So  we spent another week up at McGinnis Meadows...

A week of riding, reflection and retrys...

Thats the nice thing about riding. It is the ability to retry.. To do something, think about the result you got, and then try something again...

It was a lesson I got from this time around..

That this mountain, called Natural Horsemanship, Thinking Horsemanship, whatever you want to call it, can be approached from different angles... and those angles have different terrain depending on who is climbing..

Take for example the people I know who I think are excellent teachers and have a solid foundation in the school..

Buck - Learned for himself, had a hard upbringing... student of Bill/Tom and Ray
Shayne Jackson (McGinnis) - Same deal like Buck but approaches things a different way...
Randy Bock ( McGinnis ) - Learned from the ranches he worked on, and self taught until he also crossed paths with the Dorrances/Ray and Buck...
Bonnie Stohen - Came up from 3 day eventing, dressage and then learned from Buck/Bill/Tom
Ray Berta - Learned from Bill/Tom, cattle family and steeped in the heritage....

I would consider these people my teachers.. And you know I am lucky to have them. Each of them has their own way of handling horses, of approaching the horse.. Sure the words are the same they use, "soft feel", getting down to the feet.. but the approach is different..

This gives someone like me a variety to learn from. Something that may not have sunk in with Bonnie, may for some strange reason be crystal clear when I hear it from Shayne... Thats not to say Bonnie is wrong and Shayne is right... ( though something tells me Shayne would say it!! LOL), but that how I interpreted it came through one way vs the other...

There are other things too.. Like the fact that Randy I think trys to approach things from " Where can I make the horse the winner ", Where can I offer justice in what I am doing...
This is on the skin when he is working with horses, vs when I am working with Ray it is more about what does it feel like for me... Why they both may be approaching the problem the same way, what one  them brings to the surface may be different because they have things that are important to them.
That is not to say that Ray does not think being just with the horse is important too, it is just more apparent with Randy then say Ray...

There are other things too, when working with teachers...

Some of them may not verbalize what they are doing, so you may not see it, where others will. This is important to a student because it helps the student calibrate what is going on..

Like Shayne working on a horse.. you can hear him say.. "Don't get heavy on my hands " which means there is no float in the rein.. Where someone like Bonnie may say something else, or not say anything at all.

It is having these teachers and the ability to watch them, get feedback from them and to learn from them that helps us grow, that helps the students learn what "right" should feel like, and what the results of " not right " are...

This is helping me put things together.. Not to mention working with cattle and people and keeping everyone safe..

It brings into clarity the fact that horses need to respond, and sometimes that response may be explosive.. And as riders, we have the responsibility to be able to support the horse through-out this experience.

So in trying to learn how to communicate with the horse so they look and feel classy under us, and are happy to do the job we are asking them to do.. is a hard course.. Hard because it requires dedication from ourselves.. and a ego-less appreciation for the horse..

There can be no ego when working with horses.. It is no us against them.  It is a partnership, a unity of feel and heart as we work with them.. There is no dictatorship, no showmanship, no ownership.. It is a union of two entities... a joining of mind and body.. A benevolence of spirits.. If I ask, you can perform. I will do all I can do to make you a winner, to set you up for success to make it easy for you to do the right thing... And because you are balanced, and full of life you are able to move smoothly and perform the tasks I may ask of you.. Because your feet are my feet, your thoughts my thoughts, we are together, one, a perfect union of mind and body...

Hi Ho!

L