Okay, I’ve done some poking around, and I’ve gone from cringing to horrified.
The girl in the video is three. She is apparently under the supervision of her 15 year old sister, who fancies herself a horse trainer. From the sister’s page:
Bolding mine, to underscore what Hello Again mentioned about the little girl not having the ability to command the horse.
I’m also going to repeat a few things that HA said, because this quote from the youtube page (and the comments made in this thread) illustrate that there’s a basic disconnect between what concerns the horse folk in this thread and what the OP is upset about:
I am speaking only for myself here, as someone who has been riding since the age of nine, competed in hunter/jumper and dressage, really did train horses, and now works on a daily basis with kids and horses (though we also have others in this thread that have even more experience than I). I am not giving you shit to catch because I have some investment in the girl’s welfare. I don’t care if there are any number of ways a three year old can get hurt/die. I don’t care if she has an entire family of pit bulls living with her, or if she routinely rides her trike out in rush-hour traffic. Indeed, I wasn’t actually giving you shit to catch; my frustration was pointed entirely at the creators of the video, the folks that are allowing this child to interact with this pony in a vastly unsafe manner, and the folks that are training a pony to do things that are unsafe for the people around them, and (most importantly physically damaging to the pony and her future prospects as a pet/working companion. And, of course, for all the idiots who are now going to think that all the horribly unsafe things in the video- things that I spent much of my day trying to keep people from doing (walking under the horse, playing with the horse’s mouth, putting their face next to the horse, sitting on a horse that’s laying down, etc, etc, etc)- are okay things to teach kids to do.
I don’t think any of us could have made it more clear: Rearing is a bad thing to encourage a horse to do. Horses rear in the wild only when given no other option; mostly because they have a tendency to topple over, but also because it’s a bad defensive position (leaves their bellies open) and it’s physically bad for their legs. The Lippizan horses have been specially bred to withstand the physical impact of the performances, but there are career-ending injuries all the time. Welsh ponies aren’t known for their athletic prowess. As I mentioned in my previous post, we were given a pony that was taught to rear, on a command that is a common beginning rider error. It’s impossible to ‘train out’ something like that without putting someone on the pony’s back, making it rear, hope it doesn’t fall over on top of you or injure itself, and as soon as its feet leave the ground, bonk it between the ears. Repeat until the pony ‘gets it.’ Unsurprisingly, no one wanted to volunteer, and we had an adorable, sweet, gentle pony perfect for little kids that NO ONE wanted to ride because they were terrified she’d hurt them. It was a very sad situation for everyone, especially the pony who had been used to ‘working’ as a barrel racer, and was now little more than a pasture ornament.
The pony in that video is the equivalent of a dog-aggressive dog; it will always have to be in a home where special care is taken to keep her from hurting someone unintentionally. Watch what the command is for this pony to rear- there actually appear to be two, the first is a hand moving in a ‘hello’ motion, the other is holding up both hands and jumping a bit. How often do you think people do that, especially excited children? If the 15 year old who has trained her can’t keep her (and it seems that she’s done this with other horses who have gone on to possibly unsuspecting owners), then she either gets sent to a home where the owners are unaware of her training (a crisis in the making, as people buy Welsh ponies for their very small children for a reason), they somehow find a performing family willing to take her on, or she gets euthanized because Welsh ponies are a dime a dozen and one that could hurt someone isn’t worth the trouble.
I see no difference between this video and the one from this thread. Uneducated people putting their children (or siblings) at risk at the horse’s expense.
I would also like to add that the person who responded on the youtube page about the child teaching the horse according to Parelli has a bizarre understanding of his system. He would never, ever, ever teach a horse to rear or lay down, for safety reasons. The methods may have been Parelli based (honestly, I didn’t see enough actual training to make a judgment), but certainly not his system. And I doubt he would agree with poking a horse with a stick.
Obviously she’s not being carefully monitored, nor is she a circus performer in training. In fact, just as I was about to post this, I noticed they no longer have the pony:
Wonder what happened… 