Netflix for Equestrians: HorseFlix!
12. Jul, 2009 
0 Comments
When my daughter was away at college, I was able to dispense with television entirely because, well, I hate it. It serves no purpose in my life other than to introduce noisy and offensively mindless material into my home. I have never been able to understand why people keep the thing on endlessly and even eat in stupefied silence in front of it. What happens to family life? To conversation? Or to the life of the mind? How can you develop your mind (or stillness of the mind) if you are so busy filling it with garbage?
Ok, enough ranting disguised as rhetorical questions.
I’m a huge fan of Netflix. I get to choose Netflix among a large variety of independent film and documentary, and on the rare occasion when a guest insists on a horror flick or my daughter is home and insists on SciFi, she can have that, too. On a limited basis. Hooray for a limited basis.
I can never find equestrian instructional DVDs on Netflix, and now I don’t have to keep trying.
Now, there’s HorseFlix, an online/mail video rental service for equine/equestrian videos.
Here are some of the categories offered:
Bits
Clicker Training
Documentary
Dressage
Driving
Eventing
Feature Films
Foal Care
For The Rider
Gaited Horse
General Interest
Grooming
Health – Horse
Hoof Care
Horsekeeping
Hunter
Jumper
Natural Horsemanship
Pony Club
Saddles and Fit
Travel
Trick Training
Western
Wild Horses
There’s a lot of good stuff in there, and there’s also some questionable stuff, but not much of it. I would very much like to copyedit the site, but that’s a bad habit of mine, so ignore that statement. I am thrilled to see that there are five Mark Rashid videos. *doing a little happy dance* and I can now watch Chris Irwin, which will make Shoshin happy.
Take a look, see what you think. Let me know what videos YOU most would like to see.
blogposts
Chris Irwin, Pete Ramey! WOW! Thank you, thank you, thank you for blogging about this ingenious service. It is literally a dream come true.
oneredhorse,
I know! Pete Ramey! Think of all the stuff we get to learn!
Sounds like they have diversity then the service I use, but right now I’m using BarnSweetBarnDvds http://www.barnsweetbarndvds.com/
horseideology
That site looks great, too! I never knew there was such diversity available. So much good stuff to learn. Thanks for showing us!
One, thing, though is that the Tellington TTouch videos they offer are WAAAY out of date. I don’t even know where they got them!
I’ll post a link to it when it goes online. It’s positive.
Really? I’ve read some not-so-positive things by other readers. Such as, “‘phrenology’ for horses–haha!” that sort of thing. If you don’t read it critically, and with a careful eye, it sounds a bit far-fetched. I’m glad you found it a positive reading experience. Do share the link when it’s available.
When I read Linda’s book about this same subject, I was not happy with it. There was a part in me that wanted to reject what she was saying and I think this is because, as people, we have a history of using other races’ color and physical characteristics as a way of malignining their intellect and place in society.
However, watching the DVD, it became clearer that Linda uses many different things (i.e. health, riding, history, etc…) to impact her personality profile. I liked the the dvd gave 19 (that’s a lot in the DVD horse world) examples.
Whether we want to admit it or not, a horse with small eyes, parrot mouth, bulging nose, and poor conformation is usually a hard horse to get along with
I was a Horseflix subscriber for about 6 months and loved it.
I recently switched over to giddyupflix, and love it even more.
They have a much larger selection, allow you to keep a longer queue of movies, shorter wait times and don’t charge late fees.
(http://www.giddyupflix.com/)
I love that there are horse DVD rental sites, though!
cheers,
Mary
Hi Mary. I’ve visited Stale Cheerios before but not in a long time. I think that we have more in common now than ever. Congratulations on writing such an important blog on positive animal training.
Thanks for the tip on GiddyupFlix. I will definitely check them out. It’s a good sign that there are competing companies to choose from.
Maybe you could drop them a line…? I would like to see more diversity in what they are offering. Right now I did write a review (not up yet) about the Horse Personality DVD of Linda’s.
Waiting for the Peggy Cummings Connected Groundwork and one by Walter Zetti.
what did you say about the video?