Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Equine Affaire: Clinicians

Stacy Westfall
Fortunately for me, the 8 hour drive I was expecting ended up only being 7- which meant I arrived early enough to catch Stacy Westfall's first clinic on riding bridleless. I was impressed by her teaching style, she was well-spoken and structured. She also said something that reminded me of Alexandra Kurland: she said that the first motion of any transition is the most important, if the horse starts wrong don't keep going hoping that the horse will fix itself, start over and help the horse start correctly. As many times as it takes.

This reminded me of Alex because of one of the "problems" many people have with clicker training- that when you click you stop the motion. What Alex says is that gives you opportunities to start over and reinforce good transitions. Thus how I've been training Coriander to pick up the left lead, we get three steps, C/T, and start over. This way we get a lot more bang for our buck. Interesting how good trainers think alike.


Jeff Wilson
The western dressage clinician. He was very knowledgeable and rode a nicely trained little morgan stallion, the problem was he was boring. He spent way too much time sitting still and lecturing and not enough time demoing. I felt like he would have done better to briefly explain a movement, like haunches-in, and then ride it so that people could see what he was talking about. I think he was pretty new to this environment though, so he'll probably get better with time.

Linda Parelli
I promised I would go see her with an open mind and I did. I went to two of her clinics, one on humanality and one on the "Game of Contact." For you Parelli fans, I agree with she is a very engaging speaker, plus she has that accent that Americans cannot resist. I will also commend her for her "Game of Contact" concept, it's the Parelli method to help horses accept the bit without the use of gadgets or rollkur. So yes, I liked that- BUT- it was really just French classical dressage repackaged. The first step in her game is Philippe Karl's first jaw flexion exercise, followed by lengthening the neck and stretching long and low. Unlike Karl, she did not mention anything about the movement of the jaw and mouth and how that helps a horse to relax. For that, I give her "Game of Contact" a 2 out of 3.

Unfortunately her demo riders were distracting. One of the riders kept hanging on the front of her saddle with one hand while she rode. Why? I don't know. The other would post for a few strides, look like she fell behind the movement, bounce in the saddle for a few strides, post again- never on the correct diagonal. I couldn't take my eyes of her because I couldn't figure out what she was doing! Of course neither of them had a helmet either, but I guess I shouldn't pick on that since I only saw ONE person ride in a clinic with a helmet all weekend.


Jim Masterson

What a nice guy he is! He was obviously new to this whole Equine Affaire clinic setup as he had a hard time staying on task and didn't have much structure. But to me that wasn't a problem, I wanted to see the techniques and the horses' reaction to them and that's what I got. There is quite a bit to his method that I couldn't quite understand from the book that became clear as I was watching him- for one thing I've been using too much pressure. I went over to his booth afterwards to speak with him and buy the DVD, and he was very open to answering questions and discussing my horses' stance issues.

Todd Flettrich
Bleh! He was the only "dressage" clinician there and I couldn't sit through one whole clinic with him. I watched his clinic on riding accurate movements for first through third level and all of the riders were seesawing on their horses' mouths, all the horses were overbent, on the forehand, and the riders never ever let them stretch down!  And he was advocating this! Only one rider made it look like she was letting her horse stretch and really all she was doing was lowering her hands around her knees while still keeping a death grip on the reins. Heaven forbid she should let go and her horse's nose should pop up in the air (which it did when he managed to tug the reins out of her hands). NOT impressed.

Aaron Ralston
Mmmm, eye candy. What can I say? This guy was attractive, and his boots were awesome. I caught his clinic on riding horses through spooks, what really liked was how he emphasized that you can't take the spook out of your horse, you can only change how you respond to the spook as a rider. He had his riders establish their horses on a circle of cones, with a cone in the center as a pivot point. He had the rider and the horse put all their attention on the pivot point and then he'd induce a spook (with an umbrella). The rider was then supposed to let the horse spook for a few strides and then direct them back on the circle. This way the horse could move their feet and feel better but the rider was still able to give direction. It seemed to work out really well and I'm keeping it in mind for my spooky little girl.

He was also very open to questions from the crowd (sometimes to the detriment of his riders). One woman sitting behind me asked how this exercise can help her since when her horse spooks he flies sideways, she flies off, and then he flies away. Ralston basically told her (paraphrasing) that her horse didn't see her as being trustworthy and dependable and was taking matters into his own hooves. To help her horse, she would have to become a better rider and stop being a passenger. He said this as nicely as he could, but I liked how he didn't mince words with her.

Next post: Mark Rashid!

16 comments:

  1. Great summary! Found it interesting that riders in the Parelli clinic were wearing helmets. I would have thought it would have been mandatory for all participants because of the liability. And, not impressed with Todd Flettrich for advocating archaic practices! Here is an opportunity to promote a kinder way of doing things, and he blew it. Shame. I like Aaron Ralston's approach to spooking! "....you can't take the spook out of your horse, you can only change how you respond to the spook as a rider". Makes sense.

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  2. Sorry - that first line should read "...Parelli clinic WEREN'T wearing helmets...

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  3. Right- because if they were wearing helmets they would be admitting that they didn't think their horses were safe. *eyeroll* Still, I did find it amusing that Linda Parelli ended up being a better advocate for dressage than Flettrich.

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  4. Welcome back! Sounds like you had a great time, but you must have been busy! It's too bad that the western dressage guy was boring... I was looking forward to your review on that one. I had to google Aaron Ralston but I agree with you. :)

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    1. He definitely knew his stuff and had a lot to say about having the horse round and stretching the horse down for relaxation. When he would actually demo it looked good, he just didn't do enough of it.

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  5. I think it's good that you could pick and choose from all the clinicians and see who you thought made sense. That only proves that you're a thinking rider and can dissect what looks and sounds right or wrong. There isn't one clinician I would advocate for except maybe Mark Rashid. I've never been to one of his clinics but so far he's the only clinician who seems to not be in it solely for the money. I'll be interested in what you thought of him and his methods.

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    1. Why thank you :)

      Hopefully I won't disappoint with my next post. I got a lot out of his clinics but that doesn't mean I'll be able to put it into words in a way that makes sense. I'll do my best.

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  6. LOVE me some Masterson! My Masterson lady who worked on Laz reminded me the pressure on their skin is either to literally HOVER over it, OR as gentle a touch, as if you were to touch a raw egg yolk without breaking/poking it. It helped me but YES, I too have a tendency to want to go harder... Laz loves this method. LOTS of releases :)
    Interesting about the Parelli, I have seen on some of their videos a rider holding the front of their saddle, maybe to avoid pulling the mouth? But I think that's called CORE ;) I do think they have good methods that HELP people who are on their own. ie; me for starts, we do a bit of Parelli and I enjoy what we do :)

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    1. I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that you don't need to knead their muscles to get them to loosen. Thus my problem with too much pressure. I'm going to watch the video and try to ooze it all in.

      Yeah, it was hard to take the Parelli stuff seriously when the riding was so poor- except that the horses were still stretching down. That's why I gave it a 2 out of 3.

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  7. Ugh, that dressage trainer, yuck. I saw someone oohing and ahhing over him one day. Talk about crank and spank! From there I looked his website up. All his students have turned in hands with the horses' highest point being the 3rd vertebrae.
    I like westfall. Parelli, another Blech from me for their training but a gold star for marketing.

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    1. In total agreement with you about Flettrich. He's not getting any of MY money.

      Notice I didn't mention anything about Parelli's humanality clinic that I watched. If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all...

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  8. I love it when clinicians actually have the guts to tell people that they just need to work on becoming a better rider. It's pretty hard to get a horse to do anything or stop doing something if you can barely ride. ;-)

    I would be really interested in hearing more about Jim Masterson. I'll google him, but if you have any deeper insight into his presentation...that would be awesome to hear. :-)

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    1. I wish more would do that. I've been to too many clinics where poor riders just get their egos stroked by the clinician.

      I watched the Masterson DVD last night and thought it was pretty good, it's meant to be an addition to the book so it doesn't quite have as much information as it could. Still, it was only $35 so why not?

      His method works by tying into the horse's nervous system. You search for the areas where there is tension (the horse will blink or twitch the lips) and then hold your hand over the area until the horse releases the tension (licking and chewing, yawning, shaking the neck, etc). It seems like it couldn't possibly work but it does.

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  9. It sounds like a lot to hear and see. Your head was probably swimming after all that. I would really like to hear more about Westfall said about riding bitless...that's something I'm interested in.

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    1. I only got to her first clinic- preparing the horse to ride bridleless by making sure the horse really knows how to stop and back. She advocates teaching 3 different stop/backing cues:

      1) saying "whoa"
      2) using the reins
      3) using a seat/leg cue (leaning back and waving your feet at their shoulders)

      She said that any of these should work on their own to stop the horse. If you have to use all three to stop then you really don't have much control and you certainly can't ride without a bridle.

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  10. Great report! I am disappointed about the dressage instructor. I would have been most excited about that one, and most disappointed. Clinic experiences like that reinforce negative perspectives of the sport, which make me sad. That pretty much exemplifies why I am so cautious about choosing someone for private instruction. Unfortunately, there were probably spectators who would be quick to criticize if the horse's nose popped up. This might have made the riders even more focused on their horse's faces.

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