Читать книгу Geoff Teall on Riding Hunters, Jumpers and Equitation - Geoff Teall - Страница 11

By nature, I am suspicious of “new.” I prefer tried and true. I prefer to stay with proven practices that I know work. If something has been effective for the past generation, and the one before that and—in all probability—the one before that, then I can reasonably assume that it will work for me as well.

In my experience, people will try something “new” in training because they believe there is a substitute for good, old-fashioned, hard work. They will go all the way down the road on that new approach, only to discover that it doesn’t work for various reasons. Very often, those people will then set about looking for another quick fix —which doesn’t exist.

An understanding of the physics of riding tells me that if I ride a horse in a particular way, and I do a particular thing with my hands and my legs, then I will get a particular result. To my mind, there is no need to look for new ways to accomplish the same things I can using tried and true techniques.

“New” ways tend to be more complicated. By definition, they are unproven. They often involve gimmicks and equipment to force the horse to do something rather than train him to do it. For these reasons, I believe they are generally inferior to traditional methodology.