Monday, October 8, 2007

Mark Rashid Clinic May 2007











Clinic Notes


Campton, New Hampshire. The first day I went to the clinic by myself. When I drove in I couldn't believe the beautiful covered round pen. I had been wanting to see one in person. AND they lived in the barn! Well, the house was at one end, not directly over the stalls. We have bought a piece of land and had been thinking of building a barn with living quarters overhead, so anytime I see a set up like that I get excited at having the chance to talk to someone who has experience with that living arrangement. I later found out the clinic hosts build the round pens as a business. They are called Merry Go Roundpens and Mark has actually started endorsing them.

Considering the Horse
The first session I saw was really the 2nd of the day, I thought the clinic started at 9:00 but it was really 8:00, so I missed the first session. The owner, R said his horse bucked at the canter and he didn't know why. Mark knew right away. He told everyone to look at the top of the horse's butt as he led him away and watch to see if each side rose the same amount. This poor horse was so stiff and sore they couldn't do anything with him, and that was the bucking problem. Out of 8 horses that day, 4 had soundness issues and 2 were too bad to ride. I've been to lots of clinics and he's the only clinician I've seen that even mentioned physical pain. Mark explained to us what he looked for when assessing a horse physically and just that was worth going for me. The next day there was another horse that wasn't rideable.
The Full Cup
The next participant owned a 4 yo gelding she had raised herself. She had him saddled and wanted to work on some mounted work, but he was leading her all over the place and pushing into her, etc. so Mark said he thought they should start right on the ground and get some boundaries set. She said they'd done lots of groundwork at home and he's not like this at home, its her being nervous, him being nervous, etc. Mark took the horse and had to bump him in the muzzle a couple of times with his hand to even get him to back off running over him. One thing he did was show how he could walk toward the horse one time and have it immediately move away and the very next time it would stay to be petted. All in using energy from the center, when moving horse away, lead with your center, when wanting horse to stay, lead with upper body. He was a smart boy and didn't take long to get with the program but the whole time the woman was so defensive and insisting that they didn't need anymore ground work, she didn't hear a word Mark was trying to tell her. It was painful to watch someone obviously so resistant to listening or learning anything. This was a good example of the cup being full and needing to empty something out in order to learn something new.
Going With
I had never heard of the next type of horse, the Hackendale, a cross between a Hackney carriage horse and a Clydsedale. This was one of two very emotional sessions for me. The owner's husband had come home from a trip with 3 horses, none of which she wanted. This horse had been abused and had kicked and bitten her. She was a bit intimidated by the gelding, I don't blame her, he was huge! Mark talked to her and told her their relationship may never be a love affair, but it didn't have to be THIS wasy. Mark complimented her on her horsehandling skills. Mark really liked that horse. He said she could get a long way by just going in with the attitude of "I mean you no harm." He approaches all horses at first with that thought. The owner was petite and the horse huge, she couldn't get him to lower his head with pressure on the poll, so Mark had her put her hand under his jaw and apply upward pressure until he decided to lower it.
Thinking Outside the Box
Next was a plump little halflinger who was very braced backing up. They went over saddle fit as the saddle didn't fit. The horse kept chewing the rein, so Mark used the rein in his mouth to back him up. I thought this was a great example of thinking outside the box! Mark had a water bottle hanging from a piece of baling twine, water bottle lariat he said. He started swinging the water bottle back and forth and wanted to know what the fastest way to stop the water bottle from swinging WITHOUT disturbing the water inside would be. Can you figure it out?
Awareness
Horse 5 had a snarly attitude and didn't want to move forward much. She wasn't happy with the way he bridled, felt he was resistant to many things. When bridling all he would do was move his head away to the side and up some, then let her bring it back down. Mark just moved right with him into a circle until the horse decided to bring his head back around. Took 2 times and no more problem. It had become a pattern, he knew where she wanted his head, but she'd never let him find out how to get it there, she kept bringing it back, he thought that was just one of the steps in the bridling process. Mark said he was just helping the horse do what he wanted until he decided he didn't want to do it anymore. This was a good example to me of being very aware of what we are teaching the horse, intentionally and unintentionally. This horse was very off in the right hind, couldn't ride him. Most of attitude and not wanting to go forward was physical.

Circles and Links in the Chain
The next up was a year old Belgian gelding. The owner had seen him the day he was born standing in the rain with his mom and vowed to own him one day! This was a very nice colt, but a little pushy, not too bad but needed to be addressed. Mark taught him to lunge, he caught on quickly. He only does this with the bigger boys since they get so strong so quickly. He talked a lot about links in the chain, building one and then linking it with the next.

Stillness of Mind
Teko the mustang was next. He belonged to the owner of the farm, T. They have been working with Mark since last September. Teko is a Sorraia mustang that he got at 18 mths and used for a breeding stallion until he was gelded last year. He's 6 now. T was the only human that could touch him, and only on his terms. He was so bothered all the time that they were feeling the only 2 choices were to find a place to set him free again or shoot him. He was still very touch, jumping when the rope touched him at first, but he settled pretty quickly. T said he'd shed more tears over this horse than anything in his life, and he loved him deeply. He said they had a connection and you could clearly see this. They did some work with putting the rope around his butt and getting him to yield and turn. Then ground driving in the halter. The next day they did some ground driving with the bit. If he got worried, he would squirt around, but then turn and face T and settle. Mark said this horse looked 10 feet tall when he first met him and started working with him. There is a whole chapter on T and Teko in Mark & Kathleen's new book coming out in September. Mark wasn't sure if this horse was going to make it, he was trying to climb out of the round pen when he first started working with him. Once they could work with him a bit they started doing targeting work with ground driving and that was a huge breakthrough for him. Especially when they started having him touch the people around the roundpen. These two breathed in harmony, Mark had been talking about a Japanese phrase they use in Aikido that translates to stillness of mind, and that was what was evident here. T had to have complete clarity and focus when working with the horse. All his movements had purpose. They ended with T standing behind Teko and hugging his butt. Teko relaxed and leaned back into him, it was beautiful. I've never been able to see or feel such a connection between horse and man in real life. I think this is probably the type of connection Mark has with his horses.

Day two, first session was a young red roan gelding. The woman had gotten him dull to the leg, she bumped him all the time. They used a squeeze and then backed up with slapping lead rope on lady's leg, ended up having to give a tap. This horse was mouthy and Mark said he trains them to do something with their mouth, like pick something up, puts it on a cue and then doesn't cue for it, has worked so far!

This next session was funny! It was R again, he had the first lame horse, but also had a grulla mustang that Tim had bought the same time he got Teko. This guy was sooo cute, but he was still a little jumpy too. R kind of tiptoed around him, and once Mark told him to just be more natural he did better. They started lounging and each time they changed direction or stopped, R did the Leslie thing with throwing the energy or taking the ground. Mark thought he looked a little bizarre and that they didn't have a good flow going when R did that. He called it the "vampire move", demonstrating his version of it for R. He said it was fine, just didn't seem to flow well and when R tried to take the ground in front of the horse to stop him, he was completely disconnecting from the horse by turning his head that way and it didn't look very natural. He got R doing a figure 8 with the horse, walking with him like he does in the longlining video. It did look much more connected and flowing. I asked about the way other people tell you to step the hind end over, rock them back and bring the front end through to change direction, and he said he would build that in later, the next link in the chain but would start this way. R was so used to that Leslie move, they appointed his daughter a monitor to tell him when he was doing it.

The rest of that day was just continuing work he had started the day before.

The lady with the Belgian colt was going to work with her older horse, her first horse ever, but he was in such pain. When Mark was checking him, you could see how bad he felt for him. On the right side, there was a space where a rib should have been, it was an old injury from when he was a breeding stallion. Mark was just blown away, never seen anything like that. You could barely touch his back and he looked uncomfortable just looking at him. She had actually started riding him and Mark had her stop and get off, and then discovered how bad the poor guy was.

Mark was much different this time than when I saw him 4 years ago. He's leaner and didn't tell corny jokes or ask obscure horse-related trivia questions. He was more intense and focused and seemed so open & available when interacting with people. He had a few questions that he asked that you had to think outside the box to answer, even though the answers were quite simple. We didn't get to do the other exercises he does with people, I asked him if he had any plans to put them in a book or something and he said he'd thought of maybe doing a video including those things.

I hope to go back and see him for 3 days in October if he makes it back. Its so weird, I've wanted to see him again so much and keep telling Alan its my dream to go spend a week at a Mark clinic, which is actually 5 days. After doing LOA exercises and trying to keep in the positive energy state, all of a sudden Mark's coming to New Hampshire, and 2 days this time and 3 days next will be 5 days! I've been checking his schedule since last year and these clinics didn't appear until 3 weeks ago. And then to show up and see a farm set up similar to what I had been thinking about was just uncanny, LOL! Tim and Trudi are so nice and the small number of people made it more like a gathering of friends. Very cool, couldn't have asked for a better situation.

Stories




Riding the Inside of the Horse

"Well, you've got some lightness but you don't have soft" says Mark. She is the last rider of the second day of Mark's clinic in the mountains of New Hampshire. It's breezy and cool, a perfect day for a gathering of students and two talented clinicians so graciously willing to share their knowledge. In the covered round pen a woman with red hair rides her red horse. They've been together for many years, he's 20, been there done that, lots of go. "Does he know he's 20?" asks Mark. The horse is walking forward quite well and gives some to the bit when she asks for it, but there's a bit of a lack of flow in their movements. "You are riding the outside of the horse, but you're not riding the inside." I have read this before, heard this before and thought I understood what that meant, but I was about to find out I'd had no idea.

Mark asks the rider to think about the horse's feet. "Can you tell when the right hind is coming off the ground, the right front, do you feel your shoulder moving back, your hip up, leg out and back again?" As Mark asks these questions, the rider really loosens up, not that she was riding badly before, but now there is lots of movement in her body as she follows the horse's movement. He's pleased that she can feel her shoulders moving, says lots of people can't. She's soon moving softly with the horse and I'm amazed at how much movement is there but how soft and good it looks. Then I notice the horse. Soft eyes, head relaxed, moving fluidly and quietly, smiling! Mark calls everyone's attention to the horse and we're all amazed at the difference in him. "He's relieved that you're finally paying attention to him, where his feet are, instead of thinking about what you're doing" says Mark. He then explains and demonstrates each gait, things I've read and seen on video but that are much more powerful when seen in person. At one point Mark asks her if she has children, "God, no" she says, "I can shoe everything I have." We all chuckle.

Next he tells us about transitions. Words don't work here, walk, trot, canter have no meaning, no fluid picture. Walk, we hear that and see a still picture, trot, canter, same thing, in our minds we see a still picture of a stride of the gait. "I want you to count the footfalls of the gaits, 1,2,3,4-walk, 1,2-trot, 1-2-3, canter" he explains. "Okay, think 1,2,3,4" the horse walks softly on, "Now think 1,2" the horse speeds up and does a couple of steps of trot. "That's it! Try again." With no visible movement of reins or leg, the horse softly, smoothly moves into a trot. We all gasp, the rider beams, can't believe it! As she goes around the arena doing walk, trot transitions with no rein or leg cues, she gets more and more excited. At one point she and the horse stop right in front of me, I reach out and touch him, you can feel the joy in him too. As she gets better and better at this she says "I'll come back to this when I'm having trouble". "This is what I'll fall back on from now on". Suddenly I hear my thoughts coming from Mark's mouth, "NO, this is where you want to LIVE!"

As we walked away soon after, I knew I probably wouldn't remember the rider's name, but I would never forget the way her smile outshone the sun on that perfect May afternoon when she softly rode the inside of her horse.

The Hackendale

The day is starting to heat up in the mountains of New Hampshire as a handful of people gather around a beautiful covered round pen strung with small white Christmas lights and watch as a petite woman "leads" a towering, black horse into the arena. He makes a striking picture, glistening black coat, snow white feathers on three legs, white blaze down his face and one light blue eye, human-like in its expressiveness. He's dancing around like a kite at the end of a string as she tells Mark about him. Her husband had "surprised" her with 3 new horses when he came home from a trip. She already had 4 horses of her own, and only room for 4. She only WANTED 4, this was her husband's horse and she hadn't wanted him, he had bitten and kicked her so she was a bit afraid, he was huge so she was a bit intimidated and her husband couldn't even halter him so she was responsible for all the care and training of this horse she didn't want. A lot of emotion there, none of it good, she was very aware of this and had decided to give the horse a chance, 2 months, and came to Mark for help. The lady is a wonderful horsewoman, she obviously had the skill to handle this horse, but felt no connection, the horse was a very accurate mirror of all this stuff emanating from her. He had not been kindly handled at his last home, he is only 5 years old and has never been given a chance to be the horse he is. When the handler said she didn't know why her husband bought him, Mark said because HE could see the horse that was really in there.

She gave the lead rope to Mark, I did not see the next few minutes, but gather that Mark had to give one clear correction and the horse settled down. What I saw when I came back was a totally different horse. He was so relieved and happy to finally meet someone who really got him. He didn't want to be a kite bobbing around the sky, barely connected to anything solid and buffeted around by circumstances beyond his control. He didn't understand what people wanted from him because no one had bothered to explain things to him, just assumed he should know and then punished him for not knowing. When Mark took the lead line in a soft, open palm and sent the message to this lost horse that HE would do no harm, the horse found a soft place to land. I had tears in my eyes watching this horse finally find someone who truly saw him and recognized the good boy, the sensitive, willing, loaded with try soul he possessed. Mark told her all the good things about this horse, what he saw in him, what he felt from him. He joked that if he wasn't honest, he would tell her that this horse was way beyond her being able to fix him, buy him cheap and take him home for his own!

I half-jokingly asked if he was for sale and she said yes, the lady beside me said "He'll be much more expensive on the 4th day though, better get him now!"

After Mark worked WITH the horse a bit and showed the softness and willingness he gave when given the chance, the horsewoman took the lead line again and worked quietly and softly with him and had a different horse. By the second day they really had a good thing going, you could see the horse just wanting to connect with her and her resistance melting away a bit as she admitted he was a good boy and deserved the chance she had given him. I hope they are able to build a relationship that gives them both peace and joy, but at the very least, because this woman was willing to put aside some powerful emotions and open herself up to giving this horse a chance, and because the horse didn't give up on people, he will live a better life and be the horse he truly is with whoever shares his life from now on.