Buck Brannaman Chico Clinic

Buck Brannaman Chico clinic, day one:

After 6+ years of riding with Buck, Ray, Peter and Co, I thought last Sunday at Gilroy Gaits was my Best Clinic Day Ever. Well... TODAY was my best clinic day ever. Captain Jack was a champ... softer than ever, listening back, moving out without needing to be pedaled. He was able to get soft and carry the softness through up and down transitions and roll smoothly into the backup. He was able to carry his momentum through turns, leg yield smoothly into the corners... basically, he was a champ. He even made me look good :)

Y'know, it's funny. My epiphanies these days seem to consist of profoundly realizing at some deeper level truths that are patently obvious, even on the surface. Like today, I suddenly realized at a deep, internal level something which is already obvious to everyone: I realized that if I didn't like the way something felt and wasn't enjoying it, then Jack wasn't liking it either.

Duh!

I've known this forever. But I didn't *know* it. Today I really realized it at some deep internal level, and it totally affected the way I asked him for things and correspondingly, the way he came thru for me. We spent quite a productive afternoon hunting for feel that felt good to both of us.

We were also playing the game of "see if we can be so soft that we can get everything done without the ball of the bosal even lifting off his chin." With that little pressure. We weren't always successful at it at the trot, but we were successful at the walk, and at the trot we managed to get the job done without getting to the point of having to pry on his face, so good progress all around.

Buck Brannaman Chico clinic, day two:

Personally, I think day two is always the hardest. Day one is for introducing the noobs to what's going on, getting the horses to settle down and reminding people what it means to WORK with their horses instead of just putzing around for an hour at their stable and then putting them up. Day two is where we get to work on a serious basis.

One of the key exercises we focus on for day two involves going from a fast walk, bringing your horse 360 degrees and then walking on. Theoretically without a loss of energy. Colloquially known as "getting the hind and then getting the fore", it teaches the horse (and rider) to separate movement of the front quarters from movement of the hindquarters and sets the horse up for lots of great stuff later, like spins or working a cow.

Horsemanship class isn't (well, ought not to be) the first time a horse encounters this. Most colts see this during colt starting, with some judicious help from a flag to get them moving over with some life.

The basic exercise involves untracking the hind end at a fast walk (disengaging the hindquarters) and drifting the hind end through 180 degrees. Then helping the horse shift his weight back and opening up the leading rein to get him reaching out and back with his front foot, then having his other front foot cross over as his front end follows around the remaining 180 degrees.

When you do it right, there should be a rhythm to it. Hind foot reaches under 1...2...3... Front foot reaches out and back 1... 2... 3...

Unfortunately, while I've practiced hard (for years!) at feeling the timing of Jack's front feet, I'm not very accurate yet at feeling when his hind feet are reaching. So we're having a tough time taking this exercise to the next level.

I discovered a way to practice doing a better job of feeling Jack's hind feet though. As we're walking out, I ask him to untracked the hind. Then as he brings the hind around, I let him bring it full circle, just feeling of his feet. As I start to feel when the inside hind is leaving the ground, I time up my body's movement with it and encourage him to carry it far under himself.

So far this seems to have been helping my feel for the timing.

Other stuff today: getting soft and carrying the soft feel up and down through transitions from trot to walk to slow walk rolling into the backup without letting the bulb of the hackamore lift off his chin. Getting him to pick up a soft feel and carry it at the walk and trot maintaining an even rhythm and not surging as I release it.

Key win today: with a pretty crowded arena (35 horses), Jack was more willing to trust me to take him safely between the milling chaos. Last week in Hollister and even yesterday, he was markedly hesitant, preferring his own judgement to drop back or turn and go somewhere else. Today though he was willing to trust me and to even pick up a trot and pass pretty smoothly between two other horses busy doing their thing without getting too stiff or worried.

We were both mentally cooked and doing the thousand yard stare by the end of the day.

Tomorrow should be fun. It includes long-trotting on a loose rein and doing 180 degree rollbacks in preparation for chasing "cows" (other riders) around the mock rod ear.

Oh yeah, and serpentines. Did I mention short serpentines? We do boatloads of them every day. Here's a description of them from a previous clinic: Here's a description of them from a previous clinic.

Buck Brannaman Chico clinic, day three:

Jack was kind of fussy during the start-of-class monologue. He was tossing his head and rooting into the bosal. Pondering for the first half of the talk, it finally occurred to me that yesterday I hadn't been riding Jack with a light enough feel.

I realized that he'd progressed to the point where he was expecting much lighter cues than I had been offering -- especially when things got quick.

So I made it my mission to try to offer with less than half the pressure today. I also spent the rest of Buck's introductory talk asking Jack to 'get soft' with the lightest pressure I could possibly manage -- basically just touching the mecate reins. Then when he got soft in response, throwing him a ridiculous amount of slack -- like a foot or more. When he felt the release and went to automatically root against the reins, there was no back pressure for him to push against and by the second try he stood stock still, cogitating. After a couple of more iterations, the lightbulb went on and he stood quietly thereafter.

Then when we were riding... Today's menu included more of 'get the hind, get the front' from yesterday, walk-trot transitions while carrying a soft feel, more tight serpentines and also walking long serpentines with no reins, operating entirely off of leg cues. There was also plenty of backing circles... I really struggled to offer the lightest possible feel when I asked for something.

Jack seemed to respond positively and we did great, except for the first half of the walk-trot transitions which kinda resembled a snake killing. (Not for the obvious reasons, but because Jack wanted to cut the corners on the arena and skip one end all together while trotting. I would up having to be rather firm leg-yielding him into the corners, which made me fear we would lose our lightness, so I dropped back down to a walk and worked on fast walk-slow walk-stop-roll into backup while carrying a soft feel to make sure we hadn't lost our nice softness.

By the time we finished with walk-trot transitions, Jack was able to pick up a soft feel while stopped, carry it into the slow walk, up to a fast walk and into a trot. Then I would pitch him slack and we'd trot on a loose rein for a while and then pick up a soft feel again, carrying it down to a walk, to a stop and rolling into backing a half circle.

We finished ears forward and with a soft expression.

Beth says she caught me with poor posture and my legs too far forward sometimes, but all in all, a really hard day but a an excellent one.

Buck Brannaman Chico clinic - Day Four:

This is sum-up day for everything we worked on from the three preceding days.

So the menu on offer was "get the hind, then get the front", getting soft at the walk and stopping, then rolling into the backup, backing circles, an exercise designed to prepare the horse for doing rollbacks when working a cow (get soft, stop, back a couple of steps, then walk the front-end around in a half circle, finally backing a couple of steps and then taking off in the opposite direction.)

And the biggie (for over-achievers like Jack): getting soft while stopped and carrying it up through the walk to the trot, throwing slack for a minute or two and then getting soft again and carrying it through downward transition to the stop and backup.

I was still on the hunt for that super-light feel, trying to have Jack feeling back to me without lifting the bulb of the bosal off his chin. We made steady progress in that regard, though still not where we want to be yet. We were, however, able to avoid "burning out" the hackamore except for one or two instances. ("Burning out" is one term for when the horse doesn't give softly to the movement of the hackamore and you wind up pulling hard against his face… the "Do What It Takes" part of "First do less than you think you will need, then do as much as it takes" mantra.) The price we paid for staying in the positive zone was slower response time. That was okay with me, even though it made us the laggards in class sometimes. There's another mantra: "first you go slow in order to later go fast."

The arena of the Tehama District Fairgrounds outside Chico is smaller than the covered arena we had at Gilroy Gaits, and we had more than thirty-five horses in there, so it was cramped and we spent a lot of time dodging other riders and avoiding collisions.

One of the big ways I was measuring success is that Jack was trusting me more and letting me take him softly through gaps between other horses and ask for trot transitions to avoid tight spots without having to peddle him or thump him up to the trot. Major win for a horse who is not very forward by nature. (Major props to Bonnie Stoehn for helping Jack learn to be okay with being more forward and for helping me learn to keep him there without endless pedaling and not immediately throw it all away again.)

We also did more long serpentine work, with the reins looped over the horn and riding just off leg and seat cues. Jack was getting softer and smoother at it and we were able to carry it up to the trot a few times. We were still working at being able to come down to a stop and roll into the backup just from my change in body position without me having to pick up the rein to help him out. Oh well, more to do yet.

We're not yet throwing spins, rollbacks and sliding stops like a cutting horse, however the foundation for all those things is starting to feel a little bit solid.

Again we finished nice and soft with ears forward.

Simple and Difficult

Thinking back over horsemanship clinics I've participated in over the years, here's one of the most common exchanges that I remember. It's been repeated time after time, clinic after clinic. The participants change, but the exchange remains essentially the same:

Teacher: "Any questions?" 

Student: "When I do ABC, StumpKicker tosses her head and does XYZ. What should I do?" 

Teacher: "Well, like I just got done telling you... When the left foot hits the ground release with your left rein. Then when the right foot hits the ground, you release with your right rein. But your timing has to be right. You need to release exactly when the foot hits the ground. If you are early or late, it will mean the wrong thing to your horse and you'll just be teaching your horse to be worse."

Student: "But that's what I AM doing!"

At this point, the teacher is thinking to himself "No, you're not. If you were, you wouldn't be having this problem. So regardless of what you THINK you're doing, or WISH you're doing, you're actually doing something else."

If the world was a fair and just place, the Universal Soundtrack would be playing Dave Stamey's "Dude String Trail" somewhere in the background:

...They show up in skirts 'n sandals
And shorts way up on their thighs
And they thump 'em with their heels
And they jerk on the rains
And them ponies just role their eyes...

My point, and most recent epiphany, is that making that next step with my horsemanship is dificult but it isn't complicated.

Really. It's not complicated. When I keep my balance even and in equilibrium with my horse, when I consistently offer the lightest possible good deal before following up with whatever pressure is required to get the job done, when my offer is correctly timed up with my horse's movement, and when I make sure to offer it when the correct foot is leaving the ground, my horse cheerfully and willingly does what I ask. Pretty much every time. Ears foreword.

Simple. But difficult.

What makes it difficult, is that word consistent. I most always get those elements right when we're sitting still or making slow, single movements. Heck I usually get some of them right at a walk. Sometimes I forget or get confused, but usually if I focus intently I can make it happen. Any mistakes I make, I usually have enough time to realize and correct before things turn into a mess. Trotting though? That's another story. That's difficult. There's a lot going on and it's all too easy to start feeling control of the situation slipping out of my hands. Cantering? Really difficult.

Now add in other horses, some cattle, taking slack out of my rope while getting short on the cow without getting rimfired when the cow suddenly decides to make a break in an unexpected direction, and all of a sudden difficult has escalated into freakin' impossible. At this point, my horse is going to do anything except what I want and he's pissed off and recalcitrant about it in the process... and the harder I try, the more grumpy he gets. I mean... what does he expect? I AM giving all the right cues to get the job done. Why isn't it working out how it' s'posed to? 

Oh wait. Maybe what he's receiving is different than what I'm giving.

When I think carefully about it, I AM doing the right things. Just not with the right timing, not coordinated with the right foot and often in the haste and pressure of the situation, not prefaced by that initial good deal before coming in with the "get 'er done" emphasis.

If I were the Governor, my well-intended pardon would be arriving too late to stay the execution.

Just like those students I mentioned above. Y'know, the ones that can't admit to themselves that they're failing at walking and chewing gum at the same time.

The reason that I said this is an epiphany for me and not the sudden yawning of a bottomless chasm of despair is that I can fix this. In fact, I don't even have to be a rocket scientist to fix this. I just need to be diligent and have a study plan.

Let me make an analogy.

I've been trying to improve my roping. I've got the basics down: I can throw an overhand shot, hit what I'm aiming at, re-coil my rope without making a mess. When I'm roping a dummy cow, I'm a shot-making fool. Bet on me and you won't go wrong. However, when I'm on horseback, roping a real cow, things quickly wind up in the proverbial handbasket.

My left hand goes forward and back along with my right as I coil, which translates into me yanking and slacking my poor pony's reins. My left had instinctively clamps on the coils when I throw causing me to choke my shots and miss far too often. When I neck my calf, I am way too slow starting to take my slack, so he runs right through my loop. Then when I get my slack, I'm too slow to make it to the horn and start dallying so I wind up getting my arm jerked by the calf.

Well, I've found that if I take a deep breath and look honestly at what I'm doing, I can identify the various things that I'm actually doing. I can break these actions down and practice them individually until I get good at them. Then I can practice doing one after the other to get automatic about transitioning between them. For example, I practice throwing my loop out, whether I hit anything or not, and then immediately coiling with no wait inbetween. I practice holding my coils in front of me as I coil and not moving my left hand... You get the picture.

The idea is that even though practicing these little bits of things is not the same as reality, I can still improve what happens in reality. Because I've discovered that my real problem is all the time lost just standing around trying to figure out what to do next, while everything is happening at once, or lost to fumbling with basic actions like coiling. If I practice transitions and basic moves until they are smooth, then when things are happening fast, I can spend what precious little time I have on making sure I've timed up the taking of slack with the movement of the calf so he doesn't run through my loop, instead of spending the time trying to remember whether or not it's time to take slack. I can make sure my pony is headed in the right direction so I don't get rimfired as I dally instead of fumbling around trying to remember which way around the horn to wind the wraps of the dally. By using rote practice to take some of these things out of what I have to worry about during the real-time process of roping the calf, I can spend more time on what's really important... and I'm more calm because I'm rushing less, which winds up making me succeed more often.

It's the same deal in the case of my riding.  I mean, understanding about good timing and feel is nothing new for me.  However, really understanding the difference between the feel I think I'm giving and what my horse is actually feeling of me is sort of a big new deal.

 By "watching" myself ride, sort of acting like a ride-along spectator in my own body, I've discovered that part of why I was offering such poor feel to my horse when things got busy was that I was getting physically tired and spending a lot of time and effort on just keeping myself together. Time I should have been spending on offering the right feel to my horse. When I lost forty pounds, found some lower-back support and switched to a much higher-quality saddle that gave me a better riding position, I found a major change in my ability to keep my balance. This in turn meant that all that time I was spending not falling off while riding could now be spent on other things... like feeling where my horse's feet are.

I also started looking at the various riding exercises I do during clinics and everyday riding differently. I didn't necessarily start doing different things, or doing the exercises differently, I just started thinking differently about them while I was doing them. Instead of feeling like the exercise was "for the benefit of the horse" I started thinking of the exercise as being for my benefit. I also started trying to be analytical about them instead of just treating them as something that I did by rote to create muscle memory. I started spending more time looking at what I was doing, feeling and thinking while my horse and I did the exercise. I started discovering that I was missing things or doing them out of sequence or doing them on the wrong side or... but I hadn't been able to tell before because I was normally far too "in the moment" to be able to see what was going on.

For example, half the time when I was backing my horse, he would get stuck. Well, it turns out that half the time, I was releasing (cueing) him when the wrong foot was coming down. Why? Because I didn't know where his feet were. How could that possibly be? I have invested so much time learning to feel him move his feet.  Counting footfalls. Feeling how his barrel sways as we walk.  Not knowing where his feet are? Impossible!

Well, it turns out I only knew where his feet were supposed to be. I was starting my cues to him when I felt his body shift back, just assuming that his feet were positioned properly. If he moved the foot I thought he did, all went well and I was nicely timed up with him. If in fact his feet had been out of position and he was forced to move his other foot to start backing, I was completely out of sync with him and miscuing step after step. Naturally he would peter out and wind up just standing there exasperatedly.

You know what they say about assumption. "You make an ASS out of U and MPTION."  Err... well... something like that.

So I started asking myself as we got soft and slowed to a stop, but before we rolled into the backup, "Exactly where ARE his feet right now?"  It didn't take much time... even when I had to lean over and peek it was pretty quick.... but then when that first foot came back and hit the ground I KNEW which rein to release. Since I didn't have to waste time wondering and figuring out, I more than made up for the extra time I used stealing a peek... and he began backing much more smoothly.

I've also been practicing releasing even when I wasn't riding so I wouldn't have to spend time thinking about my hands on the reins and if I was throwing enough slack or too much or whatever. I would just think release, my hands would release and I could move on to thinking about other, more important things, like "Did he really reach back as far with that foot as I'd like? Could I get him to reach further next step by shifting my weight slightly?"

So I guess my amazing epiphany is that the devil is in the details and self-honesty is the path to righteousness. What the unfortunate students I mentioned above just don't get... and I didn't get until recently, is that it really is just as much how and when you do it as what you do, and if you haven't got all three, you haven't got your horse. And you can prove easily to yourself that even if you think you're doing it right, you're not. Because your horse isn't coming through. When you get it right, he will come through.

Simple. Not complicated at all. Difficult though.

However if you're willing to take a deep breath and work on becoming habitually, honestly observant of yourself, you can get some things working.

That's my theory and that's what I'm trying to do these days. Seems to be working because the more honest and accurate I get, the more my horse is coming through for me. 

...or maybe it's just that my teacher and coach, Bonnie Stoehn, is a damn good trainer.

Practicing Medieval Games and Other Challenges

A couple of photographs from the Medieval Games practice this weekend to break the long silence between blog entries.

Jack wasn't just packing that blue banner around like a flag.  That's a lance and we were tilting at the quintain with it.  He got pretty good at being blase when the lance tip would hit the arm of the quintain and make it spin around overhead in true horse-eating style.

MountainHorseGrrl and Phooka also demonstrated how to knock an arrow and fire as they loped past the archery target.  Phooka proved to be a steady partner even when the reins were dropped and riding just off the leg but he wasn't too sure about the sound the arrow made when the nock snapped onto the bow string.

In addition to mounted archery, lopping heads off and tilting at the quintain, there were some "horse obstacles" at the Graham Hill Showgrounds that were fun to coax our horses into navigating.  These included a set of stairs:

And even a teeter-totter:

Great Book for Green Horse Owners

I ran across the following book the other day:

Whisper This, by Smokie Brannaman

It's a quick read.  It's laugh-out-loud outrageous in its unvarnished honesty and what Smokie has to say is practical and valuable.  I'm thinking of investing in a stash of them for my tackroom to hand out to all the starry-eyed folks who seem to regularly wander by in search of an Equine Clue.

So if you're new to horses or seem to accumulate "frequent flyer miles" and wish you could do something about it, you should take what Smokie has to say to heart.  For the rest of us, if you like your truths delivered straight and with the "bark on", read it and laugh, appreciate and take home some nugget that you  had forgotten or never realized.

Smokie's website is: Smokie Brannaman's Horseman Services

More on Tight Serpentines

A couple of months ago, I talked about an exercise where you bent your horse in a series of tight serpentines, walking a snake trail:

Ray Hunt and Buck Brannaman have a couple of different exercises they have had us go through to really focus and bring horse and rider together. One is to ride very tight serpentines at a walk, overbending in each direction so that they are more like s-shaped snaketrails rather than serpentines. When you start, one 's' might be 30 feet long but you slowly tighten it up so that by the time you get to the end of the arena, an 's' might be 4 or 5 feet long. If you can do this with a soft rein, asking less and less each time to get the same bend, by the time you hit the end of the arena, your horse will be listening very intently to you. The idea isn't to overdo the suppling but to progressively refine how subtly you are communicating and how carefully your horse is listening back to you.

 At the clinic in Chico last weekend, Buck emphasized how important it was to have your horse walking unified, having all four corners reaching equally, as you do the snaketrail exercise.  Here are a couple of sequence pictures showing my filly Emma and I doing our serpentines:

As you can see, we weren't quite reaching evenly in the last picture.  We still have some work to do.

Extreme Example of Working At Liberty

MountainHorseGrrl found this interesting video the other day:

   Advert for Nevzorov Haute Ecole

He sure didn't get all that working overnight. That took some effort and understanding :)

If you read his site or listen to his narrative, it quickly becomes apparent that his message is a load of extremist bunk designed to promote himself and his school by appealing to people whose hug-impulse is stronger than their intellect and self-esteem.

However, if you look at him like another Parelli (someone who has considerable ability with horses and chooses to use it to further their personal agenda but is a little bit disingenuous about it) then it's easy to step back and admire the things he is able to accomplish with his horses without buying the baggage along with the beauty.

Like Stacy Westfall's bridle-less wins in the NRHA reining competitions, he helps show what is really possible if as individuals we are willing to apply ourselves to understanding and working with our horses.

After all, the point isn't to ride your horse without a bridle. It's to ride your horse without NEEDING a bridle, whether there is one or not. 

The Gentle Horse

MountainHorseGrrl has produced a new video, explaining with examples the distinction between halter broke, rideable, green broke and gentle.  Her thesis is well founded and the difference between a horse that can tolerate humans and one that welcomes human interaction becomes very clear.