Mark Rashid Clinic Report - July 2008
This clinic, held at the extensive Hoplands Equestrian Centre near Winchester was formatted in the way Mark tends to work his US clinics with a morning and afternoon group of four riders each one working with Mark for a couple of sessions at one end of the arena and then with his wife and teaching assistant Chrissie in between times. It was a step up in terms of clinics I have attended - the venue was huge and there were a lot of people in the audience- probably between one and two hundred spectators. I've read Mark's books ( which I heartily recommend ) and I've attended clinics by Kathleen Lindley and Tom Widdicombe, both of whom are students of his, so I was really looking forward to seeing him in person.
I'm going to go through the clinic horse by horse because that seems to be the most coherent way to show how each one developed over the three days. One of the horses ( who was, coincidentally, someone we once shared a yard with but hadn't seen for a few years ) came in and after seeing him lead around and hearing about his problems - mostly bucking - Mark spent a while exploring his back and told his owner that the problem was physical and that he needed to get some serious chiropractic before there would be any point in working on the training, so she got her money back and had to take her horse home. The sad thing was that she had got an equine chiropractor in and they hadn't noticed what was clearly a serious and long-term problem, possibly relating to saddle fit. As we know her and she's only a few miles away from us we gave her contact details for our chiro but it was a real shame- to get a chance to ride with Mark in the UK you have to put your name down and go through a lottery so it's doubly unlucky for her.
Coconut
Coconut was a little dark palamino pony who had been a riding school horse and gone through pony club before his current owner took him on. He had learned from pony club that he was supposed to run everywhere and his rider now had some problems with his brakes.
They started out working on the stop from walking- Mark observed that he was giving to pressure but that he was staying braced- he was doing what he was asked for but with no quality to it. He was light when he was asked for things in the way he was used to but if his rider asked for more they would get heaviness. Mark said that this was because his rider knew what she wanted but wasn't making it perfectly clear to him or offering with the feel that she wanted him to offer to her. They worked on getting him to soften to the bit, making sure that the pressure didn't come off until he offered that softer feel- he was finding gradations of brace, starting to soften and then getting heavier again as he looked for an answer. Releasing on a brace would teach him to keep doing the same thing- that is probably how he learned to be this way in the first place - horses lean on the bit because they have had release for leaning on the bit. Mark told them that they needed to get right through to the end of this process having started it and not to settle for anything less than exactly the right feel, "We're not looking for perfection, but we're looking for something pretty close to it," he said.
There is a balance in this work, Coconut's rider needed to find a middle point between pulling on him and allowing him to pull on her - if you pull you will force the horse to find a brace, if you allow them to pull you then they will learn that is what you want, you need to find a place where you can help them to find softness. The horse is unlikely to accept softness at first if they have learned another way, so you need to be steady in what you ask. Not pulling but not allowing yourself to be pulled. So if you want to get a response to a request with a softness of 1 on a scale of 1 to 10, then you need to put in that ask at 1 and then be like a post- if the horse wants to pull until the pressure is at 9 then they can, the rider's hand stays in the same place but does not give at all to the extra pressure, it just stays still and the horse is just working against themselves until they work out that they can choose to release it. In one of the most succinct explanations I've heard, Mark commented: "Contact is the space between you pulling on the horse and the horse pulling on you."
By their second session of the morning Coconut was starting to offer brief bits of softness, not more than a second or two or maybe a few steps but softness nonetheless, Mark's classic saying for the session was "when a mule flies we don't blame 'em if they don't stay up very long".
To help Coconut stay soft his rider needed to work on her breathing, making sure she could breathe down to the bottom rib. Her shoulders shouldn't move with her breath- a breath that stops in the chest is a survival breath- if you're using your shoulders to bring the air in you're not using your diaphragm. Mark explained how we can use our breath to improve our transitions by breathing out when the horse exerts themselves. If you watch horses on a cold morning you will see them exhale as they transition and your breathing can become a part of that. I found this very interesting because although I've been told I need to be breathing on transitions I had never really understood why. With regard to transitions he also talked about the difference between cueing the horse and then waiting for the transition to happen or going with him. If you wait for it to happen then there's a good chance you'll get left behind when the transition does occur. By making sure that horse and rider go together, as a single movement rather than a "cue... response" sequence you find a much smoother and more accurate transition.
She was also tending to look at the back of Coconut's head, a fault a lot of us share. Mark was able to reassure her that this wasn't necessary "if his head falls off, you'll hear it." He did a little demonstration with her, having her look up and forwards and then pushing on her back- nothing happened. Then he had her look down at the horses head and when he pushed on her she started to lean forward. Then he had her sit straight looking up but think about looking at her horses head and she reacted the same way as when she had been looking at the horse's head. This was a great illustration of how your body follows your intention. If you are looking at their head then the chances are good that your intention is following your eyes and you aren't really giving them a direction.
Direction is really important ( more of this later ) but we tend to follow what the horse offers, which is not what they need. Horses are natural followers- in a herd you may have thirty followers and only one leader. The leader is usually an old mare who knows the area, knows where the shade and the good grazing and the water are. It is very rarely an alpha mare- most horses don't want to be near an alpha horse, they have their role in the herd but it is not one that other horses consider to be that of leader.
On Saturday they moved things up a pace and looked at his trot and specifically how good he is at stopping from there- in walk he was pretty good by this point so this was the next logical step. He was stopping eventually but really tending to run through the aid. In order to get this under control Mark had his rider turn him tightly if he went through the stop and keep on that tight circle until he actually did stop then, without pausing at all, back up. The amount of movement you get on the circle before he stops indicates how far he was running through that cue.
The important thing about this was to get him to think, more than to get him to stop. As he gets a better idea of things it should be unnecessary to turn a whole circle, the start of asking him to turn should be enough to do the job. It shouldn't take too long to be at a place where he will just stop when he's asked without having to go through it. Until he does, he needs to always be backed up to exactly the place where he was supposed to stop.
In the questions at the end of this session Mark was asked about the (quite strong) bit the horse was working in. He observed that sometimes with a horse that runs off it's better to be safe than to be idealistic. He said that bit shouldn't be one the horse needs for long, but right now it's better for everyone if he keeps using it.
There was also a question about how the horses are when they soften to the bit - they tend to have the highest point of their neck about 8 inches behind their ears rather than breaking at the poll. Mark said that this is actually more biomechanically correct for horses- breaking at the poll my look nice for dressage but it's not the most efficient position for a horse to carry a person.
When Coconut came back for his next session he was stopping a whole lot better- he was starting to feel her intention to stop and prepare himself a little bit. His rider needed to soften her wrist and the top of her hands to help him stop more softly, which he was soon doing beautifully, so they called it a day.
On Sunday they were working towards cantering- Mark said it may take a while to get this right and talked about a horse he worked where he took eighteen months before he was cantering it. In that time he got walk to feel right and then got trot to feel right, before he even started on cantering.
Coconut was stopping nicely still but his rider needed to make sure that any time he was asking a certain question she was answering it in the same way- in this type of situation if we fix something up we can go for years without the horse asking that question again, but when they do you need to be ready to answer it in exactly the same way we did previously. Mark talked about how both people and horses fall into patterns and how we have to be very conscious when we have made a change that we maintain it and we don't slip back into it.
Having been working on turning him when he was not stopping very accurately his rider needed to be ready for him to be stopping well now and not go into the turn if it's not needed. As long as the feel that he is being offered to stop is presented consistently it will become the new pattern and the horse will respond more accurately to it. When they were working on a circle he was starting to learn the places they might want to stop, learning a pattern rather than responding to the feel so they needed to change the physical pattern to keep him thinking. His rider's biggest problem was with helping him get his brain engaged and have him working with her rather than trying to sort everything out for himself.
By the second session, they were stopping really nicely from trot, so it was time to look at cantering. Their circles at canter needed a bit more roundness, which Mark suggested would come from his rider looking where they were going rather than at Coconut's head. He also wondered whether Coconut actually realised his name was "Coconut" he suggested that in the pony's opinion he was called something like "Lance".
Going forward they needed to be working to start soft and end soft, start straight and end straight. If they can get that going forward then other stuff should fall into place pretty well.
Chestnut Mare
The second horse on the first day was a chestnut mare, who was quite herdbound and not very focussed on what her rider wanted. Mark observed that people tend to talk about a horse like that as lacking focus, but the truth is they have plenty of focus, they are just applying in a different direction to where we would want it.
He also introduced what he considers to be the three components to doing well with horses: Speed, Direction and Destination. If we don't give these things to our horse they will choose them for us.
He talked about the energy that both halves of the partnership put into things- so if you have a scale of 1 to 10 then ideally you want both the horse and rider to be putting in 5 so that everything is in balance. If the horse is putting in 7 then really the rider needs to be putting in 3 to keep everything balanced, but in this case ( as happens with a lot of us ) the rider was picking her energy at the same time so she and the horse were both putting in 7 and there is just too much energy in the system. The more we feed into the horse's stress the more they will raise that stress level.
The mare was calling a lot, which Mark felt was fine- it doesn't matter if she calls and gets stuff done, the important thing is that she gets stuff done. Her rider was tending to leave things a little late before reacting to what the horse was doing, though - leaving it until the horse had started to carry out her own plan before she corrected it. The mind leaves before the body does and if you can catch that thought you'll head things off a lot better and everyone's life will be that little bit calmer. Part of the reason that the mare was so anxious about being apart from her field mate was that she was feeling alone with her rider, they weren't enough of a safe leader for her to feel secure with them. Mark highlighted an interesting point about correcting the horse- by letting her run and then correcting it she was correcting rather than helping the horse. She was also turning without offering direction so the turn was "we are not going here" instead of being "we are going there". By not insisting on getting the thing she wanted this rider was perpetuating the thing she didn't want. Her horse needed her to be ready to take things on a little further. Often we will use our aids to create a bit more energy in the horse, but in the case of a very high energy horse like this one, we need to be thinking of them as a way of creating focus so that we can move together as a unit.
Mark discussed the idea of Trauma Energy as something that behaviouralists have been writing on, which is the energy that is released by a life-threatening situation. As humans we tend to suppress that energy but animals will tend to need to release it by moving after the danger has passed. This is at the root of the common observation about horses needing to move their feet when they are anxious. In this case the horse was really needing to move and it was important that the rider shouldn't stop her, just give direction and get her to the frame of mind where she can pay attention so that she can come through it and feel safe there.
Because the horse's body reflects their emotional state we can use the physical state to change the emotional and use our own physical state to change that of the horse.
The next day ( this rider had two horses at the clinic so they only had one session with this horse each day ) they started by talking about what the horse is like in general- she tends to be fairly low energy in lessons, so she seems to have the two ends of the energy spectrum and not the middle, she'll hack out quite happily then see another horse and lose the plot a little. Mark observed that this indicated a disconnect between the horse and the rider, a lack of trust probably coming from a breakdown in leadership. This was at the root of being unable to get a medium amount of energy when working.
Her rider really needed to work on becoming a better leader, to focus on providing speed, direction and destination the whole time and to have really close attention to detail so that she can catch things before they happen. She also needed to be more effective because her horse had learned to ignore what she was asking for - she didn't carry a crop because she could find a way to use it without feeling bad. Mark described how we need to find a place of balance where we can do things without getting emotional - anger, in particular, is often a result of things not working the way we want and it renders us absolutely ineffective. We need to be calm and unemotional about how we work so that we can be as consistent and understandable as possible.
We might think "if i put my leg on, we go" but if the horse ignores that cue then you need to find a way to teach the horse the meaning of that cue. While they were discussing this, the horse started moving and they did a little circuit. Mark pointed out that this showed the disconnect between the horse and rider - the horse really wanted to move and by allowing her to the rider was effectively rewarding her for being in that frantic mindset. It's important not to reward until you get the thing you want. You don't want to stop the horse from moving but you want to make sure that you don't go far and that you get back to where you started as directly as possible. By not leaving until she is a bit calmer they will start to find everything else going more smoothly as well. The big picture in most cases is largely made up of very small details.
They moved on to doing a little bit of trot work, setting off on a big circle, shortly followed by this set of questions from Mark:
"You asked her to trot, correct? She slowed herself down, correct? And now you're walking, correct?"
The horse was happy to follow the request for an upward transition but then she would quickly slow and drop out of trot. The way to get this more consistent was to pay closer attention to what she was doing and to catch it the moment she stopped doing the thing she had been asked to do. It's not that the horse is getting away with it, it's that they are always asking questions, "is it alright if I do this? What about this?" and if we don't provide an answer they assume the answer is "yes."
If you don't get what you want from cue, then you need a secondary cue to back it up- when working with a crop Mark suggests moving it by the rider's leg, in clear site of the horse, then tapping on the rider's boot or chap if they haven't responded to the extra movement from the whip and then tapping the horse if they haven't paid attention to that tapping on the boot. They very quickly learn that sequence of events and what it signifies and there is very rarely any need to touch the horse after the first couple of times.
He had the rider really paying attention for the retrograde feel as the horse starts to act on their idea, something Mark could see but she was having trouble spotting. As soon as she started to find it the change was very clear.
Mark talked about how if your goal was to have the horse working off a certain cue in the long run then the best thing to do is start using that cue immediately - most people tend to expect that the horse can't do something so then they don't try. Mark just assumes that they will get it- if you show them a softer and smoother way they will go for that every time.
On the Sunday morning they started working on moving forward and to be soft. Getting the horse to give to the rein was not a question of collection or anything else necessarily, purely of making sure you get the same response always- even if you want to be working off a loose rein most of the time, you should get a response when you do use it. This was something Mark compared to one of the goals of training in a martial art ( Mark is an Aikido instructor ) which is that you learn techniques so you will never have to use them. The same goes for using pressure in horsemanship- if you know how to use it well you may well never need it.
In this case the rider was offering the feel they wanted down the rein rather than working with the feel that the horse is offering. In this case the rider's hands were at 2 out of 10 and although the horse was quite happy to pull through that the rider wasn't prepared to put more pressure on if they did which meant that she ended up going with the horse and the horse ended up getting to choose speed and direction. By doing this she had inadvertently turned the role of leader over to the horse, so what she was doing to try and be kind was actually making life more stressful for them.
They were working in a sidepull because the rider didn't want to be using a bit. Mark observed that this wasn't ideal in this situation because although it's fine with a horse that doesn't brace against it, but if they do it's very easy for them to stay braced because it doesn't apply any meaningful pressure. Questions about equipment came up a few times between sessions and Mark's view was very much that he doesn't really care what equipment someone is using as long as they get the job done. He said a few times "I'm not married to this stuff" - he didn't have a halter or a magic lead rope or magic bit to sell ( although he does sell the Reinsman "Rockin'S" bit, but he freely admits it's got nothing magic about it, it's just a well designed bit that works well ) he cares more about what the person and the horse do. He prefers to use cotton ropes and regular leather or nylon headcollars at first and then a normal bridle and saddle later on. When someone asked about bits in relation to how sensitive a horse's mouth is he just said "Do you have thistles in this country? Do your horses eat them?" The horse's mouth is strong, it can be injured but if you're using a bit correctly then it's not a problem. In his opinion a rope halter causes more physical discomfort than a bit ( this is partly to do with fit, though - he was referring in particular to the fact that the knots on a rope halter can fall over nerve points on the side of the horse's head but there isn't a lot of evidence that this happens on a well fitted halter, - that aside a rope halter can be a very harsh tool if used badly ) so the idea that they are a gentler options is not necessarily one that horses would share.
Bear
Bear was a big, fairly young, dark bay horse with a disreputable mane and a bit of a brace in him. When he was stopping and his rider was asking for him to soften to the bit he was starting to back up rather than yielding his head. Mark observed that Bear clearly knew that pushing on the bit didn't work, so the only way he could think of to release that was to back up. He couldn't stay relaxed with the bit. Associated with this he tended to throw his head around slightly during transitions, which is analogous to the way a person might use their head to help them stand up out of a chair.
Mark had them working on just having him relax on the bit at halt, the rider just putting enough pressure there for Bear to be able to feel it and letting him figure it out. He was really finding it very hard to figure out though and Mark talked a bit about how when you're consistently not getting the response you want, you need to change something. Some people will use a kind of pulsing squeeze on the rein which Mark said will tend to confuse the horse because they're getting constant release. I find that a little hard to reconcile with how effective I've seen that to be when Steve Halfpenny uses it, but I think probably in his case the pressure is always there, he's just adding a slight modulation to it, not a complete release. It's just a difference of approach really and I'm sure you could do pretty well with either.
When Bear did start to release a little he was doing it with a very high head- that is absolutely fine by Mark- as far as he's concerned it doesn't really matter where the horse puts his head as long as he is giving to the bit willingly rather than resisting it.
They moved onto going forward, with Bear tending to lean on the hand in the same way that he was at halt. Mark noticed that his rider wasn't releasing enough when he did give his head so he spent a while holding the rein so the rider could feel different points and make sure they are releasing at the right moment. He also pointed out that this is something that you can do better if you're not looking at your horse - you can feel it a whole lot better than you see it but because we are such visual animals we tend to think of sight as the be all and end all. Learning to listen to the feel we are getting through our bodies is really important and something we can easily forget to do.
When they were trotting Bear was tending to peter out- when he was pushed on, so that he wasn't the one making the choice to stop, he was able to soften directly afterwards, which is apparently quite common. While he is learning to soften it's important to let him stretch down and not just keep working him in a frame the whole time- as long as he is doing it when he has permission to and he's not running through or bumping into the rider's hand then it's good for him to be doing this.
During the questions after this section someone asked about why it was important for a horse to work softly- Mark gave us all an exercise to try, in order to illustrate- and it really makes the point:
Hold your arm out sideways from your shoulder, palm up, arm relaxed, then bring it up, bending your elbow and wrist until you have a right angle in your wrist and elbow, a bit like the classic "strong man" type pose. Just try that a couple of times and feel how easy and natural that movement is. Then tense up your little finger and do the same. Try tensing more fingers and doing the same movement. In the same way, if a horse has tension anywhere in their body it impedes the work of the ring of muscles that they need to be using in order to be moving comfortably and easily.
The next day they started out looking at getting a bit more activity into Bear's movement and helping him feel a little more forward. Mark commented that his rider was getting exactly what she was asking for- we tend to ask for something an expect the magic to happen. Bear wasn't understanding the subtlety that his rider was asking with yet - before she could be asking the way that she wanted to be she needed to be asking the way that he could understand.
Before they could get forward freely they went back to working on the brace that Bear was still carrying around with him. This time Mark actually worked on it himself taking the reins and really working to find the place where Bear could release and soften a little and then back up with softness. Bear obviously found this very hard- at times he was leaning so hard he was almost sitting back rather than taking another step. It was very interesting to see how Mark patiently and gently but relentlessly moved through this- he said that a lot of horses will brace with their head and neck but that Bear was bracing right from his nose to his tail and he really had to get inside that brace to free it up.
After some time of working through this, they went back to the simple forward, halt and backup to see how he was going- he was a lot better, but Mark pointed out that when his rider was asking Bear to halt she was backing off with her hands when he responded by bracing. That is exactly how a brace gets built up. Once again ( actually, this is where my horse-by-horse ordering falls over, this was technically "once previously" ) it was a question of the rider not being prepared to go beyond the level of pressure they had in their mind as the ideal while the horse was entirely ready to run straight through that. "If you want him giving, you've got to ask him to give," Mark commented. He also suggested that Bear's rider shorten her reins and lengthen her arms to get a more direct feel of the horse. Our starting point needs to be that we are as soft as we can be rather than as soft as we want to be. We can work towards the latter.
At the end of this session Mark was asked why a horse would go back to bracing. He responded that this is something it has been taught - as far as the horse is concerned this is absolutely the correct thing to be doing things and so our job becomes to change what they have learned. He talked about the principle of Homeostasis, that could be crudely paraphrased as "change is hard" - we go back to the things we know more easily than we do something new, even if the new thing is better. It might be like driving a certain way to work, then one day the road being closed and taking a diversion that you had never seen before. Even though the diversion turns out to be a more direct way to work if the diversion was removed the next day most people would go back to taking their usual route. We prefer the things we know to the things we don't and horses are the same. It's much easier to put this work in on the start, when the horse hasn't learned to brace.
He also talked more about the idea of pressure and how a lot of people wanting to do natural horsemanship want to do so because it is soft and quiet, the idea of whispering to our horses, and that too often that gets tied in with a reluctance to use pressure and be effective when it is needed. If we can't do that then the chances are good that we will be unable to be an effective leader for our horse.
The next day Bear was a whole lot more yielding, although still inclined to back up rather than softening. He was no longer locking up his whole body, though and his overall demeanour seemed a lot more relaxed. Having got back to a good starting point they moved on to looking at the trot- Mark explained that to Bear every gait is effectively independent of the others and he's likely to need to work through the same braces in all of them although they are likely to diminish once he starts to get the idea.
In the question and answer session there were a few questions ( and it was interesting how some of the people along on this day seemed to be very much asking questions in the accusative ) about the usefulness of backing up. There is a slightly odd idea that a lot of people here in the UK seem to have that if you work on backing up you risk losing the ability to get your horse working forward or that backing up is physically harmful to the horse. Mark explained that without a soft backup you're unlikely to be able to find any softness going forward. When asked to describe a horse that he wouldn't use backing up with his immediate response was "one that backed up well already." He went on to say that if a horse was very hectic and full of forwards they might need that directed and a little out of their system before he started working on backwards.
There were also questions about how you can correct a horse that tends to overbend- the simple answer is that you pick up one rein, but there was a lot of explanation here about how the horse, along with all other mammals, uses different joints in it's neck for vertical and lateral flexion and for rotation. An overbent horse will be bending in the first joint so by turning the head you change the second joint. It's also uncomfortable for the horse because it moves their eyes away from being parallel with the horizon, something which is a fundamental instinct in equines, so they will look for a way to change that.
By their final session Bear and his rider were looking like a much better team- he was working in a more level way and starting to free up a whole lot. He was still finding a little hard to balance sometimes and his rider needed to work on giving him direction and really finding their contact on the rein. Mark talked about the middle ground between the rider pulling and the horse pushing on the bit- that is your contact. If he pushes the important thing is to maintain pressure, so its as though he is pulling on a static object, rather than pulling back against him. When Mark had explained it Bear's trot immediately opened up and got a lot more free.
Bay Colt
This little horse belonged to the same owner as the chesnut mare described previously, in fact he was the mare's son. He had been ridden a few times but wasn't at the moment because they had had saddle problems so their goal this weekend was to work on ground-driving with him. He came across as quite young in how he behaved, although I think he was 6 or 7.
Once again he was working in a sidepull and this horse had really learned his own strength where that was concerned so he was very happy to just run through pressure on it. He was another horse who was light but not soft- when things were going his way he was happy to respond to what he was being asked for, but the moment things weren't he would start trying to take over. Mark ended up having to create a lot of energy ( not helped by the thin, nylon long-reins that he was also working with ) with his body and movement before he got much response from the horse. He was really working to give the horse clear instructions- we're doing this and we're doing it now, explaining that if you plead or negotiate with a horse as confused about your relative social status as this one was then all he would have to do to get release was not to do it. In this case the energy stayed high whenever the horse was trying to take over so that the message he was getting was "try something else- I don't care what but try something else." The horse was ready to escalate things quite high because he wasn't bothered at all about the sidepull he was working in. Mark was having to bump him quite firmly with it because it does such a great job of dispersing the pressure that the horse really wasn't noticing it at all.
His owner said he wasn't nearly that bad at home and Mark's response was that he probably was calmer but that he would still have been pushing the boundaries- "behaviour like this doesn't just turn up."
The next day they continued working on the long lines- the colt was going a lot more nicely this time and Mark had time to field a few questions about this type of work- again there was some questioning that seemed a little accusative to me, asking about body position when he was doing the ground driving. Mark drives from the side, explaining that he does that so that the horse doesn't get nervous if he appears on one side or the other from behind them- they can see him the whole time that way. He doesn't worry about getting ahead of the shoulder- although he acknowledges it's easier for the horse to understand him asking them to go forward from behind the drive line, there is nothing wrong with letting them work a little to learn something he needs them to know. Horses are easily smart enough to understand that the rules are a little different ground driving relative to lunging or leading- the biggest barrier to them is the handler thinking they won't understand it.
On the Sunday they went back to working on his leading- he was still fairly sure he was in charge even here, he had a real baby horse attitude. Mark talked about how horses are brought up at this point, how they get to have the run of the herd and do whatever they like when they are small and then at weaning the other members of the herd start showing them how to be a productive member of the group- they go from having the run of the herd to strict rules pretty much overnight. After six to nine months they are naturally able to take direction or give direction. One problem a lot of domestic horses have is that they don't necessarily get to run with the herd at that age.
In this case that gap between baby and productive horse had just never been crossed. He really didn't understand that he couldn't do whatever he wanted. Mark showed the horse that Mark could move him and that the reverse wasn't true. He pointed out that every time the horse moves us he learns he can move us, something that he will understand to mean he is in charge. He set up a simple rule for the owner to work with; she could touch the horse but the horse couldn't touch her. He explained how horses aren't really tactile- they will touch one another for mutual grooming or when they are chasing one another. When they touch a person it is almost certainly either to sniff them or to push on them. According to him when we rub them to let them know they have done well, they feel the intent behind that, there is no quality in the rubbing itself that is inherently meaningful to the horse.
In the question and answer session at the end of this Mark was asked how they raise their own foals and how much handling they do. He said they only really do incidental handling- leading, touching them, the basic stuff they need in place in case of an emergency. Most of the acclimitisation just happens in the field. "We have a good field."
He finished with the comment that a lot of what we do with horses, really a huge amount of it, really has no bearing on anything. It's almost entirely unnecessary.
Skewbald Mare
This very pretty horse, who came in for the second two days after Mark decided that poor Kiwi was in no state to be working on the first day, reminded me a little of our Joe in look and colouration, although she was much more immediately flighty. A gorgeous horse to look at but clearly not that easy to work with. She was really tending to run away with her rider, getting faster and faster in trot until it turned into a bucking canter if it wasn't contained.
When they were trotting and she was starting to get faster her rider was bending her to a halt and then setting off again. Mark picked up on this, pointing out that although doing that gives the clear message that running off is not what is wanted it doesn't really show what the required response is. Instead of stopping her, she needed to be caught and directed as she started to have the thought of leaving so that she could learn from it. For this horse running off was a release in itself so the thing to do was to give her lots of changes of direction so that had to keep her feet and her speed under control. Stopping her was like putting a dam in the river with all that energy just building up behind it- directing her allowed the rider to keep that river between the banks, still moving, still flowing, but a lot less dangerous.
On the Sunday she was calmer again and they worked on slowing her trot a little. In this case it came down to the rider who was tending to fall forward and pull back a little- Mark suggested that they needed to soften the front of their shoulder ( I was impressed several times by his very detailed and subtle observations on what people needed to do in order to change their riding and the effects that it had ) and to use their core muscles to rise to the trot rather than rising from the solar plexus, moving only their centre rather than their whole body- by lowering the point that the power for the rise comes from it should be easier to stay in balance. Then just slowing the rise should facilitate a slower trot- instead of going to the horse you invite them to come to you. By working this way they got the trot slowed right down to a jog.
In their last session they worked on canter again- the mare was trying to buck but she wasn't really doing it, it was just a mark of her finding her balance hard and being very sensitive to her rider's asks. The problem as far as she was concerned was the transition, which she was never really comfortable with. Mark had her rider turning down the volume on it- "if you keep asking the same question, you'll keep getting the same answer" - in this case the horse would be happier with less. Mark suggested that the rider could just change the count in her head from a one-two trot to a one-two-three canter and would find that would be all the horse needed. If the rider just thought canter she would still get a rushed transition ( Mark suggested she soften her lower back to help the horse stop feeling like they need to rush ) so by focussing on the rhythm she wanted she could find that pace more easily. It was really interesting to watch this in action, because it was absolutely effective.
Bullet and Sarah
Sarah, who was riding in this session, is a clinician and author in her own right and someone we have learned with in the past so it was really nice to see her getting to ride. The horse she was riding was a piebald mare belonging to a friend of theirs that they had bred and she was absolutely stunning. It was really good to see some of the more advanced work that Mark teaches in action - several of the riders in the afternoon sessions had been clinic participants in the past and gone out to ride with him in the US in the past.
They began with finding an accurate halt, which was something that needs to come up from the feet- by focussing on the hind feet, exhaling on the first step and then stopping on the second it should be possible to get a very definite and natural halt. They moved on to walk and trot transitions, aiming to keep the horse from running through them and make sure that they are happening when they are supposed to. Going from walk to trot was just a case of changing rhythm, not changing speed. Thinking this way started to get the transitions a lot smoother but she was still tending to go a little late on the downward. Mark observed that she wasn't changing down when she was tense so by observing the changes between tenseness and relaxation it should be possible to time the ask for the downward transition to a point when the horse can do it. One they know what they are supposed to be doing it should help them relax more and become more responsive.
In their second session Mark pointed out that when the horse was starting to tighten, Sarah was tending to tighten herself around the collar bone, by Sarah softening those muscles Bullet was able to relax as well. He then had them trying some different things to illustrate the connection between rider tension and horse tension- having Sarah wrap her toes around the stirrups changed the way Bullet's hind feet moved, when she tightened her right arm up Bullet was instantly off on her right for, almost lame with it. If you tighten a muscle in your body the chances are that your horse will tighten a corresponding muscle.
Mark spent a while working with the rein, holding one end so Sarah could experience different types of feel through it to illustrate how he would ask for things using purely intent. He was very generous in showing anyone from the audience who asked how these things worked between sessions.
On Saturday, Bullet was a little less relaxed. Mark explained that Sarah needed to be really paying attention to keeping the initiative in this situation- she needed to retain an absolute focus on what she wanted, not on what she wasn't getting. If you focus on what you are getting, you will keep getting it.
They went on to experimenting with Bullet's trot, trying to find how big they could make her trot and then how small. Sarah could get the trot down to walking speed and up to a good working trot for a little cob like Bullet.
Then Mark got her thinking, doing nothing other than picturing Bullet's right forefoot stretching out and landing right under her nose. With Sarah doing only that, Bullet's trot started to open up. She snuffed and coughed a bit as well as she started to breathe a little deeper. By visualising the other feet in turn, the hind feet landing underneath the stirrups, Sarah soon had a really impressive pace from Bullet with much more suspension and elevation than one might expect from a horse of her type. It was very impressive indeed to watch.
Now when they started making the trot shorter it was coming back until it she was almost trotting in place.
At one point when they stopped to chat to Mark he said "have you noticed how much noise your horse's feet are making when they land? Just think about that and go again." The next circuit Bullet's footfalls were almost completely silent. That pretty much blew my mind right there. At the end of the session I asked how that worked, Mark replied "I don't know - it just does."
Because Bullet was tending to be a little anxious in canter, they did some work towards that, just getting Sarah to ask her to trot faster and slower until they hit a fast enough trot that it was easier for her to canter- by setting things up that way they could avoid any anxiety over transitions.
On Sunday she was a little tired after the previous day's exertions, she had probably been using muscles she had not really engaged before, but Mark felt there was no harm at all in working through it with her. They worked in trot, which was very much under control and moved from there into a bit of canter, just asking for four or five strides and bringing it back down before the horse made the decision to slow. She was tending to pick up the wrong lead because she was a little out of balance and because she was being kept on the circle but she wanted to be going straight. To help her find the right one Sarah needed to ask a bit more and concentrate on how they were cueing to make sure they were really working with the outside hind foot.
In the afternoon they worked on getting her halt really square. This is not really an exercise in doing anything, more in getting out of the way - horses will tend to stop fairly square naturally, so by making sure she is soft in the halt ( and exhaling on the halt- I had got the idea that one exhales on the exertion but the idea that stopping is an exertion was a bit of a light bulb to me ) and then adjusting very slightly if they didn't get the square halt. What was difficult about this was doing little enough to get that slight adjustment- to ask one foot back needed a very tiny request, very close to noting at all. Mark talked about how easily we overthink things- with a job like this it's just a case of making it happen rather than worrying about how we do it.
Apaloosa Mare
This little horse and her rider have been to a few clinics with Mark in the past and they've come a long way in that time from a fairly troubled horse to a regular riding horse. They began by working on bending on the circle, which the horse was finding difficult. Mark identified two basic causes for this - having done so much work on going straight they had forgotten slightly how to bend and because she had been a horse that needed a lot of help for a long time and her rider had been focussed on trying to help her out, rather than just riding her. Now the horse was in a place where they could just ride and she needed to get herself into that place too.
When the stopped, the horse was tending to fidget and wander off so Mark drew a cross on the floor and had them stay there. When they stopped, he said, it was important that if they ended up facing the way the rider wanted to be facing when they stopped. Then he just had the rider wait out any fidgeting, just putting the horse back until she could try to just be still.
On Saturday they moved onto working on her lope- she only had a left lead and tended to get stressed in the canter and tend to lean right in on the corners. They started out working on her stronger lead and the first thing Mark picked up was that the rider was looking at the horse's head while they went along so they worked on direction on the circle, on focussing on the outside rather than looking at the middle, which is likely to end up bringing you in towards the centre somewhat and certainly won't help the horse stay upright.
The rider was also getting a little out of breath after a couple of circles in canter. Mark observed that this indicated that she wasn't breathing properly when they were riding, which was also constraining the horse. When she started breathing a little deeper and lower into her body the horse's pace picked up almost immediately. She was tending to set off on the wrong lead as well, so Mark had them drop back to trot for two strides and then pick up again.
They did quite a lot of work with the rider's position, showing the tension in her back and legs and how she needed to fill her back out so that it wasn't so concave and spring loaded and to put her pelvis in a neutral position.
After that they went back to cantering and getting control of the speed and the lead- Mark described how you can switch the lead in canter after two trot strides and how this relates to a sequence where typically from one lead there is a pattern to the lead in trot over the next few steps - strides one, three and four will be on the same lead as the last canter, strides two and five will be on the other lead. He also showed us how to look for the lead the horse is on in walk and trot, which can be a useful tool for judging which lead the canter you will get if you're setting off then. The side that the horse is leading with will be stepping slightly longer at any given time.
Chestnut Paint horse
This little guy and his rider were another pair of long time students of Mark's and he was apparently a very troubled horse when they first met- she had bought him as an unhandled three-year-old only to discover he clearly had been handled, and brutally so, leaving him severely traumatised. That was the account I heard anyway, by this point he was looking like a regular riding horse which is a testament to a whole lot of work on the part of his rider.
As with the previous mare, this was a case where they had been working so long on getting things right for the horse that the rider hadn't had so much opportunity to think about her riding for a little while so they spent a while helping her to feel the movement of the horse in her hips, enabling him to free up his feet by getting in time with him. Mark talked a bit about how it's not uncommon for someone who has spent time riding a troubled horse to still ride on the defensive even when the horse is no longer troubled. As a relaxation exercise he suggested taking note of how it feels to be really relaxed standing and in movement on the ground and then comparing that with how it feels on horseback- there should be very little difference.
The rider got a cramp in her shoulder at this point as well- Mark suggested this was probably because she was breathing in time with one of the horse's feet- if you're running and you breathe in time with one foot that is apparently what causes a stitch; each breath coming in time with the energy from the foot landing will tend to affect the organs on one side more than the other, causing the discomfort we're all familiar with.
On Saturday, after working through an inventory of tense muscles on the ground and then in the saddle they moved on to cantering. The transitions were a little dragged out and Mark suggested that rather than thinking "it's....tiiiime.....to.....caaaannnteeer....noooooow...." or "it'stimetocanternow" she just needed to be matter of fact about it and to really stay with him on the transition rather than asking him to go and to pull her along with him. There was some interesting talk about reflection here, how not only can tension in us manifest in the horse but the reverse can also occur.
Sunday's work continued with cantering, using the whole arena to help him get momentum and not have to worry too much about working on a circle where he may not be balanced. To help with transitions Mark suggested exhaling through the transitions, using a deliberately increasing exhalation. He explained how he uses a lot of different ways of breathing in his horsemanship for different things. By counting the pace internally the rider could change it just by changing the count. He said it was great to be able to tell her to just go and enjoy the ride on her horse after all these years- he's finally ready to just have some fun. It a pretty emotional moment for her.
Chestnut Eventer
The last horse most days was a big chestnut eventer who is well trained and going nicely but tends to be a bit spooky out on the course- he's solid at home so it's quite hard to work on.
Mark's first comment was that he may not be the kind of horse for that job- if he doesn't get better at it over time, then maybe they need to find another job for him. We can't be too dogmatic about what an individual horse will do - they all have different talents just like we do - and if we don't start to see progress over time working on it then perhaps it will be necessary to accept that this horse may not be able to do this job. He quoted the example of the little paint horse from Shanghai Noon, who was a cow horse that was afraid of cows. Anyone who has seen the film will be aware he made an awesome comedy film horse...
With that in mind Mark set to work helping the horse's rider to come up with a strategy for when he does spook- you can't prevent it ever happening but you can find ways to manage it so it isn't a problem for horse or rider. To do this he needed to replicate the behaviour, which he did by getting the rider working on a circle and getting the whole audience to stand up as the horse passed the stands. He was ok when we did it with him approaching, but if everyone stood up as he passed the outcome was a big spook and turning to face the audience. Mark explained how the bridge between the sides of the brain, the Corpus Callosum, is not well developed in a horse compared with humans so information can be very slow to get from one side of the brain to the other if it makes it at all. This is one reason that horses tend to want to use both eyes to look at something they find alarming- it may be that one half of their brain knows something about that thing that the other doesn't. People with ageneration of the corpus callosum tend to respond to things in a similar way to how horses do.
Mark got the rider to concentrate on staying calm and exhaling as the spook happened, keeping a clear focus on where they were going and just concentrating on getting there not worrying about what happened in the mean time. Meanwhile to make the practice a little easier he split the audience into three sections and had us raising one or both arms rather than standing up to create a less hectic setup for the horse. He was obviously very happy with his rider in general because even once he knew that something spooky was likely to happen on the audience side of the arena he was absolutely willing to keep going there - Mark made sure the audience were only spooky a few times in a row and then gave him a few circuits with nothing happening, but even so it was fairly predictable that something spooky was going to go on there.
There was also some general advice for working in a spooky situation- Mark described how he watched one horse start to get over its fear of cows by being in a school on its own with a field of cattle at one end and just taking a few steps towards them and then running away again at top speed. It did this for about forty five minutes before it could get to that end of the school. It's pretty hard for us to work through something in that way out on a hack or on the cross-country course, so we need to be ready with our own plan for dealing with scary things. One important thing is that you don't take the horse up to the thing they find frightening- they've already told you that they are afraid of it, by trying to make them go right up to it you risk making matters worse and potentially lose a lot of trust on the horse's part.
The main cause of the problem in a lot of spooks is our reaction to them- we tend to react more slowly than horses do so the horse will spook, which will make us tense up and maybe inhale just after the horse has reacted, this in turn tends to confirm to them that there is something dangerous going on which raises their anxiety levels. By staying calm and just keeping things consistent we can really help them through it.
By the end of the Sunday session the horse was doing no more than a little wobble, even with the whole audience standing up as he passed.
So that was all the horses- a fairly wide contrast in terms of experience and background and plenty of different things being worked on which gave a good insight into how Mark works and clearly made some really big differences to the horses and riders on the clinic. His combination of humour, calm demeanour and really in-depth knowledge both of horse psychology and biomechanics makes him a very interesting, informative and entertaining clinician and the work he does is useful and relevant to pretty much anyone who owns horses. If you get the chance to watch one of his clinics ( or to participate in one ) I strongly recommend it because no matter what your background and what level you are working at there is useful stuff in what he has to teach.
Sadly I don't think he'll be back in the UK for the next couple of years. Having seen him at work I would certainly put my name down to ride on one of his clinics ( they're heavily oversubscribed by this point so putting one's name down is no guarantee of being able to ride on one ) next time he is in the country. I came away feeling inspired by the depth and the simplicity of the work he is teaching and it's certainly pushed me on to better things with my horse.
x-posted with horsemanship
I'm going to go through the clinic horse by horse because that seems to be the most coherent way to show how each one developed over the three days. One of the horses ( who was, coincidentally, someone we once shared a yard with but hadn't seen for a few years ) came in and after seeing him lead around and hearing about his problems - mostly bucking - Mark spent a while exploring his back and told his owner that the problem was physical and that he needed to get some serious chiropractic before there would be any point in working on the training, so she got her money back and had to take her horse home. The sad thing was that she had got an equine chiropractor in and they hadn't noticed what was clearly a serious and long-term problem, possibly relating to saddle fit. As we know her and she's only a few miles away from us we gave her contact details for our chiro but it was a real shame- to get a chance to ride with Mark in the UK you have to put your name down and go through a lottery so it's doubly unlucky for her.
Coconut
Coconut was a little dark palamino pony who had been a riding school horse and gone through pony club before his current owner took him on. He had learned from pony club that he was supposed to run everywhere and his rider now had some problems with his brakes.
They started out working on the stop from walking- Mark observed that he was giving to pressure but that he was staying braced- he was doing what he was asked for but with no quality to it. He was light when he was asked for things in the way he was used to but if his rider asked for more they would get heaviness. Mark said that this was because his rider knew what she wanted but wasn't making it perfectly clear to him or offering with the feel that she wanted him to offer to her. They worked on getting him to soften to the bit, making sure that the pressure didn't come off until he offered that softer feel- he was finding gradations of brace, starting to soften and then getting heavier again as he looked for an answer. Releasing on a brace would teach him to keep doing the same thing- that is probably how he learned to be this way in the first place - horses lean on the bit because they have had release for leaning on the bit. Mark told them that they needed to get right through to the end of this process having started it and not to settle for anything less than exactly the right feel, "We're not looking for perfection, but we're looking for something pretty close to it," he said.
There is a balance in this work, Coconut's rider needed to find a middle point between pulling on him and allowing him to pull on her - if you pull you will force the horse to find a brace, if you allow them to pull you then they will learn that is what you want, you need to find a place where you can help them to find softness. The horse is unlikely to accept softness at first if they have learned another way, so you need to be steady in what you ask. Not pulling but not allowing yourself to be pulled. So if you want to get a response to a request with a softness of 1 on a scale of 1 to 10, then you need to put in that ask at 1 and then be like a post- if the horse wants to pull until the pressure is at 9 then they can, the rider's hand stays in the same place but does not give at all to the extra pressure, it just stays still and the horse is just working against themselves until they work out that they can choose to release it. In one of the most succinct explanations I've heard, Mark commented: "Contact is the space between you pulling on the horse and the horse pulling on you."
By their second session of the morning Coconut was starting to offer brief bits of softness, not more than a second or two or maybe a few steps but softness nonetheless, Mark's classic saying for the session was "when a mule flies we don't blame 'em if they don't stay up very long".
To help Coconut stay soft his rider needed to work on her breathing, making sure she could breathe down to the bottom rib. Her shoulders shouldn't move with her breath- a breath that stops in the chest is a survival breath- if you're using your shoulders to bring the air in you're not using your diaphragm. Mark explained how we can use our breath to improve our transitions by breathing out when the horse exerts themselves. If you watch horses on a cold morning you will see them exhale as they transition and your breathing can become a part of that. I found this very interesting because although I've been told I need to be breathing on transitions I had never really understood why. With regard to transitions he also talked about the difference between cueing the horse and then waiting for the transition to happen or going with him. If you wait for it to happen then there's a good chance you'll get left behind when the transition does occur. By making sure that horse and rider go together, as a single movement rather than a "cue... response" sequence you find a much smoother and more accurate transition.
She was also tending to look at the back of Coconut's head, a fault a lot of us share. Mark was able to reassure her that this wasn't necessary "if his head falls off, you'll hear it." He did a little demonstration with her, having her look up and forwards and then pushing on her back- nothing happened. Then he had her look down at the horses head and when he pushed on her she started to lean forward. Then he had her sit straight looking up but think about looking at her horses head and she reacted the same way as when she had been looking at the horse's head. This was a great illustration of how your body follows your intention. If you are looking at their head then the chances are good that your intention is following your eyes and you aren't really giving them a direction.
Direction is really important ( more of this later ) but we tend to follow what the horse offers, which is not what they need. Horses are natural followers- in a herd you may have thirty followers and only one leader. The leader is usually an old mare who knows the area, knows where the shade and the good grazing and the water are. It is very rarely an alpha mare- most horses don't want to be near an alpha horse, they have their role in the herd but it is not one that other horses consider to be that of leader.
On Saturday they moved things up a pace and looked at his trot and specifically how good he is at stopping from there- in walk he was pretty good by this point so this was the next logical step. He was stopping eventually but really tending to run through the aid. In order to get this under control Mark had his rider turn him tightly if he went through the stop and keep on that tight circle until he actually did stop then, without pausing at all, back up. The amount of movement you get on the circle before he stops indicates how far he was running through that cue.
The important thing about this was to get him to think, more than to get him to stop. As he gets a better idea of things it should be unnecessary to turn a whole circle, the start of asking him to turn should be enough to do the job. It shouldn't take too long to be at a place where he will just stop when he's asked without having to go through it. Until he does, he needs to always be backed up to exactly the place where he was supposed to stop.
In the questions at the end of this session Mark was asked about the (quite strong) bit the horse was working in. He observed that sometimes with a horse that runs off it's better to be safe than to be idealistic. He said that bit shouldn't be one the horse needs for long, but right now it's better for everyone if he keeps using it.
There was also a question about how the horses are when they soften to the bit - they tend to have the highest point of their neck about 8 inches behind their ears rather than breaking at the poll. Mark said that this is actually more biomechanically correct for horses- breaking at the poll my look nice for dressage but it's not the most efficient position for a horse to carry a person.
When Coconut came back for his next session he was stopping a whole lot better- he was starting to feel her intention to stop and prepare himself a little bit. His rider needed to soften her wrist and the top of her hands to help him stop more softly, which he was soon doing beautifully, so they called it a day.
On Sunday they were working towards cantering- Mark said it may take a while to get this right and talked about a horse he worked where he took eighteen months before he was cantering it. In that time he got walk to feel right and then got trot to feel right, before he even started on cantering.
Coconut was stopping nicely still but his rider needed to make sure that any time he was asking a certain question she was answering it in the same way- in this type of situation if we fix something up we can go for years without the horse asking that question again, but when they do you need to be ready to answer it in exactly the same way we did previously. Mark talked about how both people and horses fall into patterns and how we have to be very conscious when we have made a change that we maintain it and we don't slip back into it.
Having been working on turning him when he was not stopping very accurately his rider needed to be ready for him to be stopping well now and not go into the turn if it's not needed. As long as the feel that he is being offered to stop is presented consistently it will become the new pattern and the horse will respond more accurately to it. When they were working on a circle he was starting to learn the places they might want to stop, learning a pattern rather than responding to the feel so they needed to change the physical pattern to keep him thinking. His rider's biggest problem was with helping him get his brain engaged and have him working with her rather than trying to sort everything out for himself.
By the second session, they were stopping really nicely from trot, so it was time to look at cantering. Their circles at canter needed a bit more roundness, which Mark suggested would come from his rider looking where they were going rather than at Coconut's head. He also wondered whether Coconut actually realised his name was "Coconut" he suggested that in the pony's opinion he was called something like "Lance".
Going forward they needed to be working to start soft and end soft, start straight and end straight. If they can get that going forward then other stuff should fall into place pretty well.
Chestnut Mare
The second horse on the first day was a chestnut mare, who was quite herdbound and not very focussed on what her rider wanted. Mark observed that people tend to talk about a horse like that as lacking focus, but the truth is they have plenty of focus, they are just applying in a different direction to where we would want it.
He also introduced what he considers to be the three components to doing well with horses: Speed, Direction and Destination. If we don't give these things to our horse they will choose them for us.
He talked about the energy that both halves of the partnership put into things- so if you have a scale of 1 to 10 then ideally you want both the horse and rider to be putting in 5 so that everything is in balance. If the horse is putting in 7 then really the rider needs to be putting in 3 to keep everything balanced, but in this case ( as happens with a lot of us ) the rider was picking her energy at the same time so she and the horse were both putting in 7 and there is just too much energy in the system. The more we feed into the horse's stress the more they will raise that stress level.
The mare was calling a lot, which Mark felt was fine- it doesn't matter if she calls and gets stuff done, the important thing is that she gets stuff done. Her rider was tending to leave things a little late before reacting to what the horse was doing, though - leaving it until the horse had started to carry out her own plan before she corrected it. The mind leaves before the body does and if you can catch that thought you'll head things off a lot better and everyone's life will be that little bit calmer. Part of the reason that the mare was so anxious about being apart from her field mate was that she was feeling alone with her rider, they weren't enough of a safe leader for her to feel secure with them. Mark highlighted an interesting point about correcting the horse- by letting her run and then correcting it she was correcting rather than helping the horse. She was also turning without offering direction so the turn was "we are not going here" instead of being "we are going there". By not insisting on getting the thing she wanted this rider was perpetuating the thing she didn't want. Her horse needed her to be ready to take things on a little further. Often we will use our aids to create a bit more energy in the horse, but in the case of a very high energy horse like this one, we need to be thinking of them as a way of creating focus so that we can move together as a unit.
Mark discussed the idea of Trauma Energy as something that behaviouralists have been writing on, which is the energy that is released by a life-threatening situation. As humans we tend to suppress that energy but animals will tend to need to release it by moving after the danger has passed. This is at the root of the common observation about horses needing to move their feet when they are anxious. In this case the horse was really needing to move and it was important that the rider shouldn't stop her, just give direction and get her to the frame of mind where she can pay attention so that she can come through it and feel safe there.
Because the horse's body reflects their emotional state we can use the physical state to change the emotional and use our own physical state to change that of the horse.
The next day ( this rider had two horses at the clinic so they only had one session with this horse each day ) they started by talking about what the horse is like in general- she tends to be fairly low energy in lessons, so she seems to have the two ends of the energy spectrum and not the middle, she'll hack out quite happily then see another horse and lose the plot a little. Mark observed that this indicated a disconnect between the horse and the rider, a lack of trust probably coming from a breakdown in leadership. This was at the root of being unable to get a medium amount of energy when working.
Her rider really needed to work on becoming a better leader, to focus on providing speed, direction and destination the whole time and to have really close attention to detail so that she can catch things before they happen. She also needed to be more effective because her horse had learned to ignore what she was asking for - she didn't carry a crop because she could find a way to use it without feeling bad. Mark described how we need to find a place of balance where we can do things without getting emotional - anger, in particular, is often a result of things not working the way we want and it renders us absolutely ineffective. We need to be calm and unemotional about how we work so that we can be as consistent and understandable as possible.
We might think "if i put my leg on, we go" but if the horse ignores that cue then you need to find a way to teach the horse the meaning of that cue. While they were discussing this, the horse started moving and they did a little circuit. Mark pointed out that this showed the disconnect between the horse and rider - the horse really wanted to move and by allowing her to the rider was effectively rewarding her for being in that frantic mindset. It's important not to reward until you get the thing you want. You don't want to stop the horse from moving but you want to make sure that you don't go far and that you get back to where you started as directly as possible. By not leaving until she is a bit calmer they will start to find everything else going more smoothly as well. The big picture in most cases is largely made up of very small details.
They moved on to doing a little bit of trot work, setting off on a big circle, shortly followed by this set of questions from Mark:
"You asked her to trot, correct? She slowed herself down, correct? And now you're walking, correct?"
The horse was happy to follow the request for an upward transition but then she would quickly slow and drop out of trot. The way to get this more consistent was to pay closer attention to what she was doing and to catch it the moment she stopped doing the thing she had been asked to do. It's not that the horse is getting away with it, it's that they are always asking questions, "is it alright if I do this? What about this?" and if we don't provide an answer they assume the answer is "yes."
If you don't get what you want from cue, then you need a secondary cue to back it up- when working with a crop Mark suggests moving it by the rider's leg, in clear site of the horse, then tapping on the rider's boot or chap if they haven't responded to the extra movement from the whip and then tapping the horse if they haven't paid attention to that tapping on the boot. They very quickly learn that sequence of events and what it signifies and there is very rarely any need to touch the horse after the first couple of times.
He had the rider really paying attention for the retrograde feel as the horse starts to act on their idea, something Mark could see but she was having trouble spotting. As soon as she started to find it the change was very clear.
Mark talked about how if your goal was to have the horse working off a certain cue in the long run then the best thing to do is start using that cue immediately - most people tend to expect that the horse can't do something so then they don't try. Mark just assumes that they will get it- if you show them a softer and smoother way they will go for that every time.
On the Sunday morning they started working on moving forward and to be soft. Getting the horse to give to the rein was not a question of collection or anything else necessarily, purely of making sure you get the same response always- even if you want to be working off a loose rein most of the time, you should get a response when you do use it. This was something Mark compared to one of the goals of training in a martial art ( Mark is an Aikido instructor ) which is that you learn techniques so you will never have to use them. The same goes for using pressure in horsemanship- if you know how to use it well you may well never need it.
In this case the rider was offering the feel they wanted down the rein rather than working with the feel that the horse is offering. In this case the rider's hands were at 2 out of 10 and although the horse was quite happy to pull through that the rider wasn't prepared to put more pressure on if they did which meant that she ended up going with the horse and the horse ended up getting to choose speed and direction. By doing this she had inadvertently turned the role of leader over to the horse, so what she was doing to try and be kind was actually making life more stressful for them.
They were working in a sidepull because the rider didn't want to be using a bit. Mark observed that this wasn't ideal in this situation because although it's fine with a horse that doesn't brace against it, but if they do it's very easy for them to stay braced because it doesn't apply any meaningful pressure. Questions about equipment came up a few times between sessions and Mark's view was very much that he doesn't really care what equipment someone is using as long as they get the job done. He said a few times "I'm not married to this stuff" - he didn't have a halter or a magic lead rope or magic bit to sell ( although he does sell the Reinsman "Rockin'S" bit, but he freely admits it's got nothing magic about it, it's just a well designed bit that works well ) he cares more about what the person and the horse do. He prefers to use cotton ropes and regular leather or nylon headcollars at first and then a normal bridle and saddle later on. When someone asked about bits in relation to how sensitive a horse's mouth is he just said "Do you have thistles in this country? Do your horses eat them?" The horse's mouth is strong, it can be injured but if you're using a bit correctly then it's not a problem. In his opinion a rope halter causes more physical discomfort than a bit ( this is partly to do with fit, though - he was referring in particular to the fact that the knots on a rope halter can fall over nerve points on the side of the horse's head but there isn't a lot of evidence that this happens on a well fitted halter, - that aside a rope halter can be a very harsh tool if used badly ) so the idea that they are a gentler options is not necessarily one that horses would share.
Bear
Bear was a big, fairly young, dark bay horse with a disreputable mane and a bit of a brace in him. When he was stopping and his rider was asking for him to soften to the bit he was starting to back up rather than yielding his head. Mark observed that Bear clearly knew that pushing on the bit didn't work, so the only way he could think of to release that was to back up. He couldn't stay relaxed with the bit. Associated with this he tended to throw his head around slightly during transitions, which is analogous to the way a person might use their head to help them stand up out of a chair.
Mark had them working on just having him relax on the bit at halt, the rider just putting enough pressure there for Bear to be able to feel it and letting him figure it out. He was really finding it very hard to figure out though and Mark talked a bit about how when you're consistently not getting the response you want, you need to change something. Some people will use a kind of pulsing squeeze on the rein which Mark said will tend to confuse the horse because they're getting constant release. I find that a little hard to reconcile with how effective I've seen that to be when Steve Halfpenny uses it, but I think probably in his case the pressure is always there, he's just adding a slight modulation to it, not a complete release. It's just a difference of approach really and I'm sure you could do pretty well with either.
When Bear did start to release a little he was doing it with a very high head- that is absolutely fine by Mark- as far as he's concerned it doesn't really matter where the horse puts his head as long as he is giving to the bit willingly rather than resisting it.
They moved onto going forward, with Bear tending to lean on the hand in the same way that he was at halt. Mark noticed that his rider wasn't releasing enough when he did give his head so he spent a while holding the rein so the rider could feel different points and make sure they are releasing at the right moment. He also pointed out that this is something that you can do better if you're not looking at your horse - you can feel it a whole lot better than you see it but because we are such visual animals we tend to think of sight as the be all and end all. Learning to listen to the feel we are getting through our bodies is really important and something we can easily forget to do.
When they were trotting Bear was tending to peter out- when he was pushed on, so that he wasn't the one making the choice to stop, he was able to soften directly afterwards, which is apparently quite common. While he is learning to soften it's important to let him stretch down and not just keep working him in a frame the whole time- as long as he is doing it when he has permission to and he's not running through or bumping into the rider's hand then it's good for him to be doing this.
During the questions after this section someone asked about why it was important for a horse to work softly- Mark gave us all an exercise to try, in order to illustrate- and it really makes the point:
Hold your arm out sideways from your shoulder, palm up, arm relaxed, then bring it up, bending your elbow and wrist until you have a right angle in your wrist and elbow, a bit like the classic "strong man" type pose. Just try that a couple of times and feel how easy and natural that movement is. Then tense up your little finger and do the same. Try tensing more fingers and doing the same movement. In the same way, if a horse has tension anywhere in their body it impedes the work of the ring of muscles that they need to be using in order to be moving comfortably and easily.
The next day they started out looking at getting a bit more activity into Bear's movement and helping him feel a little more forward. Mark commented that his rider was getting exactly what she was asking for- we tend to ask for something an expect the magic to happen. Bear wasn't understanding the subtlety that his rider was asking with yet - before she could be asking the way that she wanted to be she needed to be asking the way that he could understand.
Before they could get forward freely they went back to working on the brace that Bear was still carrying around with him. This time Mark actually worked on it himself taking the reins and really working to find the place where Bear could release and soften a little and then back up with softness. Bear obviously found this very hard- at times he was leaning so hard he was almost sitting back rather than taking another step. It was very interesting to see how Mark patiently and gently but relentlessly moved through this- he said that a lot of horses will brace with their head and neck but that Bear was bracing right from his nose to his tail and he really had to get inside that brace to free it up.
After some time of working through this, they went back to the simple forward, halt and backup to see how he was going- he was a lot better, but Mark pointed out that when his rider was asking Bear to halt she was backing off with her hands when he responded by bracing. That is exactly how a brace gets built up. Once again ( actually, this is where my horse-by-horse ordering falls over, this was technically "once previously" ) it was a question of the rider not being prepared to go beyond the level of pressure they had in their mind as the ideal while the horse was entirely ready to run straight through that. "If you want him giving, you've got to ask him to give," Mark commented. He also suggested that Bear's rider shorten her reins and lengthen her arms to get a more direct feel of the horse. Our starting point needs to be that we are as soft as we can be rather than as soft as we want to be. We can work towards the latter.
At the end of this session Mark was asked why a horse would go back to bracing. He responded that this is something it has been taught - as far as the horse is concerned this is absolutely the correct thing to be doing things and so our job becomes to change what they have learned. He talked about the principle of Homeostasis, that could be crudely paraphrased as "change is hard" - we go back to the things we know more easily than we do something new, even if the new thing is better. It might be like driving a certain way to work, then one day the road being closed and taking a diversion that you had never seen before. Even though the diversion turns out to be a more direct way to work if the diversion was removed the next day most people would go back to taking their usual route. We prefer the things we know to the things we don't and horses are the same. It's much easier to put this work in on the start, when the horse hasn't learned to brace.
He also talked more about the idea of pressure and how a lot of people wanting to do natural horsemanship want to do so because it is soft and quiet, the idea of whispering to our horses, and that too often that gets tied in with a reluctance to use pressure and be effective when it is needed. If we can't do that then the chances are good that we will be unable to be an effective leader for our horse.
The next day Bear was a whole lot more yielding, although still inclined to back up rather than softening. He was no longer locking up his whole body, though and his overall demeanour seemed a lot more relaxed. Having got back to a good starting point they moved on to looking at the trot- Mark explained that to Bear every gait is effectively independent of the others and he's likely to need to work through the same braces in all of them although they are likely to diminish once he starts to get the idea.
In the question and answer session there were a few questions ( and it was interesting how some of the people along on this day seemed to be very much asking questions in the accusative ) about the usefulness of backing up. There is a slightly odd idea that a lot of people here in the UK seem to have that if you work on backing up you risk losing the ability to get your horse working forward or that backing up is physically harmful to the horse. Mark explained that without a soft backup you're unlikely to be able to find any softness going forward. When asked to describe a horse that he wouldn't use backing up with his immediate response was "one that backed up well already." He went on to say that if a horse was very hectic and full of forwards they might need that directed and a little out of their system before he started working on backwards.
There were also questions about how you can correct a horse that tends to overbend- the simple answer is that you pick up one rein, but there was a lot of explanation here about how the horse, along with all other mammals, uses different joints in it's neck for vertical and lateral flexion and for rotation. An overbent horse will be bending in the first joint so by turning the head you change the second joint. It's also uncomfortable for the horse because it moves their eyes away from being parallel with the horizon, something which is a fundamental instinct in equines, so they will look for a way to change that.
By their final session Bear and his rider were looking like a much better team- he was working in a more level way and starting to free up a whole lot. He was still finding a little hard to balance sometimes and his rider needed to work on giving him direction and really finding their contact on the rein. Mark talked about the middle ground between the rider pulling and the horse pushing on the bit- that is your contact. If he pushes the important thing is to maintain pressure, so its as though he is pulling on a static object, rather than pulling back against him. When Mark had explained it Bear's trot immediately opened up and got a lot more free.
Bay Colt
This little horse belonged to the same owner as the chesnut mare described previously, in fact he was the mare's son. He had been ridden a few times but wasn't at the moment because they had had saddle problems so their goal this weekend was to work on ground-driving with him. He came across as quite young in how he behaved, although I think he was 6 or 7.
Once again he was working in a sidepull and this horse had really learned his own strength where that was concerned so he was very happy to just run through pressure on it. He was another horse who was light but not soft- when things were going his way he was happy to respond to what he was being asked for, but the moment things weren't he would start trying to take over. Mark ended up having to create a lot of energy ( not helped by the thin, nylon long-reins that he was also working with ) with his body and movement before he got much response from the horse. He was really working to give the horse clear instructions- we're doing this and we're doing it now, explaining that if you plead or negotiate with a horse as confused about your relative social status as this one was then all he would have to do to get release was not to do it. In this case the energy stayed high whenever the horse was trying to take over so that the message he was getting was "try something else- I don't care what but try something else." The horse was ready to escalate things quite high because he wasn't bothered at all about the sidepull he was working in. Mark was having to bump him quite firmly with it because it does such a great job of dispersing the pressure that the horse really wasn't noticing it at all.
His owner said he wasn't nearly that bad at home and Mark's response was that he probably was calmer but that he would still have been pushing the boundaries- "behaviour like this doesn't just turn up."
The next day they continued working on the long lines- the colt was going a lot more nicely this time and Mark had time to field a few questions about this type of work- again there was some questioning that seemed a little accusative to me, asking about body position when he was doing the ground driving. Mark drives from the side, explaining that he does that so that the horse doesn't get nervous if he appears on one side or the other from behind them- they can see him the whole time that way. He doesn't worry about getting ahead of the shoulder- although he acknowledges it's easier for the horse to understand him asking them to go forward from behind the drive line, there is nothing wrong with letting them work a little to learn something he needs them to know. Horses are easily smart enough to understand that the rules are a little different ground driving relative to lunging or leading- the biggest barrier to them is the handler thinking they won't understand it.
On the Sunday they went back to working on his leading- he was still fairly sure he was in charge even here, he had a real baby horse attitude. Mark talked about how horses are brought up at this point, how they get to have the run of the herd and do whatever they like when they are small and then at weaning the other members of the herd start showing them how to be a productive member of the group- they go from having the run of the herd to strict rules pretty much overnight. After six to nine months they are naturally able to take direction or give direction. One problem a lot of domestic horses have is that they don't necessarily get to run with the herd at that age.
In this case that gap between baby and productive horse had just never been crossed. He really didn't understand that he couldn't do whatever he wanted. Mark showed the horse that Mark could move him and that the reverse wasn't true. He pointed out that every time the horse moves us he learns he can move us, something that he will understand to mean he is in charge. He set up a simple rule for the owner to work with; she could touch the horse but the horse couldn't touch her. He explained how horses aren't really tactile- they will touch one another for mutual grooming or when they are chasing one another. When they touch a person it is almost certainly either to sniff them or to push on them. According to him when we rub them to let them know they have done well, they feel the intent behind that, there is no quality in the rubbing itself that is inherently meaningful to the horse.
In the question and answer session at the end of this Mark was asked how they raise their own foals and how much handling they do. He said they only really do incidental handling- leading, touching them, the basic stuff they need in place in case of an emergency. Most of the acclimitisation just happens in the field. "We have a good field."
He finished with the comment that a lot of what we do with horses, really a huge amount of it, really has no bearing on anything. It's almost entirely unnecessary.
Skewbald Mare
This very pretty horse, who came in for the second two days after Mark decided that poor Kiwi was in no state to be working on the first day, reminded me a little of our Joe in look and colouration, although she was much more immediately flighty. A gorgeous horse to look at but clearly not that easy to work with. She was really tending to run away with her rider, getting faster and faster in trot until it turned into a bucking canter if it wasn't contained.
When they were trotting and she was starting to get faster her rider was bending her to a halt and then setting off again. Mark picked up on this, pointing out that although doing that gives the clear message that running off is not what is wanted it doesn't really show what the required response is. Instead of stopping her, she needed to be caught and directed as she started to have the thought of leaving so that she could learn from it. For this horse running off was a release in itself so the thing to do was to give her lots of changes of direction so that had to keep her feet and her speed under control. Stopping her was like putting a dam in the river with all that energy just building up behind it- directing her allowed the rider to keep that river between the banks, still moving, still flowing, but a lot less dangerous.
On the Sunday she was calmer again and they worked on slowing her trot a little. In this case it came down to the rider who was tending to fall forward and pull back a little- Mark suggested that they needed to soften the front of their shoulder ( I was impressed several times by his very detailed and subtle observations on what people needed to do in order to change their riding and the effects that it had ) and to use their core muscles to rise to the trot rather than rising from the solar plexus, moving only their centre rather than their whole body- by lowering the point that the power for the rise comes from it should be easier to stay in balance. Then just slowing the rise should facilitate a slower trot- instead of going to the horse you invite them to come to you. By working this way they got the trot slowed right down to a jog.
In their last session they worked on canter again- the mare was trying to buck but she wasn't really doing it, it was just a mark of her finding her balance hard and being very sensitive to her rider's asks. The problem as far as she was concerned was the transition, which she was never really comfortable with. Mark had her rider turning down the volume on it- "if you keep asking the same question, you'll keep getting the same answer" - in this case the horse would be happier with less. Mark suggested that the rider could just change the count in her head from a one-two trot to a one-two-three canter and would find that would be all the horse needed. If the rider just thought canter she would still get a rushed transition ( Mark suggested she soften her lower back to help the horse stop feeling like they need to rush ) so by focussing on the rhythm she wanted she could find that pace more easily. It was really interesting to watch this in action, because it was absolutely effective.
Bullet and Sarah
Sarah, who was riding in this session, is a clinician and author in her own right and someone we have learned with in the past so it was really nice to see her getting to ride. The horse she was riding was a piebald mare belonging to a friend of theirs that they had bred and she was absolutely stunning. It was really good to see some of the more advanced work that Mark teaches in action - several of the riders in the afternoon sessions had been clinic participants in the past and gone out to ride with him in the US in the past.
They began with finding an accurate halt, which was something that needs to come up from the feet- by focussing on the hind feet, exhaling on the first step and then stopping on the second it should be possible to get a very definite and natural halt. They moved on to walk and trot transitions, aiming to keep the horse from running through them and make sure that they are happening when they are supposed to. Going from walk to trot was just a case of changing rhythm, not changing speed. Thinking this way started to get the transitions a lot smoother but she was still tending to go a little late on the downward. Mark observed that she wasn't changing down when she was tense so by observing the changes between tenseness and relaxation it should be possible to time the ask for the downward transition to a point when the horse can do it. One they know what they are supposed to be doing it should help them relax more and become more responsive.
In their second session Mark pointed out that when the horse was starting to tighten, Sarah was tending to tighten herself around the collar bone, by Sarah softening those muscles Bullet was able to relax as well. He then had them trying some different things to illustrate the connection between rider tension and horse tension- having Sarah wrap her toes around the stirrups changed the way Bullet's hind feet moved, when she tightened her right arm up Bullet was instantly off on her right for, almost lame with it. If you tighten a muscle in your body the chances are that your horse will tighten a corresponding muscle.
Mark spent a while working with the rein, holding one end so Sarah could experience different types of feel through it to illustrate how he would ask for things using purely intent. He was very generous in showing anyone from the audience who asked how these things worked between sessions.
On Saturday, Bullet was a little less relaxed. Mark explained that Sarah needed to be really paying attention to keeping the initiative in this situation- she needed to retain an absolute focus on what she wanted, not on what she wasn't getting. If you focus on what you are getting, you will keep getting it.
They went on to experimenting with Bullet's trot, trying to find how big they could make her trot and then how small. Sarah could get the trot down to walking speed and up to a good working trot for a little cob like Bullet.
Then Mark got her thinking, doing nothing other than picturing Bullet's right forefoot stretching out and landing right under her nose. With Sarah doing only that, Bullet's trot started to open up. She snuffed and coughed a bit as well as she started to breathe a little deeper. By visualising the other feet in turn, the hind feet landing underneath the stirrups, Sarah soon had a really impressive pace from Bullet with much more suspension and elevation than one might expect from a horse of her type. It was very impressive indeed to watch.
Now when they started making the trot shorter it was coming back until it she was almost trotting in place.
At one point when they stopped to chat to Mark he said "have you noticed how much noise your horse's feet are making when they land? Just think about that and go again." The next circuit Bullet's footfalls were almost completely silent. That pretty much blew my mind right there. At the end of the session I asked how that worked, Mark replied "I don't know - it just does."
Because Bullet was tending to be a little anxious in canter, they did some work towards that, just getting Sarah to ask her to trot faster and slower until they hit a fast enough trot that it was easier for her to canter- by setting things up that way they could avoid any anxiety over transitions.
On Sunday she was a little tired after the previous day's exertions, she had probably been using muscles she had not really engaged before, but Mark felt there was no harm at all in working through it with her. They worked in trot, which was very much under control and moved from there into a bit of canter, just asking for four or five strides and bringing it back down before the horse made the decision to slow. She was tending to pick up the wrong lead because she was a little out of balance and because she was being kept on the circle but she wanted to be going straight. To help her find the right one Sarah needed to ask a bit more and concentrate on how they were cueing to make sure they were really working with the outside hind foot.
In the afternoon they worked on getting her halt really square. This is not really an exercise in doing anything, more in getting out of the way - horses will tend to stop fairly square naturally, so by making sure she is soft in the halt ( and exhaling on the halt- I had got the idea that one exhales on the exertion but the idea that stopping is an exertion was a bit of a light bulb to me ) and then adjusting very slightly if they didn't get the square halt. What was difficult about this was doing little enough to get that slight adjustment- to ask one foot back needed a very tiny request, very close to noting at all. Mark talked about how easily we overthink things- with a job like this it's just a case of making it happen rather than worrying about how we do it.
Apaloosa Mare
This little horse and her rider have been to a few clinics with Mark in the past and they've come a long way in that time from a fairly troubled horse to a regular riding horse. They began by working on bending on the circle, which the horse was finding difficult. Mark identified two basic causes for this - having done so much work on going straight they had forgotten slightly how to bend and because she had been a horse that needed a lot of help for a long time and her rider had been focussed on trying to help her out, rather than just riding her. Now the horse was in a place where they could just ride and she needed to get herself into that place too.
When the stopped, the horse was tending to fidget and wander off so Mark drew a cross on the floor and had them stay there. When they stopped, he said, it was important that if they ended up facing the way the rider wanted to be facing when they stopped. Then he just had the rider wait out any fidgeting, just putting the horse back until she could try to just be still.
On Saturday they moved onto working on her lope- she only had a left lead and tended to get stressed in the canter and tend to lean right in on the corners. They started out working on her stronger lead and the first thing Mark picked up was that the rider was looking at the horse's head while they went along so they worked on direction on the circle, on focussing on the outside rather than looking at the middle, which is likely to end up bringing you in towards the centre somewhat and certainly won't help the horse stay upright.
The rider was also getting a little out of breath after a couple of circles in canter. Mark observed that this indicated that she wasn't breathing properly when they were riding, which was also constraining the horse. When she started breathing a little deeper and lower into her body the horse's pace picked up almost immediately. She was tending to set off on the wrong lead as well, so Mark had them drop back to trot for two strides and then pick up again.
They did quite a lot of work with the rider's position, showing the tension in her back and legs and how she needed to fill her back out so that it wasn't so concave and spring loaded and to put her pelvis in a neutral position.
After that they went back to cantering and getting control of the speed and the lead- Mark described how you can switch the lead in canter after two trot strides and how this relates to a sequence where typically from one lead there is a pattern to the lead in trot over the next few steps - strides one, three and four will be on the same lead as the last canter, strides two and five will be on the other lead. He also showed us how to look for the lead the horse is on in walk and trot, which can be a useful tool for judging which lead the canter you will get if you're setting off then. The side that the horse is leading with will be stepping slightly longer at any given time.
Chestnut Paint horse
This little guy and his rider were another pair of long time students of Mark's and he was apparently a very troubled horse when they first met- she had bought him as an unhandled three-year-old only to discover he clearly had been handled, and brutally so, leaving him severely traumatised. That was the account I heard anyway, by this point he was looking like a regular riding horse which is a testament to a whole lot of work on the part of his rider.
As with the previous mare, this was a case where they had been working so long on getting things right for the horse that the rider hadn't had so much opportunity to think about her riding for a little while so they spent a while helping her to feel the movement of the horse in her hips, enabling him to free up his feet by getting in time with him. Mark talked a bit about how it's not uncommon for someone who has spent time riding a troubled horse to still ride on the defensive even when the horse is no longer troubled. As a relaxation exercise he suggested taking note of how it feels to be really relaxed standing and in movement on the ground and then comparing that with how it feels on horseback- there should be very little difference.
The rider got a cramp in her shoulder at this point as well- Mark suggested this was probably because she was breathing in time with one of the horse's feet- if you're running and you breathe in time with one foot that is apparently what causes a stitch; each breath coming in time with the energy from the foot landing will tend to affect the organs on one side more than the other, causing the discomfort we're all familiar with.
On Saturday, after working through an inventory of tense muscles on the ground and then in the saddle they moved on to cantering. The transitions were a little dragged out and Mark suggested that rather than thinking "it's....tiiiime.....to.....caaaannnteeer....noooooow...." or "it'stimetocanternow" she just needed to be matter of fact about it and to really stay with him on the transition rather than asking him to go and to pull her along with him. There was some interesting talk about reflection here, how not only can tension in us manifest in the horse but the reverse can also occur.
Sunday's work continued with cantering, using the whole arena to help him get momentum and not have to worry too much about working on a circle where he may not be balanced. To help with transitions Mark suggested exhaling through the transitions, using a deliberately increasing exhalation. He explained how he uses a lot of different ways of breathing in his horsemanship for different things. By counting the pace internally the rider could change it just by changing the count. He said it was great to be able to tell her to just go and enjoy the ride on her horse after all these years- he's finally ready to just have some fun. It a pretty emotional moment for her.
Chestnut Eventer
The last horse most days was a big chestnut eventer who is well trained and going nicely but tends to be a bit spooky out on the course- he's solid at home so it's quite hard to work on.
Mark's first comment was that he may not be the kind of horse for that job- if he doesn't get better at it over time, then maybe they need to find another job for him. We can't be too dogmatic about what an individual horse will do - they all have different talents just like we do - and if we don't start to see progress over time working on it then perhaps it will be necessary to accept that this horse may not be able to do this job. He quoted the example of the little paint horse from Shanghai Noon, who was a cow horse that was afraid of cows. Anyone who has seen the film will be aware he made an awesome comedy film horse...
With that in mind Mark set to work helping the horse's rider to come up with a strategy for when he does spook- you can't prevent it ever happening but you can find ways to manage it so it isn't a problem for horse or rider. To do this he needed to replicate the behaviour, which he did by getting the rider working on a circle and getting the whole audience to stand up as the horse passed the stands. He was ok when we did it with him approaching, but if everyone stood up as he passed the outcome was a big spook and turning to face the audience. Mark explained how the bridge between the sides of the brain, the Corpus Callosum, is not well developed in a horse compared with humans so information can be very slow to get from one side of the brain to the other if it makes it at all. This is one reason that horses tend to want to use both eyes to look at something they find alarming- it may be that one half of their brain knows something about that thing that the other doesn't. People with ageneration of the corpus callosum tend to respond to things in a similar way to how horses do.
Mark got the rider to concentrate on staying calm and exhaling as the spook happened, keeping a clear focus on where they were going and just concentrating on getting there not worrying about what happened in the mean time. Meanwhile to make the practice a little easier he split the audience into three sections and had us raising one or both arms rather than standing up to create a less hectic setup for the horse. He was obviously very happy with his rider in general because even once he knew that something spooky was likely to happen on the audience side of the arena he was absolutely willing to keep going there - Mark made sure the audience were only spooky a few times in a row and then gave him a few circuits with nothing happening, but even so it was fairly predictable that something spooky was going to go on there.
There was also some general advice for working in a spooky situation- Mark described how he watched one horse start to get over its fear of cows by being in a school on its own with a field of cattle at one end and just taking a few steps towards them and then running away again at top speed. It did this for about forty five minutes before it could get to that end of the school. It's pretty hard for us to work through something in that way out on a hack or on the cross-country course, so we need to be ready with our own plan for dealing with scary things. One important thing is that you don't take the horse up to the thing they find frightening- they've already told you that they are afraid of it, by trying to make them go right up to it you risk making matters worse and potentially lose a lot of trust on the horse's part.
The main cause of the problem in a lot of spooks is our reaction to them- we tend to react more slowly than horses do so the horse will spook, which will make us tense up and maybe inhale just after the horse has reacted, this in turn tends to confirm to them that there is something dangerous going on which raises their anxiety levels. By staying calm and just keeping things consistent we can really help them through it.
By the end of the Sunday session the horse was doing no more than a little wobble, even with the whole audience standing up as he passed.
So that was all the horses- a fairly wide contrast in terms of experience and background and plenty of different things being worked on which gave a good insight into how Mark works and clearly made some really big differences to the horses and riders on the clinic. His combination of humour, calm demeanour and really in-depth knowledge both of horse psychology and biomechanics makes him a very interesting, informative and entertaining clinician and the work he does is useful and relevant to pretty much anyone who owns horses. If you get the chance to watch one of his clinics ( or to participate in one ) I strongly recommend it because no matter what your background and what level you are working at there is useful stuff in what he has to teach.
Sadly I don't think he'll be back in the UK for the next couple of years. Having seen him at work I would certainly put my name down to ride on one of his clinics ( they're heavily oversubscribed by this point so putting one's name down is no guarantee of being able to ride on one ) next time he is in the country. I came away feeling inspired by the depth and the simplicity of the work he is teaching and it's certainly pushed me on to better things with my horse.
x-posted with horsemanship