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glenatronThis was Steve’s first British clinic of the year and over the winter he had spent time watching Buck Brannaman and riding with Philip Nye as well as spending a lot of time with his own horses, so he was full of ideas to talk through with us.
We began to discussing what everyone was looking for. Our goals included robustness, refinement, confidence, impulsion and releasing the shoulders.
Steve explained how refinement comes from knowing that your cues will work- until you know with absolute confidence that when you apply a cue, you will get a response, you can’t begin to hone them in detail.
We started with some basic desensitisation on the ground as Raz in particular was very jumpy. Steve was using a bullwhip to work on this to start with, mostly I think because they had a couple of new bullwhips in stock and he wanted to use it. He started out just gently curling it over Raz’ back so the little pony could remember that he is able to tolerate something over his back. This is similar to what you would do with any other horse, but probably feels a bit different because of the leather.
He moved on to cracking the whip behind him and developing so that Raz was less concerned about it and then so that the horse could follow him if he walked along and cracked the whip in front of himself. For a twitchy horse like this it was a useful exercise.
Lottie uncertain about the bullwhip at first.
Zorro also. This makes it look a bit as though it was just a general tool for terrorising the ponies, but these pictures are mostly chosen for dramaticness, the horses settled to it very quickly.
A little later Zorro is quite happy. Interestingly he was slower to accept the whip cracking than any of the other horses. My feeling is that it sounded too like the crackling of electric fence for his liking. He is very careful of electric fence.
Ferrum and Camilla
They moved on to working on the shoulders, asking the horse to set out on the ground by lifting their shoulders and moving them away, and then aiming to ensure that the horse is always bending before they start to steer. If they are stiff in the neck they will tend to move their hindfeet out into a disengage rather than bending around onto the turn. Often you can achieve more bend by stepping away a little.
Raz in particular found this hard- he was very reluctant to offer Steve any attention and in the end Steve put a rope on his leg ( something he also used last year ) to help connect what he was asking on the halter to what Raz was doing.
Jake wins the "who can stare at a cone for longest" contest.
In this work - actually in all work with horses - the important thing is to let the horse decide and then to set things up so those decisions are meaningful to them. That is the whole point of making the right thing easy- you want the horse to want to do the thing you are asking them for.
Steve uses Gold Dust as his spectating spot.
With Gold Dust and Kerin they were working on getting her working more together, so that Kerin didn’t end up dragging Gold Dust around and that Gold Dust didn’t go rushing ahead and leaving without her. Steve talked about how with a young horse like that they need to be very good at the basics and that is really what matters, to make a big deal out of the small stuff. Even the greatest painting can be broken down into individual brushstrokes, so make sure each brush stroke is a good one.
It’s also very easy to reward the wrong thing- you ask for forward and get a step of sideways and think “hey, great, bank that!” But if you go to the shop and ask for a bag of sugar and instead they give you a bag of salt, there’s a good chance any cakes you make are going to taste really odd.
Release is always a big deal in everything we do with horses. Leave it too late and we frustrate the horse- you have to reward every positive change and nothing else. A horse gets soft because they know that we’ll get firm with them.
The next morning, talking over the previous day’s work Steve asked what we would do differently. The themes that came out included doing less, holding attention and being emotionally neutral.
We talked a little about what Raz needs- he’s very expressive about his concerns regarding the world and it a lot of the things we might do to work on it in the arena wouldn’t be so easy in a show or out on the trail, so we aim to teach them to accept us and our decisions because even when they do get more emotional some of the training may disappear but the acceptance doesn’t.
There is a difference between a horse who is quiet and a horse that is comfortable in their environment- often horses who seem quite calm are introverting their concerns away. This lead to a discussion of flooding, something you will see a lot in the work of some trainers. The problem with flooding as a way of solving a problem is that it doesn’t always work - the success rate is about 60% ( I think, I don’t have a source for this ) but in a horse that has been flooded and it has failed, there is a very good chance that a phobia will have been created that is so severe it may never be fixable.
We started the day working on flexions- asking for the horse to bring their head left and then right ( not a long way, just 20-30 degrees ) ten times without any feeling of stiffness or jerkiness in the movement. We then developed that into work on serpentines.
Steve asks Ferrum to step across behind.
We also worked on getting our weight away from the feet we wanted to move and over the feet we wanted to stay still when we’re moving the different parts of the horse around, so moving forward into a turn on the forehand with the weight over the inside front to a turn on the hindquarters with the weight over the outside hind and forward again. Our weight is a really useful aid to help the horse know what we are looking for and one we tend to underuse.
Steve riding on Zorro to ask him to turn his shoulder around his hindquarters.
Lottie
Apparently this weekend was all about leaning on Gold Dust for Steve.
The session concluded with downward transitions aiming for the same feel as we had with the flexion- trying to get ten consecutive walk to halt to backup with no feeling of push on the bit, the same trot to walk and so on.
Gold Dust has a saddle blanket on
Ready to work!
Gold dust did a lot of work on just moving out- Steve maintains that before he gets on a horse he wants to have walked, trotted, cantered and galloped them on the line, so he knows everything that is in there and he had Kerin work through this with Gold Dust.
Gold Dust trots.
Watching Jake and Raz work it was clear that they were starting to get a lot softer in the exercises we had been doing in the morning.
The Teacher
On the last day, Steve could clearly see a significant element to the problems I was still having with Zorro:
“Have you galloped him yet?”
“No... I’m not sure he likes galloping.”
“I think you need to gallop him.”
“Why don’t you do it first?”
So Steve hopped on and explained to Zorro that he needed to go. Forward. Now. Turns out Zorro would rather spend his energy on kicking out than cantering off, but after a minute or two of discussion they were absolutely winging it around the arena.
Then it was my turn. I didn’t get up to the same speeds Steve did ( although when he used his lariat to encourage Zorro forward we weren’t far off ) but it just felt amazing. Suddenly Zorro’s feet felt so freed up and I realised that compared with this he had always felt a lot like we were riding through treacle. It was absolutely tremendous and a real high to end the clinic on.
Jake and Becky
Raz speeding on the line. He's a small horse with a whole lot of forward.
Jake trotting
It was also time for Kerin to do some more riding with Gold Dust. They had done their faster work on the line and Gold Dust was clearly in a fairly easygoing mood about the whole thing, so Steve had her hop on and do a bit more riding. He talked about how with a horse at this stage you work in their comfort zone- you can’t tell them to go where they don’t want to because you’ll just end up pulling and teaching them to pull as a result, so you work with what they can do and just gradually extend that as they are able to handle it.
You can probably tell from the random scatter of legs that this filly is a quality dressage horse.
Looking better- her legs are mostly below her now.
Kerin rides while Steve guides them with the line.
Stepping off with Steve's guidance.
In the event Gold Dust did manage a big spook and canter across the arena and Kerin rode it fine and let her keep moving out for a little and catch her balance.
Entirely calm afterwards.
Jake watched the whole thing with an expression of mild interest.
It was a really good clinic and the horse I took home was so much more fast and forwardgoing than the one that came to the clinic with me. I felt pretty good about things at this point.
Of course, a week later I had broken my collarbone so I didn’t get to practice a lot of this over the summer, but - as the next clinic report may prove, should I get it finished - that mattered less than I expected.
You can find more about Steve Halfpenny and Silversand at the Silversand website. You can see pictures from this report bigger over on Flickr.
We began to discussing what everyone was looking for. Our goals included robustness, refinement, confidence, impulsion and releasing the shoulders.
Steve explained how refinement comes from knowing that your cues will work- until you know with absolute confidence that when you apply a cue, you will get a response, you can’t begin to hone them in detail.
We started with some basic desensitisation on the ground as Raz in particular was very jumpy. Steve was using a bullwhip to work on this to start with, mostly I think because they had a couple of new bullwhips in stock and he wanted to use it. He started out just gently curling it over Raz’ back so the little pony could remember that he is able to tolerate something over his back. This is similar to what you would do with any other horse, but probably feels a bit different because of the leather.
He moved on to cracking the whip behind him and developing so that Raz was less concerned about it and then so that the horse could follow him if he walked along and cracked the whip in front of himself. For a twitchy horse like this it was a useful exercise.
Lottie uncertain about the bullwhip at first.
Zorro also. This makes it look a bit as though it was just a general tool for terrorising the ponies, but these pictures are mostly chosen for dramaticness, the horses settled to it very quickly.
A little later Zorro is quite happy. Interestingly he was slower to accept the whip cracking than any of the other horses. My feeling is that it sounded too like the crackling of electric fence for his liking. He is very careful of electric fence.
Ferrum and Camilla
They moved on to working on the shoulders, asking the horse to set out on the ground by lifting their shoulders and moving them away, and then aiming to ensure that the horse is always bending before they start to steer. If they are stiff in the neck they will tend to move their hindfeet out into a disengage rather than bending around onto the turn. Often you can achieve more bend by stepping away a little.
Raz in particular found this hard- he was very reluctant to offer Steve any attention and in the end Steve put a rope on his leg ( something he also used last year ) to help connect what he was asking on the halter to what Raz was doing.
Jake wins the "who can stare at a cone for longest" contest.
In this work - actually in all work with horses - the important thing is to let the horse decide and then to set things up so those decisions are meaningful to them. That is the whole point of making the right thing easy- you want the horse to want to do the thing you are asking them for.
Steve uses Gold Dust as his spectating spot.
With Gold Dust and Kerin they were working on getting her working more together, so that Kerin didn’t end up dragging Gold Dust around and that Gold Dust didn’t go rushing ahead and leaving without her. Steve talked about how with a young horse like that they need to be very good at the basics and that is really what matters, to make a big deal out of the small stuff. Even the greatest painting can be broken down into individual brushstrokes, so make sure each brush stroke is a good one.
It’s also very easy to reward the wrong thing- you ask for forward and get a step of sideways and think “hey, great, bank that!” But if you go to the shop and ask for a bag of sugar and instead they give you a bag of salt, there’s a good chance any cakes you make are going to taste really odd.
Release is always a big deal in everything we do with horses. Leave it too late and we frustrate the horse- you have to reward every positive change and nothing else. A horse gets soft because they know that we’ll get firm with them.
The next morning, talking over the previous day’s work Steve asked what we would do differently. The themes that came out included doing less, holding attention and being emotionally neutral.
We talked a little about what Raz needs- he’s very expressive about his concerns regarding the world and it a lot of the things we might do to work on it in the arena wouldn’t be so easy in a show or out on the trail, so we aim to teach them to accept us and our decisions because even when they do get more emotional some of the training may disappear but the acceptance doesn’t.
There is a difference between a horse who is quiet and a horse that is comfortable in their environment- often horses who seem quite calm are introverting their concerns away. This lead to a discussion of flooding, something you will see a lot in the work of some trainers. The problem with flooding as a way of solving a problem is that it doesn’t always work - the success rate is about 60% ( I think, I don’t have a source for this ) but in a horse that has been flooded and it has failed, there is a very good chance that a phobia will have been created that is so severe it may never be fixable.
We started the day working on flexions- asking for the horse to bring their head left and then right ( not a long way, just 20-30 degrees ) ten times without any feeling of stiffness or jerkiness in the movement. We then developed that into work on serpentines.
Steve asks Ferrum to step across behind.
We also worked on getting our weight away from the feet we wanted to move and over the feet we wanted to stay still when we’re moving the different parts of the horse around, so moving forward into a turn on the forehand with the weight over the inside front to a turn on the hindquarters with the weight over the outside hind and forward again. Our weight is a really useful aid to help the horse know what we are looking for and one we tend to underuse.
Steve riding on Zorro to ask him to turn his shoulder around his hindquarters.
Lottie
Apparently this weekend was all about leaning on Gold Dust for Steve.
The session concluded with downward transitions aiming for the same feel as we had with the flexion- trying to get ten consecutive walk to halt to backup with no feeling of push on the bit, the same trot to walk and so on.
Gold Dust has a saddle blanket on
Ready to work!
Gold dust did a lot of work on just moving out- Steve maintains that before he gets on a horse he wants to have walked, trotted, cantered and galloped them on the line, so he knows everything that is in there and he had Kerin work through this with Gold Dust.
Gold Dust trots.
Watching Jake and Raz work it was clear that they were starting to get a lot softer in the exercises we had been doing in the morning.
The Teacher
On the last day, Steve could clearly see a significant element to the problems I was still having with Zorro:
“Have you galloped him yet?”
“No... I’m not sure he likes galloping.”
“I think you need to gallop him.”
“Why don’t you do it first?”
So Steve hopped on and explained to Zorro that he needed to go. Forward. Now. Turns out Zorro would rather spend his energy on kicking out than cantering off, but after a minute or two of discussion they were absolutely winging it around the arena.
Then it was my turn. I didn’t get up to the same speeds Steve did ( although when he used his lariat to encourage Zorro forward we weren’t far off ) but it just felt amazing. Suddenly Zorro’s feet felt so freed up and I realised that compared with this he had always felt a lot like we were riding through treacle. It was absolutely tremendous and a real high to end the clinic on.
Jake and Becky
Raz speeding on the line. He's a small horse with a whole lot of forward.
Jake trotting
It was also time for Kerin to do some more riding with Gold Dust. They had done their faster work on the line and Gold Dust was clearly in a fairly easygoing mood about the whole thing, so Steve had her hop on and do a bit more riding. He talked about how with a horse at this stage you work in their comfort zone- you can’t tell them to go where they don’t want to because you’ll just end up pulling and teaching them to pull as a result, so you work with what they can do and just gradually extend that as they are able to handle it.
You can probably tell from the random scatter of legs that this filly is a quality dressage horse.
Looking better- her legs are mostly below her now.
Kerin rides while Steve guides them with the line.
Stepping off with Steve's guidance.
In the event Gold Dust did manage a big spook and canter across the arena and Kerin rode it fine and let her keep moving out for a little and catch her balance.
Entirely calm afterwards.
Jake watched the whole thing with an expression of mild interest.
It was a really good clinic and the horse I took home was so much more fast and forwardgoing than the one that came to the clinic with me. I felt pretty good about things at this point.
Of course, a week later I had broken my collarbone so I didn’t get to practice a lot of this over the summer, but - as the next clinic report may prove, should I get it finished - that mattered less than I expected.
You can find more about Steve Halfpenny and Silversand at the Silversand website. You can see pictures from this report bigger over on Flickr.
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Date: 31 Dec 2010 00:00 (UTC)no subject
Date: 31 Dec 2010 00:01 (UTC)no subject
Date: 31 Dec 2010 15:54 (UTC)