Living with the Dinosaurs

Some years ago I heard Mark talking about sitting on his horse and how he could feel this energy underneath him ready to go in any direction he asked. I imagined it would feel like sitting on a ball that could roll in any direction. Now, some time later, I can see and feel this myself. I can look at the horse being ridden and see which way the energy is falling, or not. I can see that the energy we add to this 'balance' is crucial. To watch a horse in balance and in movement is a very pretty sight, far more beautiful than the list of regulated moves that have become the benchmark used to prove horsemanship.

When I was with Mark last year, I noticed he was working really hard on getting people to feel the communication between them and their horse down the reins. We were talking one evening and I said to him that I thought it was really cool the way he was doing that. He said to me that it is interesting that a lot of the 'top' horse trainers say that you can't teach feel, it is something that you have or you don't have.

In our next clinic I started to do the same thing. For some people it was a revelation that such a small thing could be so powerful. For me that is one of the beauties of horsemanship - less is so often more. We are working slightly differently now, using that feel to reach a different level, but the feel is still the same thing.

So where to go from there? I am more and more convinced that the goal itself is the feel and the balance. As soon as the goal becomes something further on and we sacrifice the feel and balance, it is all too easy to get into a 'this must happen' mentality. There is a fine line between that pure communication and a pull, and why do we pull? I think it is because our focus goes beyond the feel and on to some other target. Things like us looking good, having horses in outline, winning stuff, mastering specific moves, and so on, take over at the expense of perfect feel and perfect balance.

For me, I see horsemanship as like life itself. It is difficult to build good stuff on dodgy foundations. But put in a good foundation and the good stuff can come along. With dodgy foundations, I don't think it ever truly can.

First clinic of the year

After a rather desperate post Xmas dip in energy, we are back!

Just enjoyed a great clinic here, and I got to have my first ever ride on an Icelandic. Ednah invited me to have a ride on Glaesir. What a horse! I've just been looking online to see what's for sale out there, and boy, they are expensive! I'd have to sell at least a couple of my horses to buy one of those.

I was in some trepidation about this clinic. We've learnt a lot this winter and it's always a bit confronting taking new stuff into clinics. I always have this slight fear that someone is going to say, 'Ah, but last year you told us this, and now you're saying this'. Anyway, it was fine. In a way, good horsemanship is good horsemanship. The feel that horses respond to doesn't change.

One of the horses in the clinic was a ten year old Haflinger mare who just pushed her way through everything and everyone who came in her path. We used to go out 'sorting horse problems' and it took me back to the stressy times that go along with that kind of work. We made a lot of progress but even after two days she was no way sorted enough to go home. She is staying with us for a few more days. Today I carried on working towards one of our goals - taking her for a long walk - she was loads better and I am feeling pretty confident she is beginning to glimpse a happier way of being. We have also made a good start getting her to relax her mouth and neck while she is being ridden - I think she's going to be a nice little horse.

Trying to keep it simple.

It is impossible to try to educate the mouth if the horse is not in balance.
Philippe Karl

I promise you I am only here through necessity. I don't mean here writing this blog, I mean here in my horsemanship. I am a happy hacker with not much ambition to be anything else. Having a happy horse has always been my goal. I have always strived to keep things easy, mainly because I am lazy and that combined with an instinctual feeling that 'complicated' is, if not wrong, at least unnecessary.

But things were happening with my horse that I needed to get sorted and this is the way I am doing it. To be specific I realised I needed two separate cues for turning, as on one side she couldn't make the bend, she just fell over sideways (not literally - instead of turning around the bend she fell around it like a board). Now I know this is a very common problem and I have heard many many ways of addressing it. My original plan was that as my horse improved and got more and more happy and clear about our work then surely this would sort itself out. But now I see that couldn't happen because I simply had never explained to her what exactly I wanted from her in the turn. It's not that things were that bad - anyone who knows my horse will tell you she is pretty nice to ride. She goes anywhere and isn't scared of much. I can take her out of the field after a month and go for a hack. She's a good horse.

But the realization that I needed a bit more than her just to be happy and relaxed has lead me to a whole new world. To get to what I want now it is not enough for me to have her just not leaning on the bit, and happy to go where I want. Now I need her mouth relaxed, and I need her balanced from front to back, and I need her specifically cued up for bend on both sides. Don't run away - for any of you who are like me and thinking, phew, this sounds heavy, stick with it. It's possible that more experieced riders will be reading this (actually they have probably already stopped reading it by now) and they will be thinking, 'about time too'.

So that's what I'm up to. It's quite precise stuff and I'm not finding it that easy, which goes against the grain a bit as I have always had this feeling that if it's not easy it's probably not right. I am sticking with it though, because it makes sense to me, and it is getting easier for us both as we go along. But Splodge is one of those horses that tries really hard to get things right, and when she gets confused she kind of seizes up, and then I start to feel I'm letting her down a bit, so I have to be pretty careful to try and keep things clear for her.

I am excited by my horsemanship right now. I have a clear picture of what I am doing, where I am going and how to get there. I'm enjoying it!

Right from the beginning

So we got pretty spaced out over Christmas. See my wife is really lazy, and I am even lazier, so we get a little excuse like a pagan festival or even a non-pagan one for that matter and we are all curled up in front of the log stove checking to see if there are any good films on telly that day.

All we've done is fed, mucked out, and a bit of worming. We worm the horses once a year after the first heavy frost. That kills all the bots too then. It's highly unscientific but it seems to work well for us. It's also the time when we have to handle last years foals. Up till then we have pretty much kept away from them, but they have to be wormed. This year it was really good because we had guests working with us who wanted experience handling young horses, so this was their opportunity. Working with foals is a great way to set up how you need to be to keep the horse onside.

So what's the trick - being soft within yourself, and in all your actions helps, that's for sure. I know it's a much over-used word these days but softness in your mind and body is good. I find it works for most things and also, as a bonus, it helps keep you feeling good within yourself too. And horses tend to trust it too. So in no time you can be putting a headcollar on and off these seven month old foals, and putting your hands around their mouths getting them ready for the wormer. The whole job was done in about three half hour sessions, and the foals were happy with it too.

I don't want to sound cocky about this, because I'm not, but what I do think is important is to try and keep things right with these little horses from the start, because our experience is that then, you get good horses out of it at the other end. This years foals are solid little guys. Simon is going to make a great 15hh plus cob, he is really sound in his mind and you can just see what a solid little horse he is going to be. His little half sister Kate is going to be a really pretty little riding horse. She was just a tiny tiny bit more wary to start with but as soon as she saw we were ok she was fine about everything too. It's just so great to have horses that haven't been cursed with a load of human rubbish in their lives.

Compare that to those poor horses born into human confusion. Horses not born into herds, that know no boundaries, or get weaned too early for no reason other than money or ignorance (sorry, I'm off on a rant here). Just to say, if you are planning to buy a youngster, buy one that's been raised properly - it's worth it, and also the more people who demand that, the more it will happen.

'Keeping the horse in the horse'

OK, inspired by El's question, and it's something I have been thinking about for some time, here are some thoughts on this subject.
Firstly, what does it mean? I'm genuinely not sure. I read the extract from Ross's book and he is obviously a good horseman - I've heard Harry talking about him and I know he rates him. But there is something I want to say - I have been holding back from saying it because in a way, it's quite arrogant. I expect to be severely mauled in cyberspace if this ever gets out there beyond the safety of this little blog, so it's truly for your eyes only. So here it is - I reckon that once you get to a the point of being a good horseperson, and I include everyone who contributes to this blog, and many many more, in that group, then taking the horse out of the horse isn't really on the agenda.
Up to that point you are serving your apprenticeship - you don't quite know how to be with the horses - you don't quite understand what they want from you - you are maybe a bit caught up in what you'd like them to be, rather than what they are, and so and so on. Taking the horse out of the horse is just a slogan really - I think it works better if you say 'don't go putting things into the horse from your own mind that simply just isn't the horse. But once you have served your apprenticeship, at least if it's the same one I served, then you know the deal, and you can start some serious work.
And that's where the fun begins. That's what I think anyway. But you can't, and this sounds terribly arrogant again, with horses I just don't think you can run before you can walk. You have to approach the horse and your work with utter honesty and sincerity, and with the pure motive of 'learning'. And I don't think you can be taught this stuff - you have to discover it within yourself - jeez, that sounds like a load of old Totnes shite I know, but it's only when I realise something about horsemanship, that now I realise, wow, I read that years ago, or I was told that years ago, but I had no idea what it meant.
Two days ago I was watching Damson being ridden in the school, and seeing her trying to get her mind around what I would call 'front to back balance'. As I watched I realised I had seen this before (at Harry's) and now, finally, I could see it in the horse - it was a nice moment for me. There is something really rewarding about learning horsemanship - it's humbling!

It's a bit basic - I know!

So what got me started down this latest road? The thing is that the kind of work I have been doing for years has been helping people with unmanageable horses - I haven't really been too into the riding stuff. And then, when I started to get into the riding stuff I was mainly focussing on things like confidence and relaxation - things that help the horse feel good because the rider does, and so on. I steadfastly hung on to my belief that if you get your relationship right with your horse most else would come right with it. But then I started to come up against some more specific stuff - that's what got me thinking I had to be a bit more clear for my horse.

At so many clinics there would be horses that could turn one way on a circle but when they were asked to turn the other way, they couldn't do it - they just stepped across and fell sideways. I have watched and listened to people explaining several different ways of how to sort this out and I wasn't happy with any of them. So many different tricks, and none of them that really work, and anyway, why do you need a trick - that can't be right.

I continued to think about this problem for a while, and tried to find a simple solution, but when I realised I was riding one of my horses and she was doing it too, that's when I really had to move my act on. It took me a while to get to this point in my mind - you have to realise I am a 'get on my horse and go for a ride' guy - I don't like all this fancy stuff - I have always thought people were making problems where there shouldn't be any. But then I started to think, 'hey, I'm up here saying I am a horse trainer, I need to get this sorted'.

So I started to look at things more closely and I realised that going one way, my cue for a turn on a circle meant one thing but going the other it meant something else. I was in effect using the same cue on both sides but it meant different things to the horse. Why and how did this happen? Well, horses are bent one way, it doesn't really matter why, but they are. They find it easier to do things one way than the other. And because of this it is very easy to unknowingly teach them different responses on either side. Once I worked that out I was away. So all I had to do was sort that out and off we go. But of course, if your horse has been responding to you in a certain way for say, fifteen years, and suddenly you want to change that, it might not be so easy.

So that is why I set about re-educating my horse about the bit. And what I found there was a big surprise - it was all pretty chaotic. Tie this in with the experience we were having with Bullet and it really made me think - might there be some connection between a confused mouth and a difficult horse, or to look at that statement in a more positive way, might there be a way to a peaceful horse through a peaceful mouth. I'm becoming convinced!

The story so far

'The big discovery one makes when one starts studying and applying [these] techniques is that once light in hand, that is, relaxed and mobile in his lower jaw, a horse becomes disciplined'.
Jean Claude Raciner

Working as a horse trainer and running clinics for the last few years has been a lot of fun. I work in partnership with my wife Sarah. Have you heard the expression, 'rust never sleeps' - well that's the same as Sarah's desire to master the art of horsemanship (it never sleeps), she just keeps learning more and more stuff, and what is my role in this? Well, I keep fighting against it, and desperately try to make sure that we really need to do this stuff.

It's not easy, or at least I don't find it easy. You'd think that you could sit on your horse and go where you want to go, and that would be it. But sometimes it doesn't work out that way. A horse comes along and in some way tells us we have to learn more. That is what has happened to us this year. We had a few questions about various things we were encountering in our horsemanship, but the real tipping point for us was when Bullet came to stay. She was a horse who pretty much lived everywhere except in her own body. Our job was to see if we could get some kind of order in her life, and boy, she has taken us right to the edge. Several times we have sat at the table and discussed whether we should tell Jane, her owner, that we have tried all we know and we can't do this job.

But then, we started down another path - to be fair it's a path Sarah has been wandering down for some months - and when we made a start down it with Bullet, lo and behold, we began to see a small light at the end of the tunnel. Even then I fought against what I was seeing, and I still do a bit. I have always, always strived to keep things simple, I have always shied away from systems and methods, but Bullet has demanded we go places I would never normally choose to go, because by going there we have helped her relax. She can now stand still. She can now walk slowly. She can now walk back to the field without racing and twitching like somone was going to kill her. At last, her mind is in her body, not up the field or down the barn. She is behaving like a normal horse - not all the time, but most of the time - and when she gets in trouble we have something that helps her. It feels good!

Of course, I know it may be other things that have helped Bullet. It may be the seasons, or it may be that we have worked for a certain time with her, or it may be we have unknowingly found a combination of things that make her feel ok. So with all this in mind, this winter we are working with eight of our horses to see how they respond to the same work that we are doing with Bullet. Perhaps foolishly, I plan to document our work with these horses over the next few months.

Over the next few days I hope to give details and post photos of the eight horses. They are quite different in their characters, and one or two of them have quite long term 'issues'. I will also try and explain some of the other reasons that have lead us to this point. I am fascinated to see how things work out over the next few months.

It is my hope that you find this of interest, and maybe of some use. Thank you.