THE HORSE GATHERING,
2000
ESTES PARK, COLORADO
Lael Van Riper
MONDAY
THE BAD NEWS
1. You have to drive carefully coming up the Big Thompson Canyon on the way to Estes Park, so that you don’t hit the bighorn sheep grazing by the side of the road or the tourists stopped in the middle of the road to take pictures of the bighorn sheep grazing on the side of the road.
2. The hazards on the Estes Park golf course are elk-20-50 of them, and rutting season is about to begin. They may not be in good humor.
3. Not all of you got to come to The Horse Gathering.
THE GOOD NEWS
Everything else was good news-surpassed all expectations.
THE GREAT NEWS
There will be a 2001 Horse Gathering for those of you who missed it and for those of us who want more.
THE DETAILS
The Setting
Estes Park is the eastern gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park, one of the crown jewels of the national park system. Towering peaks, pine, spruce, aspen, elk, bighorn sheep are there for the hiking, climbing, watching if you stayed over or came early. During The Horse Gathering there was no time. Days and nights were packed full of learning and laughter.
We were hosted by the Rashid family, Mark and his wife Wendy and their children Lindsay, Tyler, and Aaron and Mark’s sister-in-law Susan who coped with all emergencies. The people of Estes Park including the Lion’s Club who kept us fed were gracious and warm.
At registration each participant received a notebook with schedules, bios of the presenters, and materials to flesh out limited teaching time. The presenters at The Horse Gathering were uniformly expert in their fields of interest, passionate people, and they shared with us a wide-ranging sweep of interests beyond their field of expertise. Their personalities were strong; their opinions measured their impact immeasurable.
Over 120 of us had gathered from across the United States, Canada, Europe, and South America. Many were names I had met over the internet who now had faces and personalities. You will join me in Group B. Our volunteer guide is Lisa Martin. Most of us were from Colorado with a few from beyond the U.S. to give flavor to the group. You will be with me for five days, limited to my perceptions of what I saw. If you need to know more, there are others who can share with you their experiences. Just ask. We’d love to share. In fact, one of the aims of the week was to give us information we can share with others to the benefit of the horse.
Welcome
Our first day was spent in the Holiday Inn conference room laying a foundation for, that which was to follow. There were people from pre-teen to senior citizens, cowboy hats, braids, baseball caps, Grey beards, jeans, shorts, long hair, short hair, bald, all casual, none with a discernable horse discipline.
The theme for the week came from Vic Thomas—MIO—misery is optional—an option no one picked.
There were laughter, notebooks, pens, Horse Gathering logo name tags with our names preprinted, demonstrations, presenters, participants, horses, questions—but most of all there was laughter and learning.
Opening Remarks from Mark—Paraphrased and Condensed
Each of the presenters in working in his/her various discipline has found that training horses won’t fix everything. There are a vast number of other things that may be going on for the horse and rider. Out of that realization came the idea for The Horse Gathering. In one year’s time this idea came to fruition. Now the presenters have gathered for the full week and will be available for impromptu questions and talk.
During the week all presenters will be looking at everything in a positive light. The vast majority of horse training is designed to look at the bad and fix it. We will be looking for the good and building on it during this week.
Profits from the tee-shirts and caps (with The Horse Gathering Logo) will build a non-profit foundation for kids who need scholarships to The Horse Gathering. The presenters want to give back because horse have been good to them.
VIC THOMAS
Bio
I will give a bit of background on each presenter. For a more extensive biography you can log on to: http://www.horsegathering.com.
Retiring from 27 years of service as a Police Administrator, Vic Thomas is now using his skills as a gifted instructor to help clinic participants understand the adult learning process. Vic and his wife, Linda Bertani, also a presenter, have created a small equine educational center in Tennessee. Vic holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Criminology from Florida State University and is a graduate of the FBI National Academy. He’s the one whose southern drawl is as wide as his moustache and his smile.
Adult Learning Process
All of us are gathered here to learn about the learning process of the horse and the welfare of the horse, but to get the most out of this week we need to also know about our own leaning process. The mission of the teacher is to take a person from his or her known to the unknown. Along the way there are many things which may divert us from learning. These learning hooks take our mind away from what is being taught.
If an instructor creates a learning hook, the instructor must take it away or learn not to create it in the first place. Learning hooks may be a word, a look, an attack on an individual’s self image. Learning hooks may come with the student, and the adult student has responsibility to deal with those learning hooks when recognized. The student who determines what s/he wants before s/he begins learning and is prepared for the experience will minimize any hooks to learning.
Each of us has a comfort zone. New knowledge and skills challenge our comfort zone. If we are to move out of that zone, we need to trust our instructor, to have stability which bolsters us as we move into new territory, and to have proof that new knowledge or skills are worthy of inclusion in our lives.
We, as learners, are always filtering information. If it does not seem useful, we discard it. If it is deemed useful, we attach feeling and importance to it and keep it.
Instructors need to maintain decorum not embarrassing or intimidating students, have a secure comfort zone of their own, and a knowledge of their own ability as an instructor.
If It Smells Like a Dead Ant…
Researchers studying ant society painted some live ants with the odor of dead ants and put them back in their anthill. They went back to work, but other ants smelling the odor of death hauled them off and threw them on the pile of dead ants. The ants picked themselves up off the pile and went back to work. They knew themselves to be alive, and live ants work.
The other ants smelled death—off to the dead pile even though they were living and working. This continued until the painted ants actually died.
Ants live in a narrowly defined way. What they smelled superceded what they saw. We do not have to live like ants. We can use our six senses—the sixth being a combination of the other five—to make choices, to decide to accept and use new information in our lives.
Structure and Sequence
An instructor chooses out of his vast store of information what will be presented to the learner. He chooses the structure of the information and the sequence in which it is presented. He has a finite time and must consider what will fit in that time.
A clinician has new students each clinic. The student brings a new problem and states it. The clinician may the problem differently. Out of the clinician’s knowledge he must prepare an instant lesson plan for this horse and this rider, give information on structure and sequence so that the student can hook it together and use it to change their behavior.
Most important in this process and what a student expects from an instructor is caring. Does the instructor care about the student’s learning?
DR. DEB BENNETT, PH.D.
Dr. Deb’s bio is an impressive read not diminished by meeting her. A 1984 graduate of the University of Kansas with a degree in Vertebrate Paleontology, she has been on the staff of the Smithsonian Institution, taught equine anatomy short-courses designed primarily for owners, trainers, therapists, and breeders. She is internationally known as an authority on the classification, evolution, anatomy and biomechanics of fossil and living horses. She can convey a kind of “X-ray vision” for bone structure to breeders and buyers.
Dr. Deb rides and trains horses herself, conducts clinics, is an author of technical publications and contributor to Equus and Conquistador Magazines. And she’s not shy about voicing her opinion here and there.
She is also one of the colloquium of friends who have formed the Equine Studies Institute. More information may be found at: http://www.equinestudies.org
Deep Solutions
Dr. Deb was upfront during the whole clinic and let us know that is the way it would be when she started our by saying that the greatest sin is a lie. She then set about breaking us out of our paradigms, which she defined as a corral for our thinking.
Over the years she has developed “Right Side Up Horsemanship,” an inverted pyramid. “Spirit,” an elusive concept that you may name something else, overarches everything. Spirit and emotion, the next lay in the inverted pyramid, are where you will find your horse’s interest and attention. What Dr. Deb calls the horse’s “birdie”. Then there is understanding—ours toward our horses. Under that comes straightness, roundness, transitions (the daughter of straightness and roundness), gaits, and movements and maneuvers. Most often when we work with our horse and with trainers and clinicians we work at the movement, maneuvers, gaits, and transitions levels. This provides superficial solutions. If we begin at the spirit and emotion level and work down we will find deep solutions in our relationship with our horse.
A horse cannot perform if its spirit is not in equanimity.
Equine Anatomy
Dr. Deb’s section in our notebooks was chalk-full of diagrams and information on equine anatomy and movements. In addition she had brought Woody, a portable horse made from a log, a bungee cord, and assorted bits and pieces assembled from a hardware dumpster. Woody was used to help us visualize equine anatomy.
Let us begin with shoulder blades. Horses shoulder blades are in a vertical plane. Humans never are in a vertical plane. We have collar bones, our original, primitive architecture, a strut that holds our shoulders out. That handsome man with the wide shoulders?—he has a long collarbone. Our collarbone holds the sternum centered between the two shoulders. Horses are not so constrained. Nor are other mammals. That is why they can pronk and leap.
When horses move there is a wobble. This is essential knowledge when fitting a saddle. It also explains why a horse leaning to the left counterbalances with the head to the right. The horse is straight when his breastbone (sternum) is centered between the elbow and shoulder joints.
A horse that is leaning has the appearance of having one leg shorter than the other. The weighted leg has a wider foot because there is more weight on that hoof. Most horses like to lean on the right and move to the left. If you are riding and shake a foot on the off side, the horse shift his body and turn his attention to the side you want to turn. His sternum moves to the outside of the circle.
Leaning begins with the hindquarters. If the horse is leaning right, the left hind leg comes under the navel. The horse is straight. Stepping off the horse will step long and short, paddling with the left leg. A physical fix is to ask the horse to step under with the right hind leg.
Why bother? A horse can’t round up until he’s straight. AND the minute they go straight they round up.
Rounding up brings the hindquarters under a horse, engages abdominal muscles in holding up the rider, and provides propulsion from the hindquarters.
HARRY WHITNEY
Harry Whitney is one of the faculty of the Equine Studies Institute, but beyond his degree in animal science from Kansas State University is a man versed in the language of horses, and he can teach that foreign language to us.
He’s been an animal trainers, a pickup man and bullfighter on the rodeo circuit, and a man who can ride any horse given to him and get it to work contentedly.
MARK RASHID
Mark Rashid has been working with horses since he was ten years old. His quiet approach to resolving training problems is underscored by his unwavering commitment to looking at any situation from the horse’s point of view.
His commitment to excellence in teaching humans is demonstrated by his unique one-on-one clinics with horse and rider. He has authored three books and written for Western Horseman and Western Horse magazines. His “Passive Leadership” philosophy challenges the traditional “alpha” approach to being with horses. More information is available on his web site: http://www.markrashid.com
Horse Training Philosophies--Different Strokes
“Mark has said that watching his clinics is like watching paint dry.”
“I said it was like watching grass grow,” Mark interjects. Thus begins the repartee between Mark and Harry. If they give up horse training, they can become a comedy team.
Harry points out that he and Mark have different styles and that they are here to help dispel the idea that there is only one way to do things. They both want to get to a spot where the horse is okay with the humans in her life.
To get to the inside of a horse you need to have closure on each phase of working with the horse. If you are just working on the outside of a horse, you have a mechanical fix. Harry never opens a case he doesn’t close. He works through one thing with the horse before tossing out another. If you open a small case, you can get closure. Don’t open a large case with your horse if you can’t get closure.
Mark notes, “You can do so much with so little.”
“Do you want to go one step or to the other side of the stream? What can you accomplish at your level?” Harry asks.
One student has been to a free-for-all clinic where they rode bumper colts.
“If you can get a change for the human at a clinic, you can get a change for the horse. Mark never presents anything you can’t take home and use with your horse.
“How much can you get in a weekend or four days?” asks a self-confessed clinic cynic.
Softness in a Storm
Mark answers that he tries to teach an attitude. The vast majority of training is geared to find the bad things and fix them. Mark looks for the good and builds on it. Even in a big fight the horse is offering some softness. “We have to be looking for it.”
Harry adds that there are more and more clinic cynics who find there’s not much to take home. “Be cautious who you’re spending three or four days with. The clinician is in the awareness business. The clinician has something to offer so that you can leave there with something more to offer your horse. We can make you aware of the gold, but you also have to know what gold looks like.
“I’ve seen people who go to so many clinics they never have time to read the horse. Go home and ride your horse. Get to know your horse. Know when something is right or something is wrong with your horse. Go home and put them to work.
“There are two reasons to go to a clinic without a horse. One—you may not want that idiot to touch your horse. Two—you may be so worried about your baby (your horse) that you can’t take in what the clinician is saying.”
Mark now addresses the disparity in the two. When Mark goes to a clinic he is seeing a different horse and a different person than Harry saw a week or a month ago. He may go to a clinic and get horses that need 1-2 pressure then meet a horse that needs a 6-7. People watching say Harry is better than Mark or Mark is better than Harry.
“I get bigger than Mark sooner. Sometimes I regret what the human watching will take home with them. The only way some people can get big is to get mad. They can’t see the softness in the storm when their emotions are involved. It is so easy to see the hows and so difficult to see the whys. Listen to your horse. Horses never lie. Didn’t some guy write a book about that.
“This is about thinking and feeling…I don’t want to be called a trainer. Most trainers have a program every horse must fit or out the horse goes. Whether its Mark Rashid or Harry Whitney at a clinic we have to listen to the horse and be willing to make changes in the plan, to think through the process. There’s more to horses than their hide.
“I get frustrated with people who come to a clinic ten minutes before their session and leave ten minutes after. They’re not wanting to expand their knowledge. Watch, tinker with your horse, try other ways to work with your horse.
“If you always smile no matter what your horse does, people will think you meant for that to happen.”
One person has been thinking for a year about owning a horse “but from what I’ve learned here, I don’t think I deserve a horse.”
“Because you think that way you do deserve to have a horse,” both Harry and Mark agree.
“If you’re at a clinic and think a horse and rider are a bad pair or a dangerous pair, do you say anything?” a student asks.
“Yes,” Harry answers, “it would be unethical not to.”
Most of us get into horses because we enjoy them. If that’s not happening for you, it probably isn’t working for the horse. We want to ask what’s best for the horse. If it takes getting off to work through a situation, take time out, then do it. Sometimes we just need to step back.
“Our society,” Mark comments, “is a win-lose society. Everything in between is where the learning is.”
JESSICA JAHIEL
Jessica Jahiel is an internationally-acclaimed clinician teaching dressage, jumping, and Holistic Horsemanship. This approach combines communication, cooperation, balance, and harmony in working with and riding horses. She has written several books including RIDING FOR THE REST OF US: A Practical Guide for Adult Riders.
Her teaching goal is to develop balanced, willing forward horses and thoughtful, tactful riders. She works with each horse-rider combination to help establish or improve their riding dialogue. More information may be found at: http://www.prairienet.org/jjahiel
There Are No Separate Issues
Riding encompasses physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual states of the horse and rider. “You can’t separate riding from training. You can’t separate training from horsemanship.” Riding allows you to participate with your horse not do to your horse.
Riding, at its best, is fun. It is a relationship that is not adversarial. It is a dialogue. Horses need jobs and appreciation. Horses like work and appreciation. If the human is nice, the human is fun to be with.
The first thing we must do is make sure the horse is comfortable, that there is no physical pain or pain caused by equipment.
Riding is like sex. It is an activity two beings can do together and enjoy very much. It can also be what one person can inflict upon another being without consent or enjoyment on the other’s part.
Kids, Horses, Safety
When we introduce children and horses we must look at four issues: safety, health, environment, and welfare. We are providing these for both the child and the horse. Once these issues are addressed we need to continue to provide helmets, model wearing them, and make wearing them a constant in riding. Helmets save lives.
Three F’s
There are three big riding issues: fear, fitness, finances which must be addressed. Finances need to be considered before the purchase of a horse. Fitness is an ongoing process. Fear can be addressed through knowledge and lessons, but if it is too deep seated may need to be addressed with the help of a counseling professional.
Remember what your mother told you, “Stand up straight.” As a rider you need to sit up straight. The characteristics of a good rider are: honesty, sensitivity, balance, body awareness, patience, and compassion. Before you can control a horse you need to be able to control yourself—physically, mentally.
For Your Benefit
Being on the bit is like being on the telephone. It is back and forth communication from a distance.
Jessica asks for a volunteer who is asked to close her eyes and walk forward. Jessica begins guiding her with a hand on her shoulder at all times. The volunteer moves smoothly forward. Then Jessica asks her to continue forward but only puts a hand on her when she wants her to change direction. Immediately her steps are hesitant. She starts when Jessica does put a hand on her. She is worried, tense.
“ Riding is like music. You can’t start to improvise if you don’t first know the techniques. “ First, you must learn to communicate with the horse and keep a continuing dialogue then you can improvise.
Levels of Competence
In learning anything there are four levels of competence:
unconscious incompetence--you don’t know how much you don’t know;
conscious incompetence—you know what you don’t know and work to learn and improve;
conscious competence—you work on doing it right and think about it;
unconscious competence—it’s fun; you think left and move left.
This is the level we are working toward as riders with our horses.
A happy horse has food, security, companionship, release and reward, physical comfort, sun, light, air, movement, and, if ridden, has a competent rider the horse enjoys. We can foster enjoyment by just taking a horse our to hand graze. It’s cheap therapy for the horse and for us. When we are riding the horse can perceive our intention as well as our control. The best rider not only has skill but also positive, good intention toward the horse.
As we deal with our horses we need to ask why. Why is he opening his mouth? Why is she bucking? As we know where the horse is coming from we choose how to deal with the horse.
Jessica was asked at one clinic how to deal with a horse that charged with ears back when she was fed hay. Jessica began asking questions.
“Does she do this when she’s fed grain?”
“No.”
With that clue she asked, “Is she a mustang, a BLM horse?”
“Yes.”
Jessica then explained that in the conditions these horses are kept in once captured they have to fight for hay or die. Grain is not fed there. It is introduced as a special treat by the adopter therefore it does not elicit the learned behavior. Jessica suggested that the owner pick her battles. Three or four years down the road when the horse knows that feed is supplied regularly and to all horses, she may have a different response.
We need timing and finesse to deal with our horses, but that means we need to read our horses. It’s like rereading a favorite book five years later and asking how you could have missed that section. Ten years later there are still more insights when you read the book. The insights are relative to each period you read the book. So it is with reading a horse.
Triage Method of Problem Solving
If you are having problems of unknown origin with a horse, break down the problem solving process.
1. Look for all possible means of pain. A horse can’t learn, think, function well if in pain.
2. Look at fear. A horse can’t learn or think clearly if afraid. Thus, it is a priority that the horse has a good time to learn well.
3. Balance hard work with some fun. If this is grim for you, it’s not fun for either you or the horse.
Learning is opening doors and letting your horse go through. There is a waiting period for the hardest concepts to be absorbed. Set it up and wait. Again it is like music. It is not just the notes that make the music but also the pauses in between. Yields, stops, pauses, releases are the pauses in the music. This is where the learning takes place.
When the horse is distracted you need to get their attention. This is a way to prevent or ameliorate spooks also.
The worst riding issue that we face is there is never enough time if we are enjoying ourselves. Breathing with deep breaths calms the horse and you. Visualizing helps improve your performance. Play a game with yourself. Don’t say no to your horse for a whole section of time or space. Say yes to every try. It will relax you and reward the horse.
DEMONSTRATIONS AND ANSWERS
A volunteer is asked to go down on all fours and lean left, weight the left side. The left hind leg shift slightly under. The point is made that this now becomes a pivot point around which the body must rearrange itself. This is what happens when a horse leans. The solution is to ask the horse to rearrange the weighted legs. This is done by putting your leg on the weighted side.
Mark demonstrates how to deal with a brace. A volunteer holds the reins. Mark is the horse bracing. Mark releases. The volunteer has the reins all to herself. When Mark releases the volunteer needs to release back. The volunteer comments, “My horses, must hate me.” We are on our chairs craning to see this demonstration. “You guys have got to try this.”
Deb remarks that legs and seat bones act the same as the hands. There also we must position, wait, release.
Harry adds that hands need to be non-giving but forgiving as if the horse were tied to a stout tree. The horse would pull. The minute the horse quits bracing he gets immediate release. The horse doesn’t run backwards and keep up the pressure. There is a difference between release and throwing the reins away. When the horse presents a void you release. You can make it as big or as small as you want, but if you throw away contact, it dumps the horse on the forehand, and the horse is also off balance. Release is giving the horse as much as he needs at the right time. It is meeting ounces with ounces.
Mark pushes against a volunteer, and there is a visible shift to one side. He asks the volunteer to brace for the push then surprises her with a push from the other side. She staggers. “We often pull left on a horse that is braced to the right, but if we pull right, the horse will run around. It breaks the brace and takes away the fight. It shows the horse that you might be superman. Then you can head out in the way you want. You have stayed emotionally neutral.”
“It’s our aim,” says Deb, “to keep the horse 100% okay 100% of the time.”
“If you have a horse that wants to come off the rail,” Mark advises, “turn her in the direction she wants, circle, come around, wind up back at the rail, and go straight. It only takes three or four times before the horse decides it’s easier to be on the rail. There’s no fight.”
If you have a horse that hurries on the way home, you need to get the horse focused, to look short, to have the “birdie” right in front of the horse.
Jessica demonstrates balancing exercises. Put the balls of your feet on a phone directory. Stretch your heels down, stretching the Achilles’ tendon. Place your feet wide apart, squat keeping your head up.
Other exercises that help with riding are those that work both sides: walking, swimming which also helps breathing rhythmically, dancing for women (you get to feel what it’s like to be led, to feel right moves and timing).
The discussion turns to why 80% of the people at clinics are women. The answers:
because men won’t ask for directions,
more women ride than men,
the more well known the clinician is, the more men come because it is prestigious not ego damaging,
many men think of horses as a tool to get a job done, and when the tool is broken you throw it away,
women like the nurturing process,
women think of a horse as a big, fuzzy dog with a saddle on it,
men think of a horse as a dirt bike with hair.
Whatever our reasons we, men, women, and children, are gathered for a week of laughter and learning.
