Sidebar

[v j stauffer]

Originally Posted by Fager Fan

Respectfully, I think you’re not grasping the reality of dealing with horses. Particularly high-strung horses. What you might look at as shocking may ultimately save that horse’s life. Not just human’s lives, but the horse’s.

If the horse is not taught to respect humans, that they are subservient to them, the horse can very easily become dangerous. The dangerous horse becomes a truly mistreated horse, or one that ends up with a bad fate.

A horse turns its rear to you when you walk in the stall. You better smack that ass and get him turned around instead of allowing an aggressive action that was precipitating a kick that could kill you.

A horse doesn’t respect your space and will walk over you. You better push that horse off you, or even carry a crop or something to ward him off until he understands to respect your space.

There are plenty of times where man-handling a horse is entirely appropriate and ultimately teaches the horse manners and makes him and the humans around him safe. You know abuse when you see it, but it’s difficult to qualify abuse in words unless you are talking extremes. No one advises hitting a horse in the face yet probably everyone has popped the nose of a horse who bit them.

What no one in this thread has pointed out is that this horse nearly pulled the assistant down on his head, then almost bucked the rider off. A few hard jerks on the halter is probably the normal reaction. This guy lost his cool with the horse and struck him open-handed 4 times on the side of his face. No one who deals with horses wouldn’t acknowledge that he lost his cool, but they also would understand it and not think it deserving of losing a job he’s apparently done well at for many years.

BRILLIANT POST