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glenatronA few weeks ago I finally got to ride a clinic with Buck. If you aren't familiar with the name, you should probably watch the film about him ( a good enough film that non-horsey folk can enjoy it too ) to get an idea of his work. Buck is one of the people who spent a lot of time learning with Ray Hunt and Tom Dorrance long before anyone thought to try and sell their approach as "natural horsemanship." This is the starting point for the horsemanship I have been working on for a long time now and most of the people I have learned from have either spent time with Buck or know him personally, so he's certainly connected to the path I am on.
Now he was teaching one of only two clinics in this country and it was about ten miles from where I live so although rider places were pricey it seemed worth it to me to take part in this one. The clinic was a new double format, with Buck teaching in the morning and Melanie Smith-Taylor who works with an understanding of the approach that Buck teaches but comes from more of a showjumping direction. It made for long days, but a very interesting combination.
I turned up bright and early on the first day of the clinic - we had dropped Iris off the previous evening - made sure my mare was spruce and had water and breakfast then got ready for the first day. I hit the first problem as I began to tack up- I had somehow forgotten my saddle blanket and I couldn't really get by without it. There was half an hour left until we were due to start, time I was planning to use to get warmed up. Instead I dived into my car and dashed off to the yard to pick it up, a 15 minute journey each way in the best possible traffic, and this was the morning rush hour.
Incredibly I managed it in something close to optimal time and we walked into the arena last, but just as the music was stopping and Buck started to speak.
The first morning began with everyone on foot and Buck getting to know the horse he was riding for the weekend. He hadn't met her before and she was a mare with some history to her ( we later heard her story, which was of being a showjumper, ruined by the age of four, gradually brought back towards rideability over a few subsequent years ) and so he did a little work on the ground with her, talking about what he looks for when he works on the ground and then, pleading sciatica, said that although he wouldn't expect most of us to ride a horse at this point he could probably fix things up easier from the saddle and be more comfortable while he did.
For the next few minutes, Buck had to work hard to keep the mare moving forward - he explained to us that she was ready to flip with him, but he wasn't keen for that to happen, so he was quick to use his spurs when he felt her get that backwards or upwards feeling in her. She sprang forward a few times, gave a few small bucks and then started moving forward instead. Although Buck was fast to use his spurs and firm when he did use them, he only needed them for a couple of minutes before the horse understood what he wanted and settled down completely. I know a few people found this hard to watch and no doubt Buck could have solved the same problem in a lot of ways, but this changed the horse's mind very quickly and gave her so much clarity that she could rapidly begin to feel safe in his company. Once she settled down, she was really calm and seemed very happy with him for the rest of the clinic, probably the calmest horse in the arena for most of that time.
Listening to Buck.
Buck talked us through that process and then moved on to discussing what we were going to be doing with our horses- given the format of the clinic, he suggested that we skip on groundwork unless there was something we specifically wanted to work on and go straight to riding exercises. The first of these was short serpentines.
The important thing with this exercise is that the horse is bent on the turn following their nose, that you only ask for them to step around as the inside foot is about to leave the ground and that before you change from the left to the right or vice-versa, you make sure you have a straight stride, so you don't pull them off balance by too much of a direct change from right to left. The other important element of this, which was probably the thing I focussed on most in a fairly familiar exercise, was that we needed to really make sure our horses didn't slow down or drag through the turns. They needed to be pushing forward strongly even as we moved through. Buck observed that this was a great way of building up engagement in the horse.
Buck observed that some of the horses were a little distracted ( there were thirty of us in a new and large arena with a large audience, so it was what you might call an unfamiliar environment for most of them ) he suggested that while the horse was less attentive, we should move to really tight serpentines, with the horse a little overflexed to the inside ( so they are almost at a ninety degree bend ) so that we formed much tighter turns almost to the point of turning back on ourselves at each end. Again the focus here needed to be on the horse keeping forward the whole time and by moving into these tighter figures, we gave them more to think about in the work, so they had less time to worry about the rest of the world.
These exercises were interspersed with disengaging the hindquarters as a way of making sure we could reliably get to the horse's back feet with the reins. Buck is very particular about how smoothly the hind end turns loose and how smoothly the horse moves. The disengage must be smooth and relaxed from start to finish if we are going to be able to use it to help the horse feel calm.
We did a little work at the end of the morning on picking up a soft feel in halt and asking the horse to rebalance back a little. Buck talks a lot about a soft feel in his work and what he is talking about is as much as anything a lack of resistance in the horse. It characterises as the horse being ready to respond to the rein ( "every time I reach for my horse, I want the horse to reach back for me" ) and to work with a relaxed poll and lifted back, without bracing against the rider's aids.
You start working towards this by asking the horse to balance back a little in halt, and then taking it forward into the walk, asking for the horse to give with their poll a little and releasing when they do. Develop from there until they can carry a soft feel the whole time in all your work. That is a long time goal, however, trying to hold a horse in place is pointless because they need your release to guide them to the right answer. I had allowed my hands to become a little greedy, so this was a useful area to work on with a focus on offering a fair release and maintaining forward when picking up a soft feel.
A focus in this work was making sure that the horse's balance was moving with us, so they were ready to follow the changes in our position and either move faster or slow down with the movement that we offered them.
I was also working on all of this while trying to maintain a consistent movement past the gateways between the arena and the car park, which Iris had identified as a danger zone of the highest order ( alert status: Loggins ) and so I was working on being confident enough in directing her that she didn't need to take over too much and run away. In general it was quite successful, although if someone nearby made a transition as we went past, things got a little pesky.
In the afternoon Melanie had us continuing with the same work, but bringing in pairs of trotting poles to help us find more precision. I had never used trotting poles with Iris, so we got to do some fancy high steps, especially as we moved up into trot. Working with the poles the goal was to use the same balance that we had been developing in the morning to help set up the horses so they don't collide with the poles.
We also worked on stopping from trot directly between two poles so we could use the poles to judge our accuracy- are we in the mid-point between the poles? Are we too far forward or back in the box?
As the weekend continued we developed and refined this work. We did a lot of on connecting the horse's movement to ours and their balance to ours. Buck also has a progressive series of approaches to half turns that he teaches, so we began by making a simple half turn with a soft feel in walk, then the same in trot ( still a short turn ) while maintaining a soft feel - it's actually pretty hard to get this sufficiently tight without one - and then moving on to turning to face the other way, then changing bend into leg yield to do that out to the rail. Once you have that leg yield working consistently and the soft feel is maintained, then by applying a canter cue as you reach the rail you have things set up to help the horse pick up the correct lead when you move out.
Although it was a large group and everyone was in motion most of the time ( except we did split into half groups for canter work ) Buck was always on hand to answer questions, so if you were getting stuck he could help you out. It was very noticeable how calm and willing his horse was on the second day. She seemed really happy with the deal Buck had to offer her.
At the end of the session I was asking Buck about something after the mics were off, while we were making our way out towards lunch. I don't even remember what the question was about now, but after I thanked him Buck observed that I had done some good work that morning. That was genuinely high praise and I was super pleased with it and with my brilliant mare. I might even have been a little proud of it, in some respects that could count as foreshadowing.
With Melanie we moved on to working on patterns that had us circling around a set of ground rails- we split into smaller groups for the afternoon session and I was in the one that preferred flatwork - I have never tried jumping Iris but I feel like before I do I might want to be in a saddle without a horn on the front. Melanie had us working on lining ourselves up on the poles and making sure we were judging the number of strides we had between each set of poles, then experimenting with closing the gait down to take an extra stride or extending it to take fewer. We also worked on cantering through them. It was interesting seeing the later group work on very low jumps - there were a few horses who were determined to jump everything like it was three feet at least which I think made life a little hard for their riders, but certainly looked the part. It was interesting to see how difficult some of the more showjumpy horses found it to actually trot- once poles and jumps appeared, not something they practice much in that environment, but of course the better they get at listening, the easier things become across the board.
Iris has one of her first encounters with ground poles. At one point Buck observed "Ben, your horse would find it easier to maintain a soft feel if you kept your hands a little lower." No idea what he was referring to.
Something I found helpful was the way that Melanie, who is very aware of Buck's approach but spent a lot of time with George Morris too, was able to connect the type of riding I have seen a lot more of here with the feel that I have been learning to apply in my horsemanship.
On Friday morning, we managed to start with a slight mishap- as we began our circuit of serpentines, Iris suddenly realised that although the car park gates were very dangerous, there was a hitherto-unannounced peril space at the end of the arena. She did the sensible thing and departed at speed for safety. This is a thing Iris does occasionally - and for a gentle-looking and superficially easygoing mare one does spend a certain proportion of the time riding on what feels like a ticking bomb - so I'm not unaccustomed to it, but she had been working hard and travel tends to take it out of her somewhat and consequently she had lost a little weight. That in turn wouldn't have been a problem had her rider not just taken a "three wraps and the first hole" approach to his latigo. So anyway, there I was on a fast moving horse with my saddle having rolled half way around her side. I did the dignified thing and landed on my ass, while my poor mare panicked and went bucking and galloping off across the arena.
Funnily enough, when I was lying on my back with her throwing herself in the air a couple of feet away, I was absolutely clear that I was in no danger from Iris. I may not trust her not to spook, but I knew I could completely trust her in that situation.
So off she went, at a flat out gallop interspersed with bucking, right through the class of thirty other riders. The effect was a little like rolling a bowling ball across a snooker table- an immediate hectic crisis, which everyone needed to get control of. Buck talked everyone through it "there's nothing any of us can do for her right now, so keep your horses safe" and told everyone to follow Iris if she was scaring their horses so that they were moving towards what bothered them rather than it approaching them.
After a brief circuit, Iris made her way back to Buck, which I'm sure is no co-incidence, he was an absolute island of calm in the middle of the arena, and he had his apprentice Nathan remove the saddle and then reseat it, while he talked a little about what had happened and I got a brief check-over from one of the other riders who is a doctor with a lot of experience of people falling off horses. Luckily I had landed on my well cushioned rump and aside from a few bruises the worst injury was my pride, but it was very reassuring to get an immediate check over there and then.
Nathan saddled Iris back up ( amazingly, given what had just happened, she was fine with this ) being careful to tighten the cinch a whole lot and did a little work with her before giving her back to me. Iris was really good with it all, but I can certainly see why Buck works this way to help horses and riders stay safe in those types of situation. Once he was confident we were good to go, I hopped back on and we got on with the clinic. As Buck said, sometimes you just have to cowboy up.
In the afternoon we did work with the poles in an hourglass shape ( although with no central crossing point ) where we used the poles as transition markers for fast trot to slow trot, trot to canter and so on. I found this use of visual markers very useful, although judging by the pictures they strongly incline me to look down.
This was a big clinic, twice the size of the next largest I have ridden and it was certainly interesting and a lot of fun. It may well constitute a unique way of helping a horse learn to handle those crowded conditions, but in spite of the large group size, everyone seemed to get a lot out of it. Much of that is because both Buck and Melanie had a lot of helpful accounts and interesting stories to share in addition to the exercises we were working on, but I think having lots of points of comparison for the work we were doing and being able to call in and ask questions at any point also helped. It's also challenging because everyone is working at a slightly different level - there wasn't much that we worked on in Buck's sessions which fell outside of the exercise I use routinely, but that didn't mean I couldn't improve them a whole lot with this kind of focus. You want to get things right in front of this kind of audience and that certaily presses one to improve, I feel. The focus means that you don't really notice the spectators and although I'm sure we were all catching all kinds of criticism from the benches as we rode- it's always way easier to get things right from the back row than it is in the arena after all - we couldn't hear it so it wasn't a problem from where we were sitting. I got a lot out of it, but for someone less experienced in this way of working a horse, I might suggest riding with some other trainers who can give you more personal attention first, because if you go into this with some solid basics I think that can equip you to get as much out of it as possible.
All pictures by KTJ Photography
Now he was teaching one of only two clinics in this country and it was about ten miles from where I live so although rider places were pricey it seemed worth it to me to take part in this one. The clinic was a new double format, with Buck teaching in the morning and Melanie Smith-Taylor who works with an understanding of the approach that Buck teaches but comes from more of a showjumping direction. It made for long days, but a very interesting combination.
I turned up bright and early on the first day of the clinic - we had dropped Iris off the previous evening - made sure my mare was spruce and had water and breakfast then got ready for the first day. I hit the first problem as I began to tack up- I had somehow forgotten my saddle blanket and I couldn't really get by without it. There was half an hour left until we were due to start, time I was planning to use to get warmed up. Instead I dived into my car and dashed off to the yard to pick it up, a 15 minute journey each way in the best possible traffic, and this was the morning rush hour.
Incredibly I managed it in something close to optimal time and we walked into the arena last, but just as the music was stopping and Buck started to speak.
The first morning began with everyone on foot and Buck getting to know the horse he was riding for the weekend. He hadn't met her before and she was a mare with some history to her ( we later heard her story, which was of being a showjumper, ruined by the age of four, gradually brought back towards rideability over a few subsequent years ) and so he did a little work on the ground with her, talking about what he looks for when he works on the ground and then, pleading sciatica, said that although he wouldn't expect most of us to ride a horse at this point he could probably fix things up easier from the saddle and be more comfortable while he did.
For the next few minutes, Buck had to work hard to keep the mare moving forward - he explained to us that she was ready to flip with him, but he wasn't keen for that to happen, so he was quick to use his spurs when he felt her get that backwards or upwards feeling in her. She sprang forward a few times, gave a few small bucks and then started moving forward instead. Although Buck was fast to use his spurs and firm when he did use them, he only needed them for a couple of minutes before the horse understood what he wanted and settled down completely. I know a few people found this hard to watch and no doubt Buck could have solved the same problem in a lot of ways, but this changed the horse's mind very quickly and gave her so much clarity that she could rapidly begin to feel safe in his company. Once she settled down, she was really calm and seemed very happy with him for the rest of the clinic, probably the calmest horse in the arena for most of that time.
Listening to Buck.
Buck talked us through that process and then moved on to discussing what we were going to be doing with our horses- given the format of the clinic, he suggested that we skip on groundwork unless there was something we specifically wanted to work on and go straight to riding exercises. The first of these was short serpentines.
The important thing with this exercise is that the horse is bent on the turn following their nose, that you only ask for them to step around as the inside foot is about to leave the ground and that before you change from the left to the right or vice-versa, you make sure you have a straight stride, so you don't pull them off balance by too much of a direct change from right to left. The other important element of this, which was probably the thing I focussed on most in a fairly familiar exercise, was that we needed to really make sure our horses didn't slow down or drag through the turns. They needed to be pushing forward strongly even as we moved through. Buck observed that this was a great way of building up engagement in the horse.
Buck observed that some of the horses were a little distracted ( there were thirty of us in a new and large arena with a large audience, so it was what you might call an unfamiliar environment for most of them ) he suggested that while the horse was less attentive, we should move to really tight serpentines, with the horse a little overflexed to the inside ( so they are almost at a ninety degree bend ) so that we formed much tighter turns almost to the point of turning back on ourselves at each end. Again the focus here needed to be on the horse keeping forward the whole time and by moving into these tighter figures, we gave them more to think about in the work, so they had less time to worry about the rest of the world.
These exercises were interspersed with disengaging the hindquarters as a way of making sure we could reliably get to the horse's back feet with the reins. Buck is very particular about how smoothly the hind end turns loose and how smoothly the horse moves. The disengage must be smooth and relaxed from start to finish if we are going to be able to use it to help the horse feel calm.
We did a little work at the end of the morning on picking up a soft feel in halt and asking the horse to rebalance back a little. Buck talks a lot about a soft feel in his work and what he is talking about is as much as anything a lack of resistance in the horse. It characterises as the horse being ready to respond to the rein ( "every time I reach for my horse, I want the horse to reach back for me" ) and to work with a relaxed poll and lifted back, without bracing against the rider's aids.
You start working towards this by asking the horse to balance back a little in halt, and then taking it forward into the walk, asking for the horse to give with their poll a little and releasing when they do. Develop from there until they can carry a soft feel the whole time in all your work. That is a long time goal, however, trying to hold a horse in place is pointless because they need your release to guide them to the right answer. I had allowed my hands to become a little greedy, so this was a useful area to work on with a focus on offering a fair release and maintaining forward when picking up a soft feel.
A focus in this work was making sure that the horse's balance was moving with us, so they were ready to follow the changes in our position and either move faster or slow down with the movement that we offered them.
I was also working on all of this while trying to maintain a consistent movement past the gateways between the arena and the car park, which Iris had identified as a danger zone of the highest order ( alert status: Loggins ) and so I was working on being confident enough in directing her that she didn't need to take over too much and run away. In general it was quite successful, although if someone nearby made a transition as we went past, things got a little pesky.
In the afternoon Melanie had us continuing with the same work, but bringing in pairs of trotting poles to help us find more precision. I had never used trotting poles with Iris, so we got to do some fancy high steps, especially as we moved up into trot. Working with the poles the goal was to use the same balance that we had been developing in the morning to help set up the horses so they don't collide with the poles.
We also worked on stopping from trot directly between two poles so we could use the poles to judge our accuracy- are we in the mid-point between the poles? Are we too far forward or back in the box?
As the weekend continued we developed and refined this work. We did a lot of on connecting the horse's movement to ours and their balance to ours. Buck also has a progressive series of approaches to half turns that he teaches, so we began by making a simple half turn with a soft feel in walk, then the same in trot ( still a short turn ) while maintaining a soft feel - it's actually pretty hard to get this sufficiently tight without one - and then moving on to turning to face the other way, then changing bend into leg yield to do that out to the rail. Once you have that leg yield working consistently and the soft feel is maintained, then by applying a canter cue as you reach the rail you have things set up to help the horse pick up the correct lead when you move out.
Although it was a large group and everyone was in motion most of the time ( except we did split into half groups for canter work ) Buck was always on hand to answer questions, so if you were getting stuck he could help you out. It was very noticeable how calm and willing his horse was on the second day. She seemed really happy with the deal Buck had to offer her.
At the end of the session I was asking Buck about something after the mics were off, while we were making our way out towards lunch. I don't even remember what the question was about now, but after I thanked him Buck observed that I had done some good work that morning. That was genuinely high praise and I was super pleased with it and with my brilliant mare. I might even have been a little proud of it, in some respects that could count as foreshadowing.
With Melanie we moved on to working on patterns that had us circling around a set of ground rails- we split into smaller groups for the afternoon session and I was in the one that preferred flatwork - I have never tried jumping Iris but I feel like before I do I might want to be in a saddle without a horn on the front. Melanie had us working on lining ourselves up on the poles and making sure we were judging the number of strides we had between each set of poles, then experimenting with closing the gait down to take an extra stride or extending it to take fewer. We also worked on cantering through them. It was interesting seeing the later group work on very low jumps - there were a few horses who were determined to jump everything like it was three feet at least which I think made life a little hard for their riders, but certainly looked the part. It was interesting to see how difficult some of the more showjumpy horses found it to actually trot- once poles and jumps appeared, not something they practice much in that environment, but of course the better they get at listening, the easier things become across the board.
Iris has one of her first encounters with ground poles. At one point Buck observed "Ben, your horse would find it easier to maintain a soft feel if you kept your hands a little lower." No idea what he was referring to.
Something I found helpful was the way that Melanie, who is very aware of Buck's approach but spent a lot of time with George Morris too, was able to connect the type of riding I have seen a lot more of here with the feel that I have been learning to apply in my horsemanship.
On Friday morning, we managed to start with a slight mishap- as we began our circuit of serpentines, Iris suddenly realised that although the car park gates were very dangerous, there was a hitherto-unannounced peril space at the end of the arena. She did the sensible thing and departed at speed for safety. This is a thing Iris does occasionally - and for a gentle-looking and superficially easygoing mare one does spend a certain proportion of the time riding on what feels like a ticking bomb - so I'm not unaccustomed to it, but she had been working hard and travel tends to take it out of her somewhat and consequently she had lost a little weight. That in turn wouldn't have been a problem had her rider not just taken a "three wraps and the first hole" approach to his latigo. So anyway, there I was on a fast moving horse with my saddle having rolled half way around her side. I did the dignified thing and landed on my ass, while my poor mare panicked and went bucking and galloping off across the arena.
Funnily enough, when I was lying on my back with her throwing herself in the air a couple of feet away, I was absolutely clear that I was in no danger from Iris. I may not trust her not to spook, but I knew I could completely trust her in that situation.
So off she went, at a flat out gallop interspersed with bucking, right through the class of thirty other riders. The effect was a little like rolling a bowling ball across a snooker table- an immediate hectic crisis, which everyone needed to get control of. Buck talked everyone through it "there's nothing any of us can do for her right now, so keep your horses safe" and told everyone to follow Iris if she was scaring their horses so that they were moving towards what bothered them rather than it approaching them.
After a brief circuit, Iris made her way back to Buck, which I'm sure is no co-incidence, he was an absolute island of calm in the middle of the arena, and he had his apprentice Nathan remove the saddle and then reseat it, while he talked a little about what had happened and I got a brief check-over from one of the other riders who is a doctor with a lot of experience of people falling off horses. Luckily I had landed on my well cushioned rump and aside from a few bruises the worst injury was my pride, but it was very reassuring to get an immediate check over there and then.
Nathan saddled Iris back up ( amazingly, given what had just happened, she was fine with this ) being careful to tighten the cinch a whole lot and did a little work with her before giving her back to me. Iris was really good with it all, but I can certainly see why Buck works this way to help horses and riders stay safe in those types of situation. Once he was confident we were good to go, I hopped back on and we got on with the clinic. As Buck said, sometimes you just have to cowboy up.
In the afternoon we did work with the poles in an hourglass shape ( although with no central crossing point ) where we used the poles as transition markers for fast trot to slow trot, trot to canter and so on. I found this use of visual markers very useful, although judging by the pictures they strongly incline me to look down.
This was a big clinic, twice the size of the next largest I have ridden and it was certainly interesting and a lot of fun. It may well constitute a unique way of helping a horse learn to handle those crowded conditions, but in spite of the large group size, everyone seemed to get a lot out of it. Much of that is because both Buck and Melanie had a lot of helpful accounts and interesting stories to share in addition to the exercises we were working on, but I think having lots of points of comparison for the work we were doing and being able to call in and ask questions at any point also helped. It's also challenging because everyone is working at a slightly different level - there wasn't much that we worked on in Buck's sessions which fell outside of the exercise I use routinely, but that didn't mean I couldn't improve them a whole lot with this kind of focus. You want to get things right in front of this kind of audience and that certaily presses one to improve, I feel. The focus means that you don't really notice the spectators and although I'm sure we were all catching all kinds of criticism from the benches as we rode- it's always way easier to get things right from the back row than it is in the arena after all - we couldn't hear it so it wasn't a problem from where we were sitting. I got a lot out of it, but for someone less experienced in this way of working a horse, I might suggest riding with some other trainers who can give you more personal attention first, because if you go into this with some solid basics I think that can equip you to get as much out of it as possible.
All pictures by KTJ Photography
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Date: 21 Jul 2015 07:20 (UTC)no subject
Date: 22 Jul 2015 00:56 (UTC)