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8 internautes sur 10 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
2.0étoiles sur 5
Everything you know is wrong, Déc 7 2003
In defense of the book, the author has the right attitude in natural training through a sense of patience, understanding and fun. However, please consider the following before purchase: - This book is practically an infomercial for the small, baroque spanish horse. The writer quite openly states that the average rider should only ride a horse between 14.1 and 15.1. He "does not know of any reason they should be bred any larger." Um.. Eventing? Jumping? Hard to get a horse to jump anything they can't see over. - Modern dressage is "monotinous" and "robotic." Basically pointless to study. The elements of riding a larger horse--unfit because their backs are too long, 17 instead of 15 vertebrae--are completely ignored. Huh? Modern dressage teaches self carriage and strengthens the back and abdominal muscles. All the author sees is someone pulling the horses head into a frame. Admittedly, many riders ride in a false frame--in error--because it looks like a frame and with draw-reins (or just pulling) it is easy to do. But all of modern dressage is dismissed out of hand, because they use contact with the mouth and this is cruel. Well hello--he's using a curved bit and not a French snaffle--of course you can't take up contact in a curved bit! Western riders get collection on a curved bit without contact too! A friend of mine is an event rider and has full control of her horse in a rubber snaffle. If he wasn't happy, he wouldn't be the performing athlete he is! - According to the book, leading a horse should only be done from the front because it is the dominant position. Leading from the shoulder is wrong because it is a submissive position to the horse. Well, leading a sporthorse from the front is a bad idea, because if they spook, you can get run over. Horses are flight animals! If you've established a good relationship with your horse, he is submissive no matter where you are around him. It's called ground manners. But this book is myopically scoped to the small baroque and therefore not very hotblooded horse. If you get run away with on one of these guys, you're going maybe 20 mph. Not 40 mph like on a thoroughbred, and most everyone I know rides off-the-track thoroughbreds. And why not? They are cheap, available, sensitive, intelligent, athletically adaptable to lots of disciplines, have a work ethic, and a desire to please. So please read John Lyons, do a google search on horse rescue, and don't let these wonderful animals be eaten by the French because baroque horses are the new fashionable accessory. Thoroughbreds are NOT "unrideable, concave" horses as this author implies. The average rider "is in no way equipped to train these horses properly." So you have to learn a correct seat and leg to stop them because they are forward and train self-carriage. Oh my heavens. But isn't that what horsemanship is about? Schooling advancement, building communication, suppleness, acceptance of the bit? Not in the small world of this book.
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de Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling
de John Lyons
de Chris Irwin
de Joe Camp
