Returned from the Dressage Summit highly motivated and inspired!! I learned a lot this weekend, really enjoyed the wittiness and eloquence of Charles deKunffy (my favorite quotes: “It is a nightmare for the horse to be punished because he does not understand it.” “The horse wears his mind on his body. Suppleness starts in the mind.” “He (the horse) is not Albert Einstein… on the 8th try he will get it. Be patient.”) and the enthusiasm of Christoph Hess (“Listen through the reins.”) I enjoyed Walter Zettl and I was pleased to be introduced to Collen Kelly, who is moving from Australia to my backyard, Aiken, SC! And of course I always enjoy the wisdom of Pat and Linda Parelli.
Possibly my most profound learning of the weekend happened during Linda’s Horsenality Demo on the first day, and the lesson I took home was not the one they planned! Now, let me preface my comments by saying I have TREMENDOUS respect for Linda as a horsewoman, teacher, and human being. She has had an incredible influence on my NH journey and even my life even though I don’t know her personally. So I feel badly making any sort of negative comments because the good hugely outweighs any negatives, and it is also sort of like a sparrow throwing a stick at an eagle because she is 100 times the horsewoman and communicator that I am. BUT with that all said, what I observed I learned from and do not say in a mean or negative spirit, simply truthfully what I observed and learned.
The horse that was used for the Introvert portion of the Horsenalities demo was (I think) a dressage horse without a PNH background, and Linda had decided to ride him. She wanted to demonstrate how to use phases to increase the horse’s motivation to move forward with good effort off of light aids. The problem was that the horse was not calm in the arena: high-headed, tense, freezing then moving off suddenly. Linda went ahead and mounted up, which was disappointing to those of us who have studied the Parelli program. She had a great opportunity to explain what was going on and model putting the horse’s calmness as her first priority, but instead she went on with the planned demo. Unfortunately, that didn’t work well, because the horse still didn’t feel safe with her. She hadn’t earned his trust and respect, so he wasn’t relaxed, or focused, or looking to her for connection… which is precisely the foundation that Natural Horsemanship provides. The horse began to settle enough for Linda to begin asking for transitions, and the horse finally showed his colors as a true low-energy introvert. After a few repetitions, he actually began stopping when she asked him for a trot transition. She began her corrections, tapping him on the shoulder with the crop. This was effective briefly, and then the horse bucked quite big and then reverted to being very nervous again. Because she hadn’t taken the time to really prepare the horse’s emotional state, he was not in a learning frame of mind.
My take-away from this demo was that no matter how skilled a rider is, if they don’t take the time to address the horse’s needs, they are going to get the same lousy results as anyone else. It doesn’t sound like much of an epiphany, but it actually was really helpful to me.
Julie Robins 