Horse language is the language of the flight animal, you know, the one that gets chased and chomped as seen on the Discovery Channel. To really get horse-think it's a bit useful if you sit and watch horses at pasture, big horse herds, those kind of dynamics.......
Something that, initially, seems inexplicable may suddenly click a brain cell. What horses do loose they'll most definitely click into, under stress, when ridden. Obvious really, that one!
Like this morning here, when The Best, as alpha as they get, decided the back pasture (where the water is) was highly dangerous. The ferocious high-headed dragon's snort and her three companions cascaded to the very furthest eastward line of the corral's fencing around the back of the shelters and the old red wooden barn.
Watching through the kitchen window, I sighed, heaved on four layers, lumbered outside and filled up the ancient sliced-in-half propane tank (alias their water tank), tidied up a bit.
Nope, they weren't moving. Glued, high headed, adrenalin high, along the corral's ancient timbers.
Another sigh. Grab a halter and slid it onto the white girl and led her into the horse eating back paddock, a tad exasperated at how seriously she takes her herd guarding responsibilties at times.
The others followed, slid up, one at a time, drank deeply and then began picking, still a bit snorty, at the hay piles I'd organized.
She and I stood there, we've been together now a decade and more than any other, she's taught me horse-think subtleties. I breathed slower, my feet imagining they were tree roots and thought peaceful thoughts, idly drifting through why she was so revved up and guessing her one big fear factor, moose, were in the thick thick western woodlands nibbling on willow branches.
The raven couple, in their prime and stunningly blue-black against the hoar frosted trees, croaked their odd warning language and the white head went up again. Something, definitely in there, and the ravens croaked and cawed and flew around before, finally bored, circled away further up the valley for more morning amusements and diversions.
So, still she and I stood there, me waiting again for the white head to go 'level-headed' (see where the expression comes from?!) and then, ah, magic.
A huge bald eagle, really massive wing span this boy, flying straight up the Horse Creek Valley northwards, my first viewing this year of the earliest arrival perhaps pathmaker of their annual migration of bald and golden participants that's a documented 11,000 years old. They, hawks and many others, follow the ridgelines of the 'shining mountains' the far more appropriate name given by native people to the 'Rockies'.
The mare, finally, dipped her head, deigning to slither in a few morsels of sweet meadow hay. And then, with their ironic cosmic humour, the Land Gods said, I am imagining, OK, The Human's being a bit perceptive this morning so let's give another little gifting. In the far wood came a faint rattling drum of a woodpecker drilling but the mare, this time, twitched just an ear with a muzzle now deep in timothy and fescues .
And the very first of the young male ground squirrels popped his head out of a burrow, scampered across to the fenceline and, carefully perched erect atop the crusted snow, surveying the bright sparkling world of springtime-just-around-the-corner.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Supple. Horses AND humans..........
Working with a new competitive minded rider the other day, halfway through the session they started to laugh. I glanced across, questioning and quizzical and they exclaimed, “we were told you were expensive.”
Not, as they hastily explained, for value for money for the session time itself but because about, I am reckoning, a good 90 per cent have a saddle that simply doesn't fit (so, yes please, buy another saddle that does), and usually the horse is as crooked as hell besides so in my opinion, what's the point of running a marathon if you can't touch your toes - ?
In the past I've been crunched big time by horses, plus one major skiing number and almost three years back a whiplash number on a wet veterinarian's office floor. I thought I was pretty clued up on getting back to functioning but that day's soft tissue injuries opened a whole new bag of, er, a learning curve which, sideways, can be applied to horses too.
With movement comes core strength and elasticity, without it, one displaced rib or hip alignment just compounds into everything going out of whack.
So yes, I advocate chiro work but not the kind where you go back, week after week, month after month. Nope, my girls (the horse fixer and the human one too) get it in one or two sessions, max, and then after that it's conditioning work.
The Colorado clinician Mark Rashid (his book HORSEMANSHIP THROUGH LIFE runs totally along the same line of thought, you end up with a different – and supple – human being after he takes up the mental and physical discipline of martial art training) seems, uncannily, to run and write along similar railway tracks of parallel thought sometimes to my own. Ah, the old synchronicity thing again.........
Chiro work, saddle fit and if you click onto his website at www.markrashid.com and then onto his blogs, there he is covering my thoughts almost exactly, onto issues on slaughter and the latest, about teeth and TMJ and jaw flexion.
Nowhere near mountain fit or any type of competition fit level, my appaloosa The Fox has hit major I-am-very-happy horse-time. Conformation wise back at the knee, finally again his feet are balanced just right. He had chiro work done about two months back because he'd 'braced' himself for so long because of the jar and displacement correspondingly in his shoulders and tightened up in the stifle big time. And, finally decided he likes one bit after six years of trying nearly everything under the sun! He rides on rein pressure as light as feathers, he's tracking up, punch! from behind and the shoulder and stifle are smooth and supple on the circle with 'self-carriage' – ie, self balancing. THIS is the basis of great classical foundation work, wherever you end up riding.
And, on that note, a great classicist who follows along the line of the great Master Nuno Olivero, is giving a talk/seminar at Weedon Hall. His name's DOMINIQUE BARBIER and for a book of insights – and stunning line drawings – please, treat yourself to his just gorgeous DRESSAGE FOR THE NEW AGE.
Not, as they hastily explained, for value for money for the session time itself but because about, I am reckoning, a good 90 per cent have a saddle that simply doesn't fit (so, yes please, buy another saddle that does), and usually the horse is as crooked as hell besides so in my opinion, what's the point of running a marathon if you can't touch your toes - ?
In the past I've been crunched big time by horses, plus one major skiing number and almost three years back a whiplash number on a wet veterinarian's office floor. I thought I was pretty clued up on getting back to functioning but that day's soft tissue injuries opened a whole new bag of, er, a learning curve which, sideways, can be applied to horses too.
With movement comes core strength and elasticity, without it, one displaced rib or hip alignment just compounds into everything going out of whack.
So yes, I advocate chiro work but not the kind where you go back, week after week, month after month. Nope, my girls (the horse fixer and the human one too) get it in one or two sessions, max, and then after that it's conditioning work.
The Colorado clinician Mark Rashid (his book HORSEMANSHIP THROUGH LIFE runs totally along the same line of thought, you end up with a different – and supple – human being after he takes up the mental and physical discipline of martial art training) seems, uncannily, to run and write along similar railway tracks of parallel thought sometimes to my own. Ah, the old synchronicity thing again.........
Chiro work, saddle fit and if you click onto his website at www.markrashid.com and then onto his blogs, there he is covering my thoughts almost exactly, onto issues on slaughter and the latest, about teeth and TMJ and jaw flexion.
Nowhere near mountain fit or any type of competition fit level, my appaloosa The Fox has hit major I-am-very-happy horse-time. Conformation wise back at the knee, finally again his feet are balanced just right. He had chiro work done about two months back because he'd 'braced' himself for so long because of the jar and displacement correspondingly in his shoulders and tightened up in the stifle big time. And, finally decided he likes one bit after six years of trying nearly everything under the sun! He rides on rein pressure as light as feathers, he's tracking up, punch! from behind and the shoulder and stifle are smooth and supple on the circle with 'self-carriage' – ie, self balancing. THIS is the basis of great classical foundation work, wherever you end up riding.
And, on that note, a great classicist who follows along the line of the great Master Nuno Olivero, is giving a talk/seminar at Weedon Hall. His name's DOMINIQUE BARBIER and for a book of insights – and stunning line drawings – please, treat yourself to his just gorgeous DRESSAGE FOR THE NEW AGE.
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