HORSE LORDS BLESS YOU

Icelandic Horse

The first 4 lessons are posted to Patreon! Join me as I train my 3-year-old gelding, Bráinn frá Efri-Rauðalæk, from the very beginning. Before the pandemic, I had been in discussions with several people about traveling to do a clicker training clinic series. Since none of us know exactly when we’ll be able to travel again, I’ve decided instead to do a web series. Each episode contains a lesson, in which I discuss theory, method, and goals for the upcoming session, a full length training session, and then a follow-up talk after the session in which I dissect the session in depth to discuss what we did and why. Most lessons will be 20-30+ minutes long. The earliest lessons are the shortest, so these videos will only get longer and more information-dense over time.

Over the next several weeks you will see a horse with no previous clicker training experience be prepared for under saddle work using positive reinforcement, and get an inside look at the choices I make for his training and the theory behind everything we do.

Become a patron at patreon.com/madrivervalleyicelandics to unlock the first 4 videos and all future episodes, which I plan to post Mondays and Wednesdays 🌟

If you can’t subscribe, PLEASE share this post. I am currently unable to teach or work with clients in person, but we still have 12 horses here on the farm that need daily care and resources. I’m hoping that I can provide a helpful service by teaching these online lessons, and that I can also offset some of the sting of not being able to teach in person this way as well. Let’s ride out this storm together!

So yes, rider weight does impact a horse’s ability to perform; just like tack weight does. This animal is physically carrying you, so you need to ensure you have an animal that is physically capable of carrying you. And you need to work to make sure you are as little of a burden to your horse as any other rider does; fitness, balance, equitation, etc. are an essential part of training.

If you can see a person’s horse struggling with the amount of weight they are carrying, it’s about as socially acceptable to comment on that as it is any other thing another person’s horse might be struggling with; which is to say, proceed with immense forethought, caution, and respect. Don’t expect to be listened to just because you think you’re right more strongly and loudly than they do. Anticipate and respect disagreement.

On the flip side of that, there IS a huge problem of fatshaming in the horse community. This isn’t a matter of people being “too sensitive” or whatever; judges, particularly and notoriously in hunter/jumper classes, literally judge riders based on perceived weight. They aren’t subtle about this. I have seen people who weigh a perfectly healthy amount be called “barrel-chested” or “top-heavy” and be docked points in Wetstern Horsemanship classes. I have worked with an instructor who has bullied multiple students out of his lessons for their perceived weight.

I know girls who starve themselves and fatshame themselves at the ripe young age of 13 for the sake of riding. Young, young girls who develop eating disorders because of this.

Can we stop and consider that maybe the solution to “you need to work on fitness” and “your horse is too small for you” is, perhaps, not to ruthlessly and  systematically fatshame riders? That maybe this also has a huge, life-altering, even dangerous impact on these riders? That maybe it’s not actually justification for bullying and abuse?

Using photos of morbidly obese tourists on horses in what looks to be Caribbean island trail strings does NOT prove your point, it makes you look like more of an asshole than your original shifty post. It’s like the PETA groups constantly taking photos of carriage horses in other countries out of context to decry the American carriage industry. Using those photos but talking about the competitive H/J world is wildly misleading and dishonest.

I’m so thankful I have a reputation in my area for being a welcome/body positive trainer. I’m so thankful I’m in a position to provide a safe place for all bodies to experience horses.. and all humans to feel safe in their skin. sometimes I forget what kind of ugliness exists outside my bubble. Sometimes I forget people actual think their shitty opinions on other people bodies are so important it’s worth hurting others over.

I found that line of thinking disgusting at most. The amount of fat shaming and fatphobia in the responses was horrifying, but I guess not surprising for horsblr.

I have struggled with my weight for many years. Unfortunately I will have to be on BC for the rest of my life. I can't even take a break when I'm not sexually active because without it I can't function due to period related issues. BC causes weight gain and makes losing weight hard. While I'll never give up entirely on losing weight, it is depressing.

I don't think it makes me any less of a rider, and I will be debuting at Second Level this year. So...shove it.

It we're actually dealing with "a lack of reading comprehension"--

Either the author who published the noncomprehended post did a bad job of saying what they meant to say, and that's on them for not explaining clearly enough what they're trying to say-

Or what's being talked about is people who who literally cannot exercise reading comprehension, and then we're dealing with issues related to either disability, poverty, or both. And dumping on people in this category is not very cash money and in fact is a dick move.

But say you dont actually mean an issue with actually comprehending what's being written?

Say you actually mean willfully misconstruing/misunderstanding, ie someone offering criticism is actually consciously making the choice to not understand what an author wrote. And this by default is actually predicated on the baseline that the person offering criticism or an otherwise noncongruent reaction knows what the author means, and is deliberately opting to strawman what the author said.

That's really not a lack of reading comprehension, then.

I'm going on a limb here and taking folks who have been lamenting "a lack of reading comprehension" to really mean a lack of agreement and the appearanc of what they perceive as a deliberate misconstruction of the author's words.

Which.

Again, to reiterate, struggles with reading comprehension are usually related to disability of poverty, and dunking on genuine struggles with this is ableist and/or elitist in nature.

And, like, when people wish to indicate that they consider a person unintelligent or otherwise lacking, they accuse said person of of failing to perform those tasks, ie failing to read correctly. And this kind of language in discussion/debate/argument/whatever is very much rooted in "I think your criticism is stupid so I'm gonna dismiss it by saying you obviously can't read right" which. Ableist.

**Y'all can say that someone is flagrantly misconstruing what was written. But maybe knock it off with using language rooted in bigotry?**