Thursday, September 4, 2008
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A Blog designed for discussion of topics related to, but not limited to, Circus, Zoos, Animal Training, and Animal Welfare/Husbandry. Sometimes opening up the dialog is the best starting point of all. And if for nothing else when people who agree and don't agree, get together and start discussing it, it will open up a lot of peoples minds. Debate and discussion even amongst themselves opens a window where there wasn't one before.
4 comments:
In doing a horse long mount what is the danger of hooves damaging skin?
Dion
Dion,
The very few times I have ever seen a horse "long mount", It was sloppy all except for a rare occasion. I have seen then hang up in the crupper spider, and I have seen them cut on occasion. I have also seen an elephant occasionally scraped by a nail, so nobody can tell me it doesn't happen. I would assume less often if they were barefoot and not shod. I have seen it done much more often with ponies then with horses, and often with a pad on the back. What is odd is that in one picture one of the ponies has a pad, but it is gone for the long mount in the other picture. People will sometimes assume if you don't see a trick that often it is because it is hard to train. Most likely it is a lame trick to begin with and most won't fool with it.
Wade
Wade - I reckon that you'd know where your pics come from!
My guess is that this appears to be a carnival ride operator by the name of Robin Howell who worked ponies and still works cows on Circus Royale in Australia.
The Welsh Mountain ponies have got a bit of age on them now and were trained about 15 years ago by Jules Bullen.
I've never seen them work with the pad which is why I was a bit hesitant about identifying them for a start.
Dion - I've worked long mounts with ponies for years and have never had skin problems.
Obviously the secret is in good foot care. I've never used boots on them and have never used shod ponies. Another secret is to have them standing "high" so that there is not a lot of pressure on the "undermounter".
It is an easy trick [sorry Wade - behaviour] to train and the proof that it doesn't stress the "undermounters" is that they don't flinch when the pony behind touches down on them.
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