Clinics are NOT for horses!

[oldrookie]

Just finisned the four-day Fundamentals clinic with Dale in Lima, Ohio. That makes four clinics i have attended, two as an auditor and two as a participant, so i may just be starting to get it.

Both my horses have now been in clinics, the Mustang last year with Kristin, the mare this year with Dale. They reacted very differently and i learned something very profound that had escaped me until now.

Clinics are NOT for horses. They’re for people.

This light bulb moment came yesterday on the last day of the clinic when Dale was explaining why our horses were still behaving imperfectly, to say the least.

They were fried, cooked, overloaded, burnt out. He said working a horse 10 hours a day for four days is way too much for them. This is why DUH recommends only working a horse a max of two hours a day, 45 minutes GW, 45 minutes riding, and allowing 30 minutes for grooming, tacking, and untacking. Then tie them to the patience pole for two to four hours to let it soak.

10 hours a day for four days is a lot for people to absorb, let alone horses. Before you disagree and tell stories about ranch horses being used all day working cows, or trail horses in use all day as well, it’s not the same. In a clinic, we are insisting our horses focus on us (two eyes) and respond to our imperfect cues and imperfect release of pressure while trying to figure out what we want them to do.

My mare made this point clear, because on the third day afternoon riding exercise, Cruising, she had a Jekyll-and-Hyde change of personality. She is normally friendly and very accommodating with other horses around, rarely, if ever, picks a fight. During the warm-up, we were in the arena with only one other horse and she was a jewel, doing ORS at all three gaits.

Then the other horses came in, and her brains fell out. During the Cruising, which lasted 42 minutes, she had her ears back almost the whole time, and made Kamikaze runs at all the other horses without provocation. She even took a run at Dale, who was standing in the arena watching and advising. She stopped two feet from him. I did not enjoy Cruising.

I was completely baffled by this behavior, until Dale’s explanation of training overload on the next day.

This answers definitively the oft-asked question, “Which horse should I take to the clinic?” The answer is that it really doesn’t matter, because the clinic won’t “fix” your horse. It’s for you.

John,
The Old Rookie
Zanesfield, Ohio

Dreams are like horses, they run wild on the earth. Catch one and ride it for all that it's worth.

---Dave Stamey, Song for Jake