Reverse Psychology

I remember when Pat first talked about using “reverse psychology” with horses, that the less direct-line you are with a horse, the more progress you make.  I really thought I understood what he was talking about until I started performing in public demonstrations with him.  We would each be given a horse that had various issues, including trailer-loading problems, and within 90 minutes to 2 hours we would have the horses calmly negotiating various obstacles and loading willingly into the trailer.

One day, I had a particularly challenging horse.  Every time I even thought about going near the trailer, he would react badly and try to pull away, so I finally thought “I don’t care if you ever get in the trailer,” and just played with his confidence and responsiveness to me around the obstacles.  All of a sudden, he started wanting to go to the trailer.  It blew me away but it really opened my eyes… even though I thought I wasn’t concerned about the trailer when I was playing with these horses, I really was.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I had this thought that by the end of the session the horse would be loading.  This horse taught me how not to even go there and once I mastered that in myself, my results with horses have skyrocketed in every area.  I’m really not concerned if it happens or not – I focus on the relationship and getting the horse to really trust me and take as long as it takes.  Then, we can do anything.

This past weekend, we staged a unique event in Reno – Pat Parelli Presents: Wild Horse Taming…Naturally.  Pat and seven of his mastery students undertook the taming of eight wild mustangs over three days in front of both a live and webcast audience.  It was riveting watching horses and humans learning, but best of all was what I heard Pat repeatedly saying: “Remember, we are taming them, not starting them,” but it still took some time for that to sink in for everyone.  It was hard not to keep thinking about saddling and riding.  At one point, we asked Pat for his definition of taming and he said, “That the horse has no fear of the human, and until then, you should not be trying to train him.”  HUGE.

John and his horse, sharing a moment.

The day we were traveling home, I received a wonderful email from one of our 3-Star Parelli Instructors that is right on topic and I want to share it with you.  It is a more detailed example of reverse psychology applied to trailer loading that I had mentioned in one of my archived blogs (Texas Event – Done) a couple of years ago.  She described the technique so nicely that I told her I’m going to paste it into my next blog!  What she describes below is truly reverse psychology because there is more emphasis on the ‘come out’ than the ‘go in’, and that’s what helps it truly become the horse’s idea.  Enjoy, and thanks for sharing, Nathalie Lagasse (Belgium):

“The trailer loading strategy I developed was to only send the horse in when she is completely outside, wait (allow) and see how far she gets, and then ask her back out all the way with Porcupine Game (a firm, steady draw), and then resend.   Of course I also take into account all the other stuff I learned from Pat & you in the general preparation, retreating on a good try and doing something else, etc.

Kalley, taking the time it takes.

So whenever I ask the horse back out (with a steady feel on the rope) she has two choices: come back out (if there is still unconfidence) OR decide that she knows the game and actually push forwards into the pressure. I then release when she moves forwards. And while in the beginning I might release on just a tug forwards with the nose, I soon release only when a foot actually steps forwards. This way it is always totally the horse’s idea to go all the way in, and I have learned about the feeling of taking contact and releasing into forwards movement (that’s what Game of Contact is about too!) I’ll even keep a slight drag on the rope when they go forward, which usually encourages them to go in even further – it is really reverse psychology. ‘OK, you didn’t go all the way in, so come back out please, no don’t go in further, noooo, darn it, my horse went all the way in the trailer.’

The fun part for me is that I have been doing it this way with my horses for years now but hadn’t really tried it much with others. Last weekend I saw one of my friends still having to take an hour to load her horse, so I asked her if I could play with her horse and the trailer. It worked great, and she said ‘this actually looks much nicer than what I’d been doing’ (she’d been asking him to go further when he was halfway in by tapping his butt), the next days she tried it herself, and another friend who visited was extremely impressed with the change and said that Milo looked like a little toy car that you wind back and then it runs forward ”

Tagged as: linda parelli, Parelli Media