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Well, I don't think you can condemn all Western trainers. There are a number of them who follow Tom Dorrance's methods, plus the Aussie trainer Clinton Anderson who follows the Jeffers method and some other Aussie gentle trainers. None of these people use the tied hard methods, or weird gadgets, or any other abusive or potentially abusive methods. However, most don't train for WP either... they train for reining and cow work. The horse has to have its head together and be athletic and in condition for these events, using its own natural way of going. And calm. And enjoying its work.

As for the trainers of heavy shod gaited horses, I can't spit far enough to reach them all.

I had the same problem in the town I grew up in. I met one or two western trainers who were decent, but they were few and far between. It's been really hard for me not to carry those prejudices over here to college. I have some really good friends on our western team, and I have a lot of respect for our western coach, but it's taken a long time to get me de-conditioned not to cringe when I hear the words "Western Pleasure".

But in all fairness, all other disciplines are subject to the same prejudices. Dressage Queens? Hunter Princesses? It's the same thing. We all know that these are the exceptions, not the rules, but it's still the stereotype that we carry in our minds because that's what we've been exposed to.

I don't know if this is going to be going more off topic or more on topic razz

horseluvrelisha- you mentioned you wanted to improve your horses posture over jumps. (If somone has already mentioned this and I just missed it, sorry for the repitition..) Have you considered doing a gymnastic line(where you have a line of 3-4 fences evenly spaced, starting very low and gradually getting higher and higher)? Because I know from expeirnce that it usually works pretty well at teaching the horse to really tuck his knees and pick himself up over the jumps. Also it might be a good idea to consider only working on one problem at a time, choose eaither his headset or his jumping form so that you can really truely fix it before moving on. Chances that once you get his headset fixed, his jumping form will improve because all the rounding work will have strenghtened his back thus making it eaiser for him to jump. Don't give up hope, you have a lovely horse and I'm sure you will find somthing that works for both of you smile

We have a hotshot 'Dressage trainer' at the barn I go to upstate that has methods just as cruel and unreasonable as some of the Western folks I've seen, if not worst.

The worst part (so far rolleyes ) was when she just bought herself a new big Warmblood mare (because if you want to be serious in Dressage, a big-assed Warmblood is the ONLY option rolleyes ). The mare was barely broke to be ridden, and you could barely get a saddle on her back without her flipping out. Well, the 'trainer' decides that she's just going to skip basic ground training and everything in between and go straight to teaching the nutcase of a mare to go into a correct Dressage frame. What does she do?

Takes the horse into the round pen with a surcingle and bridle, a chambon AND sidereins, and a lunge line with a chain on the end that was over the mare's nose. Then cracks the whip, and lets the mare FLY around and around and around that roundpen, snorting and eyes wide and just having a meltdown, with all these random straps forcing her head down, with a chain digging into her nose.

This entire scene doesn't even phase the trainer. Just lets the horse keep all-out sprinting around the round-pen until she's too tired to move out any longer, veins popping and lathered in sweat.

She also is an avid user of the over-bending or 'rollkur' (however the hell it's spelled) method. Because sawing at the horse's mouth with your reins so hard that your entire upper body is moving side to side as you ride until the horse drops it's head to the dirt out of desperation is a GREAT Dressage method. rolleyes

Yeah. I read somewhere (some western folks are going to have to help me on this one) that after a reining horse competes, it is inspected. If there's any blood on the horse (ie from spurs or the bit or anything), the horse is automatically disqualified. THAT I HIGHLY agree with.

(Okay, I'm on purpose not commenting on the jumping because I am the crappiest jumper in the world. I don't know anything about it really, and basically for me as long as the horse gets over it without ripping the jump apart, that's good enough for me. rofl )

It's kind of hard to tell, but in the trotting clip it seems like your hands might be too far up his neck. That might have something to do with him not wanting to collect and calm down to a reasonable pace sometimes.

Darnit, I wanted comments on our jumping ability or lack thereof -__-'. xd

Herrrm, well, I had it in the beginning there - hands are supposed to be
though hunters tend to hold their hands closer together, which I do - have even heard of people putting rubber bands around their thumbs to keep their hands closer together - ANYWAY, that's off-topic. Point is, I usually manage to keep my hands slightly above and in front of the withers xp . Here, my normal hand position, taken from t3h video:



I do see what you're talking about toward the end of the video; Silver had started staring off in the other direction and trying to turn his head that way, so I started trying to correct it and ended up completely losing my contact neutral , which is when his head flew up. There's a dip in my reins. *wince*

It was an error on my part, for sure; thank you for pointing it out. ^___^

(If it counts for anything, in my own defense, I was slammed in the face/head very hard about half an hour before, so I was riding with the worst headache of my life and while very dizzy/nauseous [feeling like I'd just been hit by a truck]! biggrin I probably shouldn't have even been riding at all [considering that I got off the horse, immediately took painkillers and spent the rest of the day miserable on the couch with ice packs all over my head - my head's still throbbing now and it's been over 24 hours rofl ], but I was dead set on getting my damn jumping videos. And I did. xd )

Yay, comments / constructive criticism!

(Oh, as an afterthought - just to point out, he doesn't have speed problems anymore; we cured those a couple of years ago when I first started riding him. I can always keep him at a quiet, reasonable pace; I almost never get disobedience out of him except for his ADD-ness [notice that he started staring off toward the woods in the first jumping video too rolleyes ]; his only "problem" as far as I know [unless there's something I'm failing to notice / missing o__o] is lack of rounding/correct frame. And I suppose it's not all that bad, watching the videos; just not a perfect dressage frame, though it should suffice in local, low-level hunters xd )

... Is it just me or am I leaning too far forward? o___0