MARK RASHID Arizona

by Dianna

This weekend was the Mark Rashid clinic in Arizona hosted by Judy Ryder Duffy. What can I say that hasn't been already said about working with Mark? He is a spiritual healer. Mark's own words are "I am not teaching techniques". He is teaching trusting relationship between horse/ rider and how to recognize when your horse tries for you which many of us miss and therefore end up cueing more than ewe needed. This about how to help your horse find the right thing by offering a slight change. I read it, as instead of making the wrong thing difficult it was more a matter of making the right thing comfortable and the wrong thing just a bit more work.

"Everything comes from the relationship." Heard this from Mark many times over the 2 days. I struggled with this - OK so how do you GET this relationship thang?? I have decided that at least part of it boils down to trust - both the horse trusts you but also you trusting the horse. You can provide trust to the horse by being fair, consistent and soft in you cues. That means timing, feel, all the things you can't learn except by doing it on/with the horse. Then you have to trust the horse - that he will try his best. One example was someone asked about a lameness and Mark was talking about how the horse that gets killed (wolves, glue factory) is the lame one. So a horse naturally does his best or he's going to be the next one on somebody's dinner menu.

Mark is offering a different way to see the relationship - not an Alpha horse scenario. The relationship seems based on how the horse sees the world and the human proving direction with that paradigm.

For me watching Mark was like seeing the tip of the iceberg. You know that the largest part is hidden underwater - the base of what is holding that tip up. The deep part is the attitude and commitment to paying attention to your fairness in dealing with horse and not judging the horse according to the old rules.

The first day Mark helped me with flying lead changes - it went OK. But the next day we worked on western jog transitions and I got a much better feel for the REAL lesson I had come to learn from him. Feeling the horse's try, releasing immediately but with backup to get the job done with the smallest amount of cue possible, focusing on a task and not getting distracted into other issues. Also taking the time to let the horse find the answer but not in a "just keep asking" kind of way. It the answer doesn't come to the horse - help him find it with another idea offered calmly in a way that doesn't contradict the goal of upset the horse.

Most often heard comment during the weekend: "That might have been too much cue" and then he proceeded to teach how to get the task with less each time.

Another gem was if you drill the horse on something too much the horse will tune-out or quit from boredom, frustration or muscles getting tired. Mark doesn't do as much groundwork as some other clinicians. He wants good ground manners in leading, lunging and long line but the moves on to teaching the horse while mounted. He said he thought pointing your finger or wagging it in the horse face was 'rude" as you don't do that to humans without upsetting them either. He doesn't believe in liberty lounging but I can't quote the reason, didn't get everything down on paper although I remember it was something to do with the horse knowing when he was to work and when he was free.

Mark returns to Arizona in July and I am looking forward to working with my horse in the next weeks before riding with him again then.