch the horse with your lower leg. That's just asking for trouble, an Icelandic riding teacher had scolded me. A lot of Icelandics are trained with no leg at all, explained an American who owns several. An American rider gets on them in New York and ends up in Oklahoma. I found her description true... I had taken an hour's riding lesson. I assumed the familiar two-point and squeezed. The horse bolted. The scenery tumbled inward... the instructor shouting, Stop him! Make him stop! Pull! Judy http://icehorses.net http://clickryder.com
Re: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect
On Tue, Apr 03, 2007 at 10:27:59AM -0700, Judy Ryder wrote: Never touch the horse with your lower leg. That's just asking for trouble, an Icelandic riding teacher had scolded me. A lot of Icelandics are trained with no leg at all, explained an American who owns several. An American rider gets on them in New York and ends up in Oklahoma. ...whereas stjarni is trained to transition up with lower leg contact; to tolt if my seat is low, to trot if my pelvis is tipped forwards. he has never bolted on me (or, more importantly, my beginner students), unless you count getting out of the way of an out-of-control belgian on a too-narrow trail, which i think was good initiative on his part. the only icelandic/american training difference that has caused me personal feelings of lack-of-control has been from the canter or gallop. i tried pulling on both reins. on one horse i had apparently asked for a flying pace, which he happily gave me and i didn't like at all :) the other horse (my own stjarni) he tucked his head and went faster. on the other hand, after i mentioned this to my american-in-iceland friend, she suggeted alternating reins or squeeze-and-release, squeeze-and-release -- which worked perfectly. i'm told this is also how tb's are trained, so it's not a solely icelandic practice, either. --vicka
Re: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect
On 4/1/07, Karen Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: she didn't even stop to ask me how long I'd owned horses, or what breeders I'd been dealing with, but just immediately lashed out that I shouldn't be breeding ...I've forgotten her exact words...maybe she said unknown horses...? I was stunned - no questions about my experience, where my horses were from, what they looked like, what lines, nothing asking how much research I'd done on breeding, what kind of support I have locally - nothing. To react so strongly she must have somehow felt her pocketbook threatened. Janice-- yipie tie yie yo
Re: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect
Denise said: Wow! I finally got to the original msg from Anne Elwell! This only cements my opinion of her. I had talked to her on the phone several years ago when she had some mares for sale (reducing her herd). She was so arrogant and condecending to me. Karen said: random encounter with an Icelandic owner so I asked if she owned some. She wrote back... and said yes, she did own some Icelandic's. I wrote her back that I had three pregnant mares - that was when I was expecting my first foals. I was shocked by her reaction...she didn't even stop to ask me how long I'd owned horses, or what breeders I'd been dealing with, but just immediately lashed out that I shouldn't be breeding It's an interesting history of the people in the breed in the US. My feeling is that most of the owners got into the breed as novice horse owners. Not horsemen, they easily believed whatever was said about the breed. The beginnings of the breed in the US was not based on a good solid foundation. One of the resultant problems is that they are not open to anything that is not of iceland (small letter i since I don't necessarily mean the country, but the style). At one point in their newsletter, there was an article about barefoot, and an article about advice from Liz Graves then a stop was put on anything that wasn't of iceland. One time Ann Elwell told me, You can't do that. My response: ...Those who say things can't be done should stand out of the way of those who are busy doing them. Judy http://icehorses.net http://clickryder.com
Re: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect
On 4/2/07, Judy Ryder [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ...Those who say things can't be done should stand out of the way of those who are busy doing them. i love that. I should make it my snigtag. Janice -- yipie tie yie yo
Re: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect
On 4/2/07, Janice McDonald [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: but to give the person the benefit of doubt... maybe she thought Skinner's experiments with little albert were the way to go... janice -- yipie tie yie yo whoops it wasnt skinner it was watson, letting rats loose on little albert and honking a loud blasting horn to scare him so he would be conditioned to be terrified. he was going to teach him to be afraid then cure him, but he could never cure him. i saw films of it in undergrad psych class. It horrified me to the point of giving me nightmares. little baby albert would laugh and clap his hand when the rats were let out on him cause he was just a baby, then the horn would blast and he would startle and cry, just scream crying in terror. Someone should have gelded watson at around that point. Janice -- yipie tie yie yo
Re: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect
On Mon, Apr 02, 2007 at 02:43:22PM -0700, Judy Ryder wrote: We can tie this thread into the cloning thread: Dr. Money and his experiment of raising one of identical twin boys, as a girl. erk. i worked for dr money during the time these kids were lost to followup; i.e. no longer making their annual trek down from canada to baltimore. nor, i might add, were they seeing any routine sexologist or endocrinologist at home. to put it mildly, kids being raised on the edge of medical science should be seen more than once a year, and by people they can learn to trust and speak freely to. a kid's life may be led at the edge of experimental science due to accident (as in this case) or illness, but no properly-managed experiment or child-rearing is performed one day a year. so: when they *did* come to the lab, long story short: they lied, to john money and everybody else in the research group. mostly the parents lied (oh, she's fine, very feminine) and the kids acted uncomfortable (as kids in dr's offices in distant countries do, esp. when being asked rather personal questions). i know this for sure; i've read the transcriptions of the tapes of their conversations with the research group, and i read the pop book when it came out, too. david's eventual suicide broke my heart. i'd worked in that lab for five years, with hundreds of patients and research subjects, and i can tell you one thing for sure: that lab's deepest goal was the highest quality of life for everyone who came through the door. if they'd told the truth, dr money and everyone else would have bent over backwards to try to make things better, come up with different approaches, and not incidentally to tell the poor kid the truth. --vicka ps. that said, i make no excuses for ricuarte (2002), and note only that it was eventualy retracted.
Re: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect
On 4/2/07, Judy Ryder [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We can tie this thread into the cloning thread: Dr. Money and his experiment of raising one of identical twin boys, as a girl. Judy like raising a trotter as a tolter. it probably always felt hopeless and depressing, trying to do something you could never do well and being treated badly for it. I think horses can tell when they have disappointed us! mine can. As herd leader, when one of the young ones acts really bad jaspar will lunge at him and bite him, like when Traveller wont let me catch him, Jaspar will stamp his foot and then lunge at him. If stonewall is there he will sometimes try and corner him for me. Janice -- yipie tie yie yo
Re: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect / Vicka
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
RE: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect
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. Yes, adrenaline, excitement, even fear, WILL change the way a horse moves, and no, they don't always gallop when they are nervous, scared or tense. A nervous or excited horse - any breed - on the trail may jig or piaffe, instead of walk or trot, when he won't necessarily bolt at a gallop - I saw my friend's horse (normally somewhat trotty, but he will also do a nice running walk) do a lovely true tolt one day when he'd been jiggy on the trail for a while. Parelli even has a standard piaffe/pee-offed joke about the phenomena in his standard monologue - and the crowd invariably laughs because most of us have ridden one of those accidental piaffes. It's not rare at all.A hormonal stallion will have an added prance as he struts with more suspension than normal - another kind of tension. Many show horses (many breeds: Saddlebreds, TWH and Arabs come to mind - probably others too) are purposely kept in dark stalls so they will have more animation in their movements in the show ring - and no, they don't usually gallop into the ring. It just is what it is - Horses 101. Tension and adrenaline DO change the way a horse moves. Karen Karen Thomas
Re: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect
Wow! I finally got to the original msg from Anne Elwell! This only cements my opinion of her. I had talked to her on the phone several years ago when she had some mares for sale (reducing her herd). She was so arrogant and condecending to me. I had told her about my stallion, Skyfaxi from Rhythmhill and she asked if I had plans on breeding him to her mare if I bought her. When I replied she just lit into me like a lion devouring his meal. She said I should never breed a stallion that had not been evaluated and that any silver dapple she had seen would never make first prize! Can you believe that! She didn't sell me a mare (don't think she would) but boy am I glad now. Her horses are probably deathly afraid of humans. She probably pokes them with a stick when she walks by. I don't know if many of you out there know anything about my stallion but he is the sweetest, most gentle (gelding like actually) fellow I have known. He tolts in the field, very stocky (old icelandic body type) and I think he is what most Americans look for in a stallion for their mares. Anne insulted him without even seeing him. She asked me how I knew his foals were good examples of the breed. I had not told her that I had bought his then 6 yr old daughter, Tyra (my first Icelandic) and then decided I wanted another. That was when I found Sky and knew in my heart it was not a gamble. She was totally off base and off her rocker if you ask me. I now would never consider an horse that she has owned. It would have to be a nut case. I can't believe she holds such a position of power within the UIHC and many think she is so great and knowledgable. I hope I don't get any bad backwash from this but think it should be known. I did not listen to Anne and did breed Skyfaxi. His foals are wonderful just like he is but I don't scare them on purpose. They learn respect but with love and kindness. It is people like Anne that will give Icelandics a bad reputation I think. If they don't really trust people someday somebody is going to get hurt. TV dinner still cooling? Check out Tonight's Picks on Yahoo! TV. http://tv.yahoo.com/
Re: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect
The reality is Over the years haven't there been many many things that we believed to be true that we gradually let slip away?? I've often said, I wish I knew THEN what I know NOW. There are a few things that would have been much easier had I approached them with a bit more knowledge. Wanda
RE: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect
If anyone hasn't read the book, you can still buy it used from amazon.com, even though it's out of print: http://tinyurl.com/2575wh Karen Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect
If anyone hasn't read the book, you can still buy it used from amazon.com, even though it's out of print: http://tinyurl.com/2575wh 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. Judy http://icehorses.net http://clickryder.com
Re: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect
On Fri, Mar 30, 2007 at 10:59:01AM -0700, Judy Ryder wrote: Renee wrote, in regard to the above quote: Anne Elwell is one of the founding members of the United States Icelandic Horse Congress and it's long-time secretary. that does make her sound american, not icelandic. --vicka
Re: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect
On Fri, Mar 30, 2007 at 09:15:56AM -0700, Judy Ryder wrote: 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. ok, umm, and this has what to do with iceland? it sounds kind of crazy to me, and i'm not sure an icelander would disagree. like i said, i have a photograph of an icelander with a filly on a halter and lead, certainly being admired and worked with. elwell sounds like a nutbar, but we all know america contains its share of those. --vicka
Re: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect
--- Judy Ryder [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You need to make them always alert to people, not quite sure what a person will do. Is this for real? If so, that person is a NUT JOB! Sorry, so is anyone else who believes this! Susan in NV Happy High Desert Trails Susan in NV Nevermore Ranch http://users.oasisol.com/nevermore/ Food fight? Enjoy some healthy debate in the Yahoo! Answers Food Drink QA. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=listsid=396545367
RE: [IceHorses] Scare The Foals For Respect
--- Karen Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hehehehe! How do you REALLY feel, Susan? You do recognize the name of the person being quoted, right? Nope! Never heard of the person, can't even remember the name. Who was it? Susan in NV Happy High Desert Trails Susan in NV Nevermore Ranch http://users.oasisol.com/nevermore/ Don't pick lemons. See all the new 2007 cars at Yahoo! Autos. http://autos.yahoo.com/new_cars.html
