Volunteering at CANTER is nice, but some of the people drive me nuts. People for some reason, keep acting like I know nothing about horses. Its pretty frustrating, considering I explained to them my horse experience on Saturday. I think part of it, is I'm up against the usual (at least for me its usual), "she rides Western, I ride English. Western people don't know how to ride, particularly barrel racers." First off, I'm not saying that all English riders think that, but I've ran across quite a few that do, and it drives me nuts. Also, I've also ran across enough Western people not knowing how to ride, particularly in barrels. But, I'd be lying if I said I haven't seen English riders that knew nothing. And honestly, I ride both! Yeah, most of my gear is Western and I find it more comfortable to wear my western boots and jeans to horse functions if I have an option, so all you see is Western-y stuff. Today, I combined that with my barrel racing sweatshirt, which made it even better. I hate stereotypes. Honestly, I wish we could just all look at each other as a "horseman" or "horsewoman." Sure, if the person proves to you that he or she is completely incompetent, that's fine, but seriously, give people a chance. People at CANTER let some of the volunteers ride, and I can't wait until I get to get on a horse and show them that I know how to ride English, in fact I have taken lots of jumping and dressage lessons.
I get that a lot of local barrel racers and some of the pros do things that are construed as cruel, whether or not they really are. I also get that, for some reason, a lot of people think that you don't have to have a good seat or posture to ride the barrels. These people do not represent the whole of barrel racers! I know there are stereotypes for pretty much every discipline, and all I can say is, "BOOOO!"
The other issue I had today was people touting the wisdom of Parelli. Parelli bothers me a little, sure, I like his 7 games and some of his ground work and he definitely has some sound advice, but I hate how much money he's making off of some techniques that you can find in books from several older trainers, Tom Dorrance, for example. The person touting the Parelli wisdom was discussing something he had said on his show or whatever, that if your horse gets anxious about a hanging girth you use your arm to add the feel of the girth all the way around. This, to me, is common sense.
I also found it funny because she walked up to a horse who was blocking the pathway by standing lopsided and looked her in the eye and said, "Move" and pointed at her butt. The horse blatantly ignored her. People for some reason think that because the Parelli's can do it, they probably can too. Right, because the Parelli's don't spend tons of time working with the horses they do their demonstrations with. Parelli even says, "If you take the time you need, you'll find it takes less time." Something of that sort anyway. I find that pretty true, but for some reason, many Parelli followers don't get it.
Look, I'm not just a Parelli hater, I got his level 1 dvds and I read his book. I'd say, I've done my research and I find him nothing more than a good horse trainer that has amazing marketing abilities.
OK, I will step off my soap box now. I hope I haven't offended anyone, honestly, I have no problem with people who like Parelli, as long as they're reasonable.
Alright, I have to go feed the bird, go to town, and probably head to the gym!
This is one of my favorite pictures. Yeah we're not fully in the frame, but its just so neat to see the speed and the flag stuck in the bucket. It was so hard to stick the flag with Thunder!
This picture was from when I was on the Junior Mounted Division which was through 4-H. We were carrying mail, in the brown saddle bag, in a relay. It was called the Pony Express.
Titan running back after a decent pole pattern. I look SO tall in this picture. I'm not!
One of the first ties I ever let Titan go quickly through the pattern. He used to run so NICELY. What happened? haha.
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