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Joel Means and his horse Chico have a perfect partnership
Joel Means is a natural hoofcare barefoot trimmer, a trainer of horses and an instructor to people located in the Austin, TX area. Joel is an advanced student of Parelli Natural Horsemanship who has been following the program for 12 years, and has been helping others with their horses for 8 years.
The video below of Joel and Chico playing together is amazing and inspiring, and a reminder that we can all achieve what Joel has done with patience and positive training techniques.
Joel is not a clicker trainer per se but he does understand the value of positive reinforcement and treats as motivation for horses to learn and perform. I encourage everyone who clicker trains their horse to also follow a natural horsemanship program. It will give your training program structure and flow so you have clear goals to accomplish as well as the support of a tried-and-true training system. You’ll find a list of natural horsemanship clinicians and trainers on the right hand side of this page. I follow Parelli but Alexandra Kurland, the foremost authority on clicker training horses, uses the John Lyons program. They’re all good – take your pick!
As you watch the video observe how Joel cues Chico with his hands, the training stick, his body's posture and even the horse’s own tail! Isn’t it remarkable that Chico moved into pressure (pulling the tail) instead of away from it? See how Joel uses his barrels and other objects to make training more fun? Why just use the arena rail when you can use the entire arena as a playground? You can see this horse has complete confidence in Joel and loves performing for him. And Joel treats Chico with dignity and respect. It's a beautiful thing to watch!
Enjoy the video and visit Joel’s website below to learn more about him.
Have comments? Email me!
More Information
Joel Means’ Alpha Horsemanship
SNAPP (Savvy North Austin Parelli Players)
Comments
wow! what a partnership they have. Truly inspiring. One day my horse and I hope to be like that, we are just starting out and loving every minute of it. Everyone should learn to be natural with horses, its just amazing to see a bond like that. Love and trust is a whole lot cheaper than whips and spurs, and the results are awesome.
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