glenatron | Silversand Horsemanship Clinic with Steve Halfpenny, August 2011

Having managed to miss out altogether on writing up the June clinic, though I have some photos to share at some point, I am endeavouring to write up this one super-fast.

Having ridden for four years of clinics with Zorro, this time I took little Cash pony along to see how we would get along. I think it was a very good decision.

On Thursday morning we started with the usual discussion about what we are looking for this clinic.

With Cash I was looking for more confidence, helping him to be less reactive and more thoughtful. He tends to panic when anything happens and then calm down afterwards and figure out it's not the end of the world. I'd like to help him think a little first, or at least to look to me, so that he only has to panic when it's a real crisis.

Karen French is working with Sheik looking to work on flexibility and also spending some time with her elder statesman of a horse.

Kerry with Raz is working on different energy levels and keeping him with her as they work a little faster.

Julie with Paddy ( new along this clinic ) tends to have a bit of trouble with him being a little bitey and kickey. She wants to find a way to be more of leader to him and less of a target as far as he's concerned.

Karen with TP could work on suppleness, developing her work in the trot.

Becky has a high speed Jake now. She wants to get a better feel for the feet.

Camilla is working on clarity and not getting ahead of the horse.

Steve talked about some of the work he has been doing this summer when teaching. How he has been focussed on feel, timing and balance and how he feels that balance is the foundation, but you can't really achieve it without feel and timing, but then once it is achieved then timing and feel can be improved and so balance can also be improved.

We fetched our horses and worked on circles on the ground aiming to move from forward into sideways and into back-up without changing the length of the rope or stopping moving. To be able to do this requires a certain a mount of softness from the horse- with Cash he was trying to run away the whole time, so I needed to keep him from getting too far ahead of me and to be very aware when he was preparing to leave. Cash was starting to run away in walk and I needed to catch that to get him thinking about what I was asking for. Holding his attention is the foundation of this work because the moment he is starting out at whatever else is going on, I am going to have a difficult time keeping him on my programme.

The aim is for weightlessness on the rope, the horse responding to your body and energy rather than to what you are doing on the rein.

We worked on the same process in the saddle, which meant, for Cash, getting his indirect rein ( the rein that talks to the opposite hind foot ) working properly.

Notice how much he is bending here.

In the afternoon they worked on the same exercise. It was interesting to watch Raz do many of the same things that Cash did. He was tending to overbend rather than letting the rein connect to his feet- if a horse is doing that you are pulling on them, teaching them to be heavy and being ineffective.

The important thing is the connection to the feet, which Raz wasn't offering to the rein. Steve rode him, using a stick to back up the bit, so that he would use the stick where Raz could see it and just have it in his way if he chose to bend rather than picking up his feet.

TP was unimpressed to be working with

sleepsy_mouse who is not her real human.

Apparently she was forgiven later.

Having Karen French ( one of Steve's associate instructors ) on hand meant that she could offer extra support to Julie with Paddy in between working with Steve. It's really hard to get started with this stuff because it requires you to think quite differently about everything you do.

Steve talks to Jackie and her horse Tom, an ex trotting horse who has worked through a lot of physical issues in the last few years.

TP still a trifle indignant.

Steve working with Paddy, helping him to learn not to push on Steve's space.

That evening it rained and as the storm passed the sky in the west broke out into an amazing pink and orange sunset, creating a clear double rainbow and turning palomino ponies pink:

Cash is mine.

He is also little.

And he is a pony.

Make of that what you will.

On Friday morning we talked about what we had learned from the day before and where it put us now. I was very aware that I needed to get through to his feet better, both on the ground and in the saddle- Cash will bend really easily but he can bend his head right to my boot and keep moving forward. I had also realised that in the groundwork when we are looking at an exercise like the forward to disengage into sideways into backwards one we did yesterday I was tending to think of the ground as being a map, at point A we will change to the sideways, at point B we will back up and so on. The mistake here was orienting with the world, when I needed the compass on my map to be the horse, so that everything happened through our relative positions rather than through our location in the world.

Steve's teaching is always a moving target and this clinic his emphasis is very much on balance as a tangible thing that we can appreciate and that he can use to teach us more about feel and timing, the other cornerstones of the essential foundation of horsemanship.

It rained on Friday pretty heavily. Tom was not overly impressed.

One of the warmbloods rolled and started a bit of a rolling epidemic. TP had a certain panache to her work, however.

Raz was his usual flighty self. He goes from stationary to leaving with very little intermediate time or space.

Putting the stick ahead of him to ask for a change in direction.

Lottie came out to play as well. She had been off for a while and she was a little full of energy.

Steve got her energy under control at which point she began offering some beautiful work.

Asking Cash to move across and around me, helping him learn to follow a feel.

Riding on my palomino pony.

Asking for a turn on the haunches.

Some "stop and think" time.

Students line up to listen to Steve teach.

At the end of the day I asked Steve to sit on Cash for a minute to tell me what I need to be working on. He did a lot of work with asking Cash to quit pushing and follow the feel on the rein.

Steve and Cash.

While Steve rode my horse, I got to ride his. Or at least his horse for the clinic, Camilla's big warmblood Ferrum. I doubt there is another horse in the country that rides like this one right now, a real pleasure.

This evening's photography model was TP...

The next morning I realised that what I had got from Steve riding Cash the day before was that I need to really work on that push and try to constrain myself to his parameters. Cash will feel totally rubber-necked if I pull on him, but there is a point below that where he can respond with a lot of subtlety. The trick is to set it up with that really subtle cue and then to wait for him to respond. As long as he is looking for it, then I should be able to just wait him out, if he gets stuck on a different idea of what is right, then I might need to help him out more- for example when he was trying to push through the rein, rather than increasing pressure on his mouth Steve just rode him into the fence and kept him from diving off to the left or the right until he figured out that he could quit pushing and back off instead. Watching that was a big light-bulb moment for me. If I'm not getting the outcome I want I need to put some more life in some other way - bump with my legs, pat my thigh, whatever it takes - rather than increasing my rein cue.

The general talk covered finding ways to avoid pulling ( which almost invariably plants a horse on their forehand ) and on how we can do less and get more. The important thing about not pulling is that you need life in the horse if they are to move. You could think about it like a car without power steering- if the car is stopped then it's very hard to turn the steering wheel, once it is moving quickly it's very easy. The energy you put into the horse is like your foot on the accelerator- once you have that available you can do a lot more with it.

I have no idea what caused this facial expression.

Trotting off- judging by the way I'm holding the reins there ( actually somewhat counterproductive with Cash, I need to drop them ) it's more his idea than mine.

Steve positions Julie so that she can understand where she needs to be stood to be safe with Paddy. Not stepping back ever is one of the toughest things to learn when you start out.

Tom and Jackie.

TP had her real human back.

She celebrated by posing against an epic sky.

Steve riding Ferrum.

Steve and Karen with their appropriately sized equines.

Steve had me working with Cash to catch his balance and just lift him up and back every time I felt him drop forwards or start to lean. When you are asking for any movement from the horse it is only physically possible for them to achieve it when their balance is in the right place, so this is essential for achieving lightness in everything else.

By the last day I had a good idea where we need to go from here- taking the amazing and beautiful subtlety that Cash had been offering me and finding ways to help him offer it at higher energy levels without getting emotional. That is mostly going to be a long road of persisting and gently building things up while reaffirming what we already have.

Working on our sideways along the fence...

... and the same thing from the saddle.

Jackie and Tom working on getting a bit more impulsion.

Cash having a think. Such a cute pony!

One of these horses is bigger than the other, but can you guess which?

TP had been fairly sluggish for a few days, Steve did a bit of work with her to get her moving out a little more.

A little calmer.

Following Steve.

One of the great things about these clinics is watching everyone's progress over the years. Becky and Jake have come so amazingly far since we first rode together.

Karen and her TP.

Steve dragging a tarp and Camilla and Becky seeing whether their horses can be persuaded to step on it. Ferrum was interested by it.

Jake was suspicious, even when it stopped moving.

TP stomped on it first of anyone!

TP getting a bit more forward motion under saddle.

Camilla, another person who has made unbelievable progress over the last few years, dragging the tarp from Ferrum. When she tried going a little faster and dragging it he got a bit emotional and she had to drop the rope, whereupon they cantered a brief circuit...

... and suddenly the tarp and rope was right in front of them.

Which is one way to get a lead change...

Cantering around, letting Ferrum calm down a little...

... still not entirely calm...

... starting to come back a little.

Becky and Jake!

So that is it for another year. A lot more was said and done than I have covered here, but hopefully there is enough to pass on some useful ideas. I think everyone really got a lot out of this clinic- I certainly enjoyed the new challenges of riding Cash, who is a very different horse from Zorro, and I think he'll be truly amazing with a little time and work.