By Ralph Moses (3 Star Parelli Professional)
Pat defines impulsion as “Whoa Equals Go.”
Some horses have a lot of “Go,” not much “Whoa,” and we can call them long horses. Typically, these horses have extrovert qualities.
They’re not much different than people. Many people need to think out loud, meaning they need to move their mouths to think. The horsey equivalent is the horse that needs to move its feet before it can think.
Then there are the horses with lots of “Whoa” and not much “Go.” These are called short horses and usually have introverted qualities. Just like an introverted person, introverted horses need to think before they move their feet.
For beginning or inexperienced people, a long horse can be pretty intimidating. They simply go too fast.
The inexperienced rider gets scared, squeezes with their legs to hold on, and the long horse goes faster. (Remember the phases of Go—Smile…, SQUEEZE..., spank the air…, spank the hair.)
Then some local “expert” steps in and says, “You need to lunge that horse more. Wear it out. Make it sweat.” The result: The horse becomes better conditioned, able to go even further and faster.
Some essential Parelli strategies for a long horse on the ground include sideways, yo-yo backing, and change of direction.
When riding, strategies should include bending to a stop, smaller and smaller circles until the horse relaxes, passenger lessons, and the point-to-point pattern.
The short horse presents a different set of problems. The short horse is often difficult to motivate or takes an attitude of, “That’s enough. I’m done. Let’s eat.”
All too often, the human gets frustrated, starts to get into the “make” mode, and the horse says, “Game On!”
Pretty quickly, the human is doing all the work, and the horse is hardly moving its feet.
Effective Parelli strategies for a short horse include the Circling Game Allow (maintain gait), corners, and point-to-point patterns.
A note on the point-to-point pattern: It is effective for both long and short horses, but its use differs.
For a long horse, the human’s attitude becomes, “We are going there and going to stop.” Horses are good at anticipating and start to realize they are going to stop at the wall or fence post and start slowing down earlier and earlier.
When using point-to-point for the short horse, the rider’s attitude becomes, “Let’s hurry up and get there so we can stop and rest.” This motivates the short horse to put in more effort and speed up. Problem solved.
In the end, we want our horse balanced with Whoa equaling Go. We want our short horse to go fast and our long horse to go slow.
Recognizing which type of horse, long or short, we are dealing with allows us to pick and apply the appropriate Parelli arrows from our quiver.
