Tom Widdicombe clinic report May 08

[Elaine]

Was at a cracker of a Tom Widdicombe clinic in Sussex this weekend... full report will be posted later today

[Elaine]

Right! Arrived back to Dublin at about midnight last night, after a great weekend over in Sussex here's the short account.

It was Friday night in Dublin and packing was on the schedule...... unfortunately at about 9pm the schedule disappeared and instead we hit a local pub for one. In this particular pub was installed a country singer, who was literally a cross between Hugh Grant & Jeremy Clarkson and was giving it socks ;D if you have ever seen the drummer on Coronation St who's married to Liz you'll have a good idea of what I mean!! Anyway, lets us say that roughly 6 hours later at about 3am on Saturday morning I arrived home after throwing some highly impressive moves on the dance floor just in time for two hours sleep before the taxi for the airport was due at 5.30am.......

At 10am and fresh as the proverbial daisy I hopped out of Gatwick airport, picked up the car and headed off to a beautiful farm in Sussex and arrived just in time for lunch. My God the weather was beautiful! The place was perfect - lovely big arena, us all sitting outside it in deckchairs under gazebo type structures, beautiful food & great company...... all that was left now was to settle in and watch how Tom & each horse & rider were progressing in the arena............

[Elaine]

PATIENCE - UNDERSTANDING HORSES PERSPECTIVE - PERSISTANCE

First up was a big black Fresian horse. He was about 8 or 9 years old, and had had a lot of crazy/stupid handling before he was bought by his present owner. His riding is ok, but he can charge at you in the field, and had previously been trained to chase cars. His current owner had done a huge amount to get him to where he is now, but it’ll still take a fair bit of time as his previous owners made such a mess of him, and turned him into a dangerous horse to handle. The main ground issue is being safe while handling him – so teaching how to stay out of your space, and to move away from you if he gets too close. This horse was used to violence, and not uncommonly using any kind of energy which he perceives as a threat towards his safety, sets off his defensive mechanism which is aggression and ‘doing a benny’. He’s a big horse to have going mad at the end of a lead rope.

Anyway, often times to teach a horse to move out of your space, you back them up – while he’ll go back with a rope shake, he wouldn’t really go back if you just upped your energy and tried to make him go back without touching him. It was really important that he started to learn that he’s got to move out of people’s way, but we can to teach this in a non-confrontational way, as if this was dealt with head on someone could end up in hospital.

The idea was to give him a simple job to do while involved his handler making him move his feet in different directions on cue, and the horse accepting this and doing it. And also staying safe while doing this. So it was hardhats on all round and the horse was on about a 15 foot rope (long enough for a handy circle with person staying out of his kicking zone, and with a bit of rope left over to twirl if need to keep him out). His job was to walk round the handler.

So you’d ask him to walk, he might walk a few steps, or he might explode on the end of the reins for a few steps. If he walked on, the handler did nothing, just gave him peace & quiet to keep going. If he exploded, the handler (while staying safe) stood her ground, and started to twirl the rope at the horses hindquarters. The idea being

1. Walk nicely – no pressure from handler.
2. Throw a benny and go mad – handler ups pressure twirls rope (not touching horse) at horse as a consequence. Once horse goes back to walk, rope twirling stops.

So we weren’t forcing the horse to do anything – he could walk or throw a wobbley. If he walked he was left alone to chill out. If he threw a wobbley his handler would make him work even more.

Previously what probably happened was he’d throw a wobbley, scare people and they’d leave him alone, thus rewarding this unwanted behaviour. So we had to stop this behavioural cycle. I have to say he had a WONDERFUL owner – you need a very grounded, brave & talented owner to work through something like this, but even over the two days I was there you could see it really working. This horse wanted to do the right thing, but still in part of his mind was expecting horrible things to happen to him, and so his aggression was only a defensive mechanism – all be it as fairly extreme one. It was amazing to see how quickly he was learning though – there was a lovely horse there just trying to get out. I was just left speechless and how badly people can mess up good horses. This was a great example of there always being more than one way to solve a problem. You don’t (and can’t) always go in gung ho, because sometimes you may press buttons you don’t want to. It’s so important to UNDERSTAND why your horse is exhibiting this behaviour, as only then can you figure out the safest and a productive way to train them back out of it. A great session.

[Elaine]

FOCUS & ATTENTION - RIDDEN SOFTNESS

Next up was a little black horse. I hadn’t seen the first two days, but there had been a bit of work done again on training the horse to respect the handlers personal space and tidying up the groundwork manners. The initial work on Sunday was to get the horse listening to the handler. She tended to zone out and just wander around paying about 20% of her attention of the person, which isn’t the safest thing really, when you’re horse isn’t mentally with you & listening to you properly. So she did a few circles at walk on a loose rope, the aim being to get her focused on the handler. When she focused, handler relaxed and did nothing. When she started looked outside the arena, and thought what was out there was more important than her handler, handler started to make her move more, and created energy and attention to bring the horses attention back to her. Sarah helped out too, and soon a switched off no listening horse staring outside the arena, had changed into a responsive interested horse who was following her handler around automatically with no lead rope pressure, and whenever the handler went, the horse’s head followed in the same direction.

There is something to be said for making sure you’re horse is 100% with you before to do some proper performance schooling! A good exercise – when you are on the ground with your horse, can you keep your horse’s attention on you for 30 secs?!

Next up was riding & creating softness. Starting with a soft halt. Pick up a light contact and just hold it. Wait. Your horse might do nothing, might pull against you, might up their head, etc to get out of it. Don’t increase the contract, don’t move your hands, again just hold it and wait for softness. When your horse gives his head a little, and you feel the strain gone from the reins, immediately loosen them a little as a reward. Do this often enough and when you hop on, and pick up the reins, your horse will automatically soften his mouth. The idea is now your horse is balanced – he could just as easily take a step forwards or take a step backwards, whatever you choose to do. A lot of horses, when you sit up and take alight contact, they immediately push their weight forward, so you’re not at the 50/50 forwards / backwards balance, you’re about 80% forwards, 20% backwards, and so not balanced and not really ready for all manouvres.

Once the soft halt was establish, did this again from halt to backup. Once this was established, then it was time to start doing it in a walk. Looking for one step of softness first.

Walk around. Pick up a light contact. Hold it and wait. Your horse might pull against you, ignore you, etc. Just wait. When you get that moment of softness, relax the contact a little. On Saturday this little horse was up to doing this for three steps in a row, and on Sunday it had built up to five or more steps of softness together in walk. Horses pick things up so quickly!!!

Homework would be to continue this at home in walk, slowly in increasing the steps required with softness. When you’ve a solid walk, then the next step would be to go through all of this again in trot, etc. Great rider again, as you’ve really got to concentrate on your horse to get those split second release timed exactly right.

[Elaine]

OVERBENT - CORRECTING HEAD POSITION & SOFTNESS

Next up was a stunning 4 yo Fresian, a sensitive horse who currently finds comfortable / release when being ridden / longlined by having his nose literally stuck to his chest, COMPLETELY overbent. It was like a previous owner had sellotaped his nose to his body and that was now his default head position. Had been improving each day. We needed to communicate to the horse that we didn¡¦t want his nose stuck to his chest all the time. So on went the longlines, and horse was walked about on a light contact. When horse tucked his head in, handler put more pressure on the long lines. When horse relaxed head and didn¡¦t tuck it in, handler keep just a light contact on long lines. You could see the horse every tie he tucked his head in and then getting more pressure on the reins as a result going - what? Since when did the rules change? but after even the two days I saw, the amount of time he'd spend with his neck over bent on Sat, compared to how long he spent with it on Sunday (due to the consistent reactions by his handler) was MUCH improved. He was starting to loosen up and relaxed and look like a normal supple young horse, but a tense over braced one.

After this the longlines were good to get him used to the human being in charge of both direction & speed, and to realise that he could just make his own decisions about where to go / etc anymore. There was also an issue getting up on him. So at the end of the session, handler tacked him up, hopped on, sat there for about 2 secs, then hopped off. Horse didn't move at all. At that was a big improvement fro before, Tom rightly said 'bank it' and so the lesson was finished on this note. This horse is going to be fabulous

[Elaine]

BEND – TURNING – DONT BRING UNWANTED STUFF TO YOUR HORSE

The cutest horse was in next, with a gorgeous white American paint style face. Previously this horse had issues backing up, which had been worked on over the last few days, and now it was working on getting the turns lighter and introducing a bit more softness & flexibility into the horse’s body. First up again was working on a soft halt. When we got this, then it was onto a soft backup.Backup works much better when the rider knows exactly what front foot is the next one which needs to step backwards. Then a walk.

To work on the corners (horse really wasn’t bending much at all) Tom set up three traffic cones and horse started circling around them in walk. Horse started to get better & soften. One big thing to when you ask for a turn, just use one rein. Don’t ask your horse to turn by putting pressure on two reins, and its gets awfully confusing. Try it yourself - you be the horse, hold the reins in your hand and get someone to pretend to steer you. Got some really nice work here. HOrse was getting much lighter & freer.

One thing which also came up, is that horse aren’t good at handling human stuff like tempers, panic, confusion, etc, so do your best not to being them to your horse (it can be difficult!). When the rider was getting up, the stirrup leather slipped off and she stumbled back to the ground. But don’t stress. What was great about this was that this horse was so chilled out & relaxed & confident at this stage, he didn’t even move a muscle and just stood there and looked at the human as if to say ‘ whats on Gods name are you doing now?’. Sometimes you’ve got to just say ‘Crikey!!’ and grin a little I reckon! Great work by rider though, you could really see the different in the horse.

[Elaine]

FOCUS - CATCHING THE MOMENT OF INDECISION - INCREASING CONFIDENCE

Next up was a little chestnut rising 4. I missed the beginning of the session but a quad passed and horse freaked out. So again like one of the earlier horses, we need to work on focus. So when horse was with you he’d get peace & quiet and when he wasn’t listening to you, handler would increase energy and movement to remind horse he was there and to focus in on him. This will be good for the riding stuff later on too. Put on longlines, horse was much calmer than yesterday (horse was a bit spooky). Poles on ground came out today, so at the start horse was scared and couldn’t go near them. By the end about 50 times better, and would walk between 2 very close poles nicely, and also stop between them. A good point was to be able to catch the moment of indecision, before you get to the ‘i won’t’. If the human can catch the moment the horse is thinking ‘I’m not too sure about this’ and give them some encouragement at that SPLIT SECOND, there’s much less chance you get to the ’i won’t’ stage. Steering was getting much lighter too.

[Elaine]

SMALL CUES – DO MORE BY DOING LESS

In came a lovely black cob. Every now and again he does a few ‘I won’t’ but we didn’t see any of this this weekend. He’s about a 90% horse – for example when he was stood outside the arena waiting, he started to drag his owner over to the ditch to eat grass. This and a few other small things ere the 10% worth of things which his owner hadn’t been doing a lot of work on, but all agreed these small but important things would be really good to work on, to get that 90% up to nearly 100%.

Did a lovely soft halt – horse completely balanced, 50% -50% ready to go backwards or forwards.

Worked on walk to trot transitions on the ground. When asked to trot, the horse tended to walk – do a step of hop then trot. Tom got the handler to reduce his trot cue, and try and ‘drift’ into a trot, to see if we could get rid of the hop. And low & behold as the cue got smaller, the hop went away and we got some lovely smooth walk to trot transitions.

[Elaine]

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE WEEKEND

4 day clinic format worked really well - everyone had individual lessons daily and everyone else watched.

It's common to feel pressure from other people who watch what you are doing, from things you read in magazines, from what you hear other people saying, from what you watch other people doing with their horses, etc. You can think you're not doing fast enough, jumping big enough, spending enough time, progressing fast enough, etc. You need to somehow make peace in your own head, and not allow yourself to feel pressure from others.

This leads on a little to the power of a compliment. Watch someone else doing something with their horse. Find something you like, and then go up and compliment them! You've really got some nice transitions happening there. You're horse is a credit to you, he's got perfect manners. You've got natural way with your horse. When someone says something like that to you, it doesn't cost them a lot, but gosh does it mean a lot to you!!

And it also takes away some of the pressure I mentioned above. I used to be awful at taking compliments... you're horse is going nicely there and I'd say, lord, he's ok now but he's not the easiest you know, etc etc. How I got out of it was I got paid a compliment, I'd replyied negatively putting myself down like the example above, the person who gave me the compliment started to give out to me and said just to shut up, take the compliment whether you think you warranted it or not, and just say THANKS! He had a point. Also- (I'm guilty too) don't use humour as a defense too often

Biting - fixing the cause not the issue. Don't just slap on things to physically stop the behaviour ¡V figure out what's CAUSING it and address that. Good long term training isn't about band aids.

Someone people's goal is to get the job done with the least time & stress & effort involved. My goal when I'm with any horse, is to train them in a certain way so the job will be easier to do the next time I need to do it - i want to see an improvement every day. I heard a good way of explain this over the weekend. Do you train your horse for today, or for tomorrow? I train my horse for tomorrow.

Longlining (eg for the overbent youngster) can be a very useful tool.

Don't ask for too much at the same time - introduce one new thing at a time.

Horses are very forgiving.

Don't release on a brace & look for softness in everything you do.

Spectating at a clinic with glorious weather, great teacher and great company is a great way to learn about horses! Makes you want to go home and pull out your horse! (see you on Thurs Ozzie!)

Every so often, stop & say 'Crikey!'.

Don't sweat the small stuff. There's no shame in changing your plan if it's not working. Part of horse is trial and error, you can't predict their reactions 100%.

Training a horse to stop and go from light hand and leg/seat aids with softness is one of the basics.

A bit of effective thoughtful training can have a big impact on your horse's behaviour & way of going.

Don't teach what your horse already knows. Move on to something else.

It's great to see something smiling when they are riding their horse. It makes everyone else smile too

Things I'm going to work on - hugging your horse (desentisation, bpreparation for bareback stuff, circling (get rid of the no's) ridden softness)

[intouch]

Great post, sounds like a great clinic!

[phoenix1]

Sounds brilliant! Very Jealous! Read Tom's book and would love to go over some time or maybe we could invite him over to Ireland!

[Elaine]

he's actually very open to coming over... he'd need about 4 days of work (2 x 2 day clinics or 1 x 4 day) i think, with about 5-7 horses per day. Would anyone else be interested? I would highly recommend him. He's got a really nice way with horses, really good teacher for explaining what he's doing, and he gets great results. I'm spectating at his next clinic in june in a few weeks, will post the report up again

[phoenix1]

I could organise any amount of horses, cobs and ponies, and plenty of bodies too. We have a 60mx40m outdoor arena and a full sized round pen if that helps.

[Elaine]

Hi phoenix, looking to get Tom over to Dublin for a weekend this aug (or if not, sept). There will be 6 horses places. Sorting out dates & prices now

[intouch]

Keep us informed!

[Elaine]

Ok, coming over aug 30 till sept 1st 1-1 lessons, rider and spectators places More details on main website

[Elaine]

glenatron.livejournal.com/135465.html#cutid1

report and pictures from breakfast - thanks!!