A chilled Filly

Tuesday 15 October 2013

JRFS October 2013

Our holiday is over :( . But, boy, did we learn a lot at JRFS this time. I think everyone is familiar with JRFS on this forum by now, but in case you haven't heard of it here is a quick description
JRFS was run by James Roberts, who was one of Pat Parellis' proteges, until his untimely death in a car accident last year. It was a colt start station and also ran courses, called experience weeks, for anyone who wanted to attend. Parelli or not.
Since his death his staff and fiancée, Vicky, have worked very hard to keep the place going. There was a transitional period which was difficult, but I am pleased to report that it is really running well now.
Josh, James apprentice, has been to Australia twice to train with Rob McCauliffe and is now a certified colt starter and 2 star PP. Becca is mainly instructing there. Vicky is recently qualified as a certified Coleen Kelly Rider biomechanics instructor.
So the range of training opportunities has, if anything, increased since James died and his legacy lives on.
I'll concentrate on my experience there last week to give a flavour of what it is like.
We arrived Sunday night. It was the first time we had trailered Filly and Bonitao together. We have a camera in the trailer so could watch Filly dancing for the first hour until she settled. We found rough winding roads where she had to think to her feet made her calmer. Traffic jams were not so good :( . Bonitao was tolerant of her antics to start, but then started to give her hard looks when she acted up.
First mistake was to turn them out together. We had never tried this before and were keen to do it where we had savvy folks around to help if it went wrong. Well they were very very happy together overnight it turned out. If Bonitao is not firing blanks (he is gelded) I am suing my wife for paternity ;) . So we separated them. Bonitao spent 2 days calling for Filly.  Filly spent around an hour calling for Bonitao and then forgot him. That's women for you ;) .

I had sent a list of what I wanted to work on to JRFS before we arrived. At the top of that list was "Vaquero horsemanship". As soon as the staff saw this they decided that the only instructor for me was Josh as that is what he is studying as well. The upshot was that I got to ride and train with Josh for 2 1/2 to 3 hours every morning. It was great to have Josh ride alongside me as he explained and demonstrated the intricacies of this style from the back of his horse, Mocho.

Day 1
We did the normal prepare to ride and I rode in my usual rope halter. Josh was explaining how to get each individual foot in my hands and how to time the pressure and release on the reins to move each foot in turn. As he said most folks he sees gets the timing of the release wrong. For example, on the direct rein they release the inside rein as the outside foot crosses over rather than as the inside foot stretches out. When he put it that way it was obvious as to when to release, then it was just practise.

Day2
We tried the 5/8 bosal on Filly. After a few minutes of uncertainty she became really happy in it and so much more responsive. The only thing worrying her after that was the tickle from the horsehair reins on her neck. We worked on more direct rein, backup (timing my hands with her front feet) and also getting little nose tucks as we walked forwards. It took me a while to get the mechanics of not holding a steady rein for very long, but providing little bumps if she failed to yield. The hardest was timing the release of the bumps with her yield. It's easy to feel the yield with steady pressure, but harder with a trembling hand.
The real improvement that day was her backup. Getting the timing of my hands to coincide with her feet really made her backup deep and powerful.
Josh also had me calling out footfall of the hind legs as I walked around. We started with just calling when a hind foot was in the swing phase and moved onto calling when the hind lifted and placed again. I was really pleased to have studied Mark Rashids Footfall DVD !

Day 3.
We now started to concentrate more on the ground work. Josh had me walking with Filly in tight circles in zone 4/5 asking the inside hind leg to really swing under her body to get a deep stretch. She had some trouble with this so we went to the patience pole.

The patience pole is a great bit of kit. It is a pole around 7 feet tall sunk 10 feet into the ground and secured with concrete. It cannot move ! On top is a car wheel hub which can rotate freely. On the hub is a carabiner. A 45 foot line is passed through the carabiner. One end clipped to the halter, the other end and coils in the trainers hand. The inbound and outbound rope are wrapped around each other a few times to create friction. The horse can now be circled on a diameter of your choosing and it will be a precise circle. The system is great for softening up zone 1 as the horse cannot gain so much as an inch and quickly realises it is only pulling on itself. It also allow the trainer to circle with the horse and come out a little on the circle. Then using a pan fish pole you can ask the horse to yield out whatever zone is not on the circle. This really helps to get precise straightness on the circle.
I had seen James use the pole many times before. Josh thought I was good enough now to use it myself. The first 10 minutes were chaos until I got the hang of the system. The trick was to pull out on the rope to keep the line taught on the carabiner so that the hub turned. Failure to do this resulted in the rope wrapping around the pole.
Filly got pretty emotional about this. She was having to give up her ability to subtly push on my with various zones as I could now get out there and push back with the flag. For an LB horse this was hard to take. However we got there in the end.
The result of the patience pole work was amazing. She became even lighter off my leg than before. She actually seemed happier as well which surprised me, but I guess I had just become even more of a leader for her.
We worked  more on the little vertical flexion responses in the bosal at walk and trot. Then we did a long canter session to get her more rhythmical.

Day 4
Another session on the patience pole where she was much happier. Today we worked on trot rhythm. The pole is purposely placed on a reasonable slope to give up and down sections on the circle. The game for her was to figure out that she got a rest when she maintained a rhythmic trot all around the circle.
More of the zone 4/5 leg stretching work in the school revealed that she was still pushing on my energy bubble. At this point Josh took her for a while and they had a protracted and fiery exchange of views on the subject of yielding softly. I had done much of this in the past, but a) I am not yet a trained colt starter and b) even James used to say there are some things better done by others to your horse as you have to much emotional attachment to them.
I am now way more aware when she is making tiny tiny pushes on my bubble and take steps when she does. Again this actually seems to be improving our rapport.
Riding was basically more of the same. Lots of clover leaf pattern asking for little vertical flexions at walk and trot. Rewarding good ones with a loose rein.

Day 5
She was a different Filly today. Much softer and less attitude. Coming back out of season after her night out with Bonitao probably helped.
Basically more of the same but becoming more particular. We found she could hold the flexion for a stride or two which she has never done before. Her canter had also become much more rhythmical and relaxed.
What this day really demonstrated was the difference a week of riding under the instruction of the likes of Josh can make. It helps that this style of riding is Joshs' passion and I believe the I am his only student in this. As he pointed out I am now very limited in the number of instructors who can teach me. We reckoned maybe 3 in the UK including Dave Stewart who is only here 3 months a year. The only problem with Josh is understanding him sometimes as we spent so much time laughing together we could barely speak. The others in the indoor school could hear us having fun.

This is just a summary of my riding with Josh. Of course the day is 10 hours long and this only took up about 3 hours. The rest of the time was spent watching Josh colt starting and listening to his explanations of what he was doing (again through the laughter !).
We also watched Vicky developing more advanced horses.  She rode our horse Bonitao most days to advance him for us (Ritchie cannot ride at the moment due to a hip injury). On Friday I rode Bonitao with Vicky giving me a lesson in rider biomechanics and also showing me what I have to continue working on with him.

I am almost reluctant to praise the place too much as I want to be able to go there myself regularly and don't want it booked out. However I would strongly recommend my friends on this forum who can get there to visit the place and see what it has to offer for themselves. After all for £300 for a week of intense instruction what have you got to loose ?