Kate, who blogs at A Year With Horses recently audited a Mark Rashid clinic.
She has been posting detailed notes on each horse and rider pair. (The clinic was a one on one format.) These are great clinic notes. Kate’s a talented writer and pretty familiar with Mark Rashid and his teachings. Her notes really capture the events, as well as the spirit of Mark’s teachings.
She is still posting notes, but I’ll put the links to the posts that are already up below.
Here’s a quote a I really like from the post on horse number 3:
Mark told the rider that he needed to dial down his movements and aids, and to slow everything way down, and just make everything he did much softer – the mare was very sensitive and responsive and was being pushed and rushed and ended up over-amped – there was no way she’d be able to do a movement fast if she didn’t understand how to do it slowly. He should work on each movement one step at a time, giving her the space and time to figure out what to do with her feet. He said often people give their aids off a brace, or intensify an aid when they don’t get an immediate response, and that bracing and pushing can block the horse’s movement and lock it up – the horse can get the job done but it makes the horse’s job much harder. He said many cutting and reining riders are taught to cue off a brace, and although many good horses manage to do their jobs anyway, they’d be much more able to do it, and do it better, if the riders were softer. The message was break the task down and turn down the volume – the rider took it well.
Horse #2 — Change the Thought to Change the Feel to Change the Action
Horse #3 — Dial it Down, Slow it Down
I encourage you to check them out!
