Why a Professional of Forty Years Promotes Parelli Horse*Man*Ship™

Why would some one who has been a professional horsewoman for forty plus years spend time and effort promoting another horseman and his accomplishments? In my case, it is because I consider that the other person is better at transferring the information I want people to have than I am. This is an extended biography where I explain some of my journey with horses.

I am a generalist when it comes to breeds and uses of horses, but a specialist when it comes to horses. Horses are my passion. They are my focus. I will go so far as to say they are my reason for living.

Horses are so much the center of my being that I never could settle on any one sport or breed because I found the animals themselves so fascinating. Though I will say here I got involved with dressage in 1974 and followed it diligently until becoming involved with the Parelli program in 1995.

I have to honestly say I have seldom learned anything from Parelli that I didn't already know in some form or the other, which has actually made it more difficult for me rather than easier. What the program does for me is organize what I have tried to teach others for the past thirty years. This ability to organized and teach others is why Pat and Linda Parelli are my heroes; why I steer people towards their program.

Another critical aspect of why I am the follower and Pat Parelli is that, were we horses, according to the Horsenality™ he and Linda developed, Pat Parelli would be a Left Brain Extrovert and I would be a Right Brain Introvert. He is intelligent, outgoing and athletic. I am an intelligent, introvert, klutz. I am a good teacher one-on-one or with small groups. To get in front of crowds and demonstrate just how to do the things necessary to create a partnership between difficult horses and people is beyond me. So, recognizing a good leader, I'm not going to waste my time trying to circumvent his accomplishments. Rather, I will try to spread the knowledge he has organized as far and wide as I possibly can.

One goal I've had for over thirty years now is to get my students to a place where they can go farther than I can. I once heard a world-renowned dressage personality say, "The teacher should always be better than the student." I had to chew on this a long time before I finally decided he was both right and wrong. My conclusion is the teacher should know more than the student and try to transfer that information. But, a really good teacher will see when the student has it in them to be better and will encourage and develop this ability.

I have had students that I recognized early on would surpass me in many ways. I wanted those students. I have actively hunted for that kind of student. Frankly no win in a show ever thrilled me as much as the first time one of my students went out and brought back a ribbon. For me the ultimate thrill is when my students show how well they have learned and expanded on what I've taught them.

I enjoy it when I take a difficult horse and accomplish something with it that makes people ooh and ahh, but I get a lot bigger thrill when someone I've taught takes a problem horse and makes other people sit up and take notice. Now with my seventh decade rapidly approaching I am trying to pass on what I've learned via my writing. I try to point others towards the people and things I've found to be worth while and steer them away from the dead-ends I crashed and burned at.

I have been involved with horses all my life and had some advantages that most do not have in today's world. I grew up in a time and a place where I got to see and work with a LOT of different horses. I had my first professional gig, giving riding lessons, at a large stable in San Antonio, Texas when I was sixteen years old. I crashed and burned. Fortunately my students didn't. They just didn't get what they paid for and didn't stay with me. I did much better with the first horse I trained from scratch, which I did at about the same time. Eventually I did learn how to teach humans as well as horses, though not as well as I wanted too. Two years ago, after forty years, I closed my place to the public and began to concentrate on my writing. This is my way of making sure what I've learned doesn't get completely lost.

I trained my first horse from scratch using the methods recommended by Margaret Campbell Self. I didn't remember at the time, but they were very like some of the things my grandmother told me. Women have been training horses for a long time, they just have been doing it quietly.

Another source of help was an old California Vaquero who had come to live with his great granddaughter. I have a confession to make here. I did not give that man the credit and attention he deserved. I was a young teenager and when the other teen aged girls at the stable made fun of me for hanging around "that old Mexican." Their snobby attitudes completely ignoring the fact his people had been in this country hundreds of years before theirs. I listened to them instead of my own good sense. I cannot say now how deeply I regret that. What I learned from him proved to be a lot more useful than anything I learned from them.

Before I gave into peer pressure though he allowed me to ride the last horse he ever trained, a California Spade Bit horse that could be ridden with silk threads. Long before I knew how to do it I knew what a perfectly trained horse felt like. I kept looking for that experience again, but in all the wrong places. This is another thing Parelli did for me. I rediscovered what a partnership with my horse was and, more importantly, how to get it. Even more important than the rediscovery of sound horsemanship and how to obtain it for myself I learned how to teach it to others.

I'd been reading articles by Pat Parelli since the mid-1980's, but while I thought he had some good ideas I didn't see they were all that much different than my own. Then, in March of 1995, a friend offered me free tickets to a clinic taught by a Parelli certified instructor. Because the friend and her daughter were people I enjoyed spending time with I accepted and even took my daughter along. To be honest, at this point I'd seen a lot of horse gurus in action and wasn't too impressed. I didn't expect this clinic to be any different.

Then I went to the initial meeting and was a little surprised. When the people led their horses out-ready to begin the clinic-the clinician told them to put the horses back in the stalls. Learning what to do and how to use their equipment was going to be the first lessons. Since I had already realized at least four of the fifteen horses were extremely dangerous I breathed a sigh of relief, but didn't hold any hope of the weekend ending without a disaster.

After the lesson and being allowed to handle the equipment I bought a halter, twelve-foot lead rope, carrot stick and a video called Seven Games™. I still have all of them. The halter, lead and carrot stick are in good condition and since then the only time I've ever had to replace any Parelli equipment is when it got lost.

Despite my concerns there were no almighty wrecks and I was amazed at what was accomplished in two days, in an open field, in the Heart of Texas. It was cold, wet and windy. I would not have missed the experience for anything. Being an old pro myself the road since then has frequently been harder than it needs to be. It is much easier to learn something radically new when you don't have a lot of experiences cluttering the back ground. I have learned though and love to introduce others to the world I discovered.

Parelli's program has taught me a way to organize and use my knowledge. It is a way to accomplish my ultimate goal for the past thirty some years, which is not to teach the horses, but to teach the people. I set this goal for myself back in 1972 when I decided there was no way I could be a professional horse trainer. I had a hard time accomplishing it however.

I have to go back to 1963 to explain some of my life choices. Hmm, maybe even further than that. My primary caregiver, as they are called these days, was my grandmother. As a young woman she had been a horse trainer. Since she was born and raised in the late 1800's you can readily appreciate this was a bit unusual. I learned a lot from her without realizing it. Because of her I got a lot of pony rides at the local kiddie park that had a little pen with a bunch of ponies that you could ride for a dime. The attendant would lead you once around an enclosed circle for ten cents. I've since come to appreciate that this is the very best way for small children to begin riding, which I will explain in another chapter/article.

As an older child I took riding lessons. After an almighty wreck that landed me in the hospital for three days one of my uncles' decided I needed to learn to ride better if I was going to keep crawling on any horse anyone offered me to ride. I learned the correct way to pose on horse back. When he was shipped out, he was an Air Force officer, the lessons stopped.

I discovered a stable where they rented horses and I would save my babysitting money so I could ride there occasionally. The stable was a livery stable that provided rentals, lessons, training, boarding and stud service. At that time there were upwards of two hundred horses in residence at all times. They were different breeds-everything from Appaloosas to Morgans to Tennessee Walkers and Thoroughbreds. Because San Antonio was, and still is, a military community, there were sometimes breeds of horses the rest of the country wouldn't see for another twenty or thirty years. It was at this stable I saw my first Lipizzaners and Norwegian Duns. They were brought back by Army and Air Force officers after being purchased during their tours of duty in Europe. This was why I got so fascinated by all the different breeds of horses. Margarite Henry's Album of Horses fueled this interest.

As for the riding, San Antonio itself was cowboy central, yet there was a Polo club that played most Sundays across the street from this stable. There was a hunt club, though they had to drag the scent because you could hardly chase a fox through a city. There were people who rode American Saddlebreds and Tennessee Walkers. The Army's Pentathlon horses were stabled at Fort Sam Houston at that time. Because of my family's military connections I was allowed to hang out there sometimes as well as at Lackland AFB's stables. While race track betting was against the law at the time we still had race horses though in a very small way. By the time I was seventeen I had tried all of these different sports and, while not especially good at any of them, acquired a lot of knowledge about horses. No matter what breed or size I learned that all horses had some things in common. They were horses and, whether a Percheron or Shetland, they acted and reacted like horses.

When, in 1963, I was refused admittance to veterinary school because I was a "girl." I refocused my attention on raising horses. By the time the school was forced to accept women I was married, had a child, and a bunch of Thoroughbreds I hoped would race when Texas finally allowed betting at the tracks. That didn't happen for another ten years, by which time Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis had hit Texas, and my marriage had crashed and burned along with my breeding program.

I tried to set up a career as a horse trainer. Early on someone brought me an Appaloosa mare that they described as a complete slug that wouldn't move out of a walk. I spent several weeks retraining her. By the time we were finished she was a horse that shifted gears easily, as well as stopped and turned, backed etc.

The people came out and rode her for the first time. They ran her up and down the arena doing sliding stops and quick turns until she was drenched in sweat. When they finally stopped her they were pleased with the results and the man promptly wrote out a check for my services. The mare stood there heaving, with bloody mouth and sides, looking out at me with her big, beautiful eyes asking, "What did I do wrong? I did everything you asked of me. Why are you letting them do this to me?" I took the blood money, as I felt it was, because I had a child and animals to feed. I realized I couldn't train horses for the public.

It took awhile and a lot of thinking, but I finally figured out that what I needed to do was train people. I didn't want to just teach riding because that was such a small part of dealing with horses. I wanted to teach people about horses and how to handle them so the horse wouldn't stand there and look at me with those questions in its eyes.

For the next twenty years, on a one on one basis, I taught horsemanship. Sometimes I succeeded and sometimes I failed. That is true even now after using the Parelli program for the past decade. Some people just will not look at their horse as anything but a procession like their cars and bikes. Some though do learn to look into their horses eyes and see the soul that looks back at them. Those people are worth mining. This is what I get from Parelli. This is why I encourage people to get involved with the Parelli program.