Road to the Horse

Anyone who has watched Pat & Linda's latest DVD's on Reading Your Horse could not blindly sit through the onslaught of degradation and humiliation that Clinton Anderson heaped upon the unfortunate little horse he chose to work with in Road To The Horse. There was no approach and retreat. It was a frontal assaualt of all that horses senses.
Flooding of that nature, has no place in "natural horsemanship". Tom Dorrance would not have stood still for such handling. That horse was 'broke' for sure. But I thought natural horsemanship was about making not breaking horses. The curiosity was never knocked out of the horses that Chris and Stacy worked with. (And it appeared that Stacy got the toughest minded one of the three). My chief complaint is not with Andersons methods, even though I find them reprehensible. The most inexcusable part of it all, is that he is allowed to fly such training under the banner of 'natural horsemanship'. By looking away and accepting his methods, we encourage those new to natural training to believe that guns, whips, chainsaws and full frontal assaults on a horses spirit are what we are about. God help the horses and God bless Pat and Linda. Keep up the good work.


Watching Chris's horse there was no doubt that spirit and curiosity were left intact. When Chris walked out of that arena it was a joyous thing to see his horse follow a great horseman because he found safety and dignity in his presence.