The internet makes available a range of videos of trainers that would otherwise be inaccessible to many people around the world looking to expand their knowledge of horsemanship.
The thing I most appreciate about video as a means to study other people’s horse work is that it can be dissected down to seconds, replayed, slowed, the audio turned off, skip the boring parts, etc. Videos can be a great medium for examining the nitty-gritty of a person’s work.
I have a method to watching horse training videos.
Mostly I skim through it first. If it interests me enough to want to know more, then I study the end again. I want to know how the horse is feeling and performing at the end before I judge how it got there and the methods used. If I am still interested, I watch it again with the audio off. Turning down the sound allows me to focus more on what the horse has to say and less on what the human wants me to believe the horse has to say.
When looking at the end I’m looking for how the horse feels. Does the horse stay softly focused? Does the horse follow the feel with okay-ness? How does the horse feel when its thoughts are interrupted?
At the start, I am not so interested in the trainer or their method or what they are selling. My feelings on those things are irrelevant. I want to know how the horse feels about the trainer, the concept, the gear, or the method. Does the horse look like it wants to slit its throat or appears no more bothered than if it was grazing in a paddock?
If the horse has a soft-focus, a quiet mind, can follow the human's feel with no trouble, and is okay to have its thoughts interrupted with a new idea, then I want to know more about the trainer, the philosophy, and methods.
If those things are working well for a horse, the method can’t be wrong for that horse at that time.
A GoPro camera make it possible for horses to create videos on how to train a human.