More about Buck

I've been spending a lot of time watching the Buck Brannaman Seven clinics DVDs lately. I have to confess that in the past I've been a little wary of Buck as some of the online video I've seen of him struck me as a little harsh. How wrong I was !! Having now watched 10 hours of DVD, lots of it multiple times I have come to realise that he's actually a very very gentle horseman and those incidents posted online have just been folks putting up some video they thought would be exciting to watch.

Having said that he is very much a no-nonsense horseman but always fair on horse and human. He offers the opportunity for the horse to follow his feel but if it doesn't he comes in as firm as needed to get the point over. However it is rare on the DVDs to see him have to get firm at all.

The reason for this is that he has amazing timing with hands and feet. Fortunately the DVD player in my computer has a slow motion mode so I can slow the action down and watch exactly when he times the cues. They are always timed to the feet. As a result the horse is free to move in the direction the cue is asking and so there is no resistance and no fight. From this comes harmony and relaxation. The horse knows that in Buck they have a dependable leader who will never ask them to do something they physically cannot do. And I mean cannot do in this micro-second. The foot he is directing as available to move when he adds the cue so it moves. No fuss or fight as there is nothing to fuss or fight over !

For me this has been the biggest thing to take away from the DVDs. I've always tried to time my cues to the feet, but when things are a little difficult that timing has been off. This has caused more confusion in the horse as she is being asked to do something she knows is physically impossible capable of doing so. But she knows she should try and do something with the cue so does something she can do to see if that is the answer to the question. Of course in my mind it isn't so I wonder why she isn't doing what I want and add more pressure. As you can imagine this can escalate in a few seconds to a total misunderstanding which can appear to be disrespect.

Even worse is that when the foot is finally available to move as I desire if I've started with the cue at the wrong time she's probably already discounted the desired motion as the wrong one as at the time of asking it was impossible so why try it again ?

Even writing about this is confusing for me so imagine how it feels for her at the time !!

So, whilst I've always been attempting to get in time with the feet in the past it has now become another addiction to add to the one about finding lightness. Fortunately they will be mutually supporting addictions and will therefore just grow stronger over time.

More importantly I now fully realise that in general any perceived disobedience from Filly is almost always going to be a lack of timing on my part. This has made me lighten up on Filly but get much harder on myself.

Now I'm suggesting that all undesirable behaviour in Filly is  the result of poor timing on my part. But quite a bit of it is. The other evening I was riding her before she had her dinner. Not a good time to ride Filly. She was incredibly strongly drawn to the barn end of the school. Not surprising really as there is not a lot of grass in the fields at them moment and she was hungry. So we had a few issues to work through which went well and we had a nice ride in the end. However I can't help feeling that if my timing was as good as Bucks' then maybe she would have been happier hanging around with me as her "leader" would have been less frustrating for her.

I'll write much more about Buck as I understand more. Largely to keep the ideas straight and honest in my mind as much as anything else. In the meantime I would highly recommend that anyone delving into the world of Natural Horsemanship should have this DVD set on their shelf and watch them many times.

I'm not saying that the Buck DVDs are a replacement for the Parelli program. There are many things in them that without at least a foundation in Parelli I would not have understood as well. They would still be very watch-able and valuable without that background, but I think you would get only 50% of the true value they contain. However I think they also contain some vital elements that the Parelli program has not emphasised sufficiently (or left out altogether) and as such they are a very valuable addition to your knowledge.

Having lessons

Recently I've had a couple of riding lessons from Sue Edwards. That might not sound much of a revelation but they have been from a dressage instructor and I ride western style. But then good horsemanship is good horsemanship and done correctly there is not that much difference between the two styles. After all vaquero came partly from Spanish classic dressage.

I've had lessons before and have been asked to adopt various torture positions and stress my body into strange shapes. I've never really understood the reason for these odd positions as they a) hurt and b) prevent me from relaxing and becoming a part of the horse. So I was relieved when this top class instructor (up to Grand Prix dressage and an elite coach) told me this was all wrong. The first lesson was actaully about getting me to relax more.... and more!

She asked me to picture having to ride comfortably on a 50 mile hack. How would I sit. How would I relax and move with my horse. Was there any stress in any muscle, if so relax it. This didn't mean sitting like a sack of potatoes as I had to become one with the horses movements, but it did mean no muscular tension. None of that old "heels down, toes in chin up, chest out" nonsense. Just relax. And as I relaxed so did Filly. She stretched out her walk more and more and eventually sighed.

It's not all been about relaxation however. We have also been working on improving Fillys' responses to various cues. Particularly the ones to move her forequarters over and her ribs out. Sue does not teach moving the hind quarters around as she says that in dressage this can make the horse all "squirrelly" and difficult to keep straight. For what I want out of Filly, which isn't dressage, this is one area where I will differ from Sue and require good hind quarter yields.

Other than that there has been a lot I have gotten out of the lessons and the relaxation idea has certainly given me a much deeper seat. In fact I think I may have to let the stirrups down a hole or two.

One highlight was on the last ride. I was not having a good ride for whatever reason. We were working on getting Filly to move out on the circle with pressure from the inside leg, but I could not get the slightly odd position (to my mind) that Sue was asking for so it wasn't happening. Finally Sue asked if she could have a ride on Filly and see what the problem was. I was more than willing to let this top class rider ride her.

Sue actually rode her for around 1/2 hour in the end and eventually got some nice yields achieved. She rode at walk, trot and canter. I was a little worried that at some point she was going to stop, get off and pronounce her lame. However she never mentioned lameness. But I still wanted to know what she thought in case she was just being polite so I asked her straight out. "Do you feel any lameness as she's recovering from navicular syndrome". Sue replied that she could feel nothing wrong at all and that in fact once we had gotten her a bit straighter she had a very nice canter.

To say this made my day would have been an understatement. I now had the opinion of someone who would be very very sensitive to the action of a horse tell me Filly was ok.
I immediately texted Nic Barker and Ben (my vet) with the news and had a glass of something strong to celebrate. After all we have been through with folks telling me I was doing it all wrong, to the point of threatening me with the RSPCA, I finally had vindication that my faith in Nic was right and we had achieved our goal. Not that there aren't still issues to be sorted but I finally believe we are over the worst of it.