Today we got to take a tour of Parelli Ranch out in Colorado. McKenzie, a 3-star student, directed us for the tour. We began the tour with introductions and getting to know more about Pat Parelli and talk to him about what we want to do in the future. It was nice to hear about his life and upbringing in rodeo, martial arts, and going through college to get an agricultural education degree. Next, we walked through his barn's tack area. One of the coolest parts was meeting his student interns and people from all over the world doing externships. We watched them work with their horses and explain why and how they do things.
Pat has a 10-level training program with the first 4 being online for people to complete at home. Once someone has mastered those they can apply to his program and go to his ranch to complete 5-10 to become the best horse trainers and horse businesspeople. He has many locations all over the world including in Europe, Australia, and in Florida. Visiting and training in these locations is the highlight of his career, getting to help horses and their owners be able to communicate and build better relationships. He has trained English, western, and general horsemanship.
His philosophy is driven around training horses through communication and building bonds and trust instead of bullying them into doing what the owner wants. Humans naturally want to be more dominant but horses being prey animals don’t react well to being treated like that. Once they feel respected and loved they will do anything for their owner. It was really cool to hear about how he works with animals and his success rate with training horses. He also has experience with elephants, dolphins, and zebras.
The last part of our tour was seeing where the interns eat and their cabins on the property. When people do the training program they live in cabins and have a common eating and bathroom area.
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