Answering questions
15 January 2009 22:21![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glenatronI just replied to an email from Martin and Jennifer Black going through my experience and my goals for the course.
It's almost like it's really going to happen...
It's almost like it's really going to happen...
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Date: 15 Jan 2009 22:21 (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Jan 2009 22:35 (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Jan 2009 22:37 (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Jan 2009 22:38 (UTC)I started riding about six years ago, when I was in my mid twenties, then my wife got a horse and I helped out with him when I could. Four years ago I first had my own horse.
What do you consider your strengths and weaknesses?
My strengths are that I'm calm and confident on the ground, I've got a pretty decent seat in the saddle with independent hands and legs and reasonable balance. My major strength may be that I am a very keen student and good at learning, not afraid to say I don't understand if something doesn't make sense to me.
My weaknesses include not having a lot of experience compared with most people I know around horses and not having done as much fast ( canter/gallop ) work as I probably should have by this stage. I've done bits, but a lot less than I have everything else.
List any clinics, mentors, or other sources of valuable info?
For the last three years I've been a regular at clinics with Steve Halfpenny ( http://www.silversand.com.au (http://www.silversand.com.au) ) who was once one of Pat Parelli's instructors in Australia but has very much gone his own way and is a lot more influenced by people in the California-Spanish way of working now. He's helped me learn a lot about groundwork, helping my horse to be confident, timing and working with the horse in front of me.
In the last couple of years I've ridden on two clinics with Tom and Sarah Widdicombe ( http://www.bewithyourhorse.com (http://www.bewithyourhorse.com) ) a pair of English trainers who have learned a lot with Mark Rashid and I think also with Harry Whitney. They helped me to get my basics much more solid, make things clear and black-and-white for the horse and to pay attention to the little details that make a real difference in the horse's mind. I also learned a lot about working with the bit and about getting out of the way to let the horse do their job.
I have been having regular riding lessons for the last year or so with Julian Marczak, an instructor whose mentor was Charles Harris, the first englishman to complete the three year course at the Spanish Riding School and who also trained regularly with Nuno Oliveira. I have spent the whole year of lessons on the lunge, without stirrups, learning how to sit correctly on a horse.
What are your main areas of interest for this course? What are your goals for this course?
I'm really looking forward to working with a variety of horses and with youngstock. I fully expect this to be fascinating and humbling by turns.
The more I understand about working with horses the more it seems to me that the thing that they really value is who you are much more than what you do, so I guess a big part of it for me is to get the experience that will help me be the person that horses need me to be. This is somewhere that there will always be room for improvement, but I think totally immersing myself in horsemanship for a month is probably the best thing I can do to learn more about how to present myself to horses in a way they can appreciate.
I also think that experience, both first hand and through watching other people, will help me to learn to judge things better with horses I'm working with- when it's going to be best to push things a little harder, when to leave off and give them space, just having more knowledge for those times when you need to make a quick decision.
Both those things lead to confidence and I think also confidence is something horses really pick up on, so although I am fairly confident in most situations there is always room for improvement.
There is a feeling you get from a soft, responsive, balanced horse that is really with you which is just brilliant and I want to be able to find myself in that place more and stretch those moments out longer when I'm riding.
When you finish, you hope to be able to do what that you didn't do before?
Mostly my aim is to be able to do the things I can do a little bit now and do them much better.
That said, having no western riding in my background at all it would certainly be a really good experience for me to do some ranch riding - having watched the A-Pen video and read the articles on the website I'd say there's a pretty good chance of that.
no subject
Date: 15 Jan 2009 22:38 (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Jan 2009 22:40 (UTC)no subject
Date: 16 Jan 2009 02:28 (UTC)I'll wave at your plane as you fly over Massachusetts.
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Date: 16 Jan 2009 09:46 (UTC)no subject
Date: 16 Jan 2009 11:22 (UTC)