MARK RASHID Clinic in Castle Rock

by Amy Goodloe

The following post has been "in progress" for over a month now and I can't imagine that I'm going to have time to finish it anytime soon, so might as well send the "unfinished" version in.

I was one of the riders at the September Mark Rashid clinic in Castle Rock, Colorado, hosted by Nancy Olson, and thought I'd share my experience having Mark help me with two problems that don't come up all that often at clinics.

Day One: Bailey and the Bit

I brought my 9 year old TB/QH mare, Bailey, to the clinic in the hopes that Mark might have some ideas about how to get her comfortable with the bit. In the five months since I bought Bailey,

I'd been getting a lot of different advice, but most of it seemed suited to horses who had no previous "issues" with the bit and Bailey certainly had issues. She was started as a five year old by a cowboy who wanted to use her for roping, despite the fact that she's built like a hunter and has about as much interest in cows as I do (read=none). Rather than finding her another job when it became evident she was no roping horse, they tried to force her into the role, using a double-twisted wire gag bit, tie downs, sharp spurs, lots of shouting and shaking ropes, and so on -- and when that failed they decided to sell her, as a "beginning roping horse," presumably suited for beginners b/c she was so bad at roping! I went to look at her on a whim (having zero interest in a roping horse), and was immediately struck by her incredible trot -- not an ounce of jog, and a lot of "natural" talent for dressage or just about anything English. She was easily worth twice what they were asking, so I bought her!

Not long after I brought her home, Bailey began relaxing, opening up, becoming a totally different horse -- the horse I'd earlier seen "in potentia," and I couldn't have been more delighted - except for one thing: she could not deal with the bit. The slightest pressure on the bit and she either stuck her nose straight out and hollowed her back (in anticipation of the tie-down, and probably also the twisted wire), or did a "nosedive" to the ground, as though she was trying to pull the reins out of my hands. She also worked the bit constantly as long as there was any pressure on it - opening her mouth, chewing on it, putting her tongue over it, etc. All of which ceased immediately when I dropped the reins. She'd had her teeth floated right after I bought her, so I knew it wasn't that, and my partner and I had done quite a bit of TTEAM/TTouch work with her, so I knew it wasn't likely a body-pain issue I tried riding her in a halter and a TTEAM-style side-pull, and she still stuck her nose out against those, even though I rode with no contact (other than the weight of the reins), although at least then she wasn't worrying her mouth.

But I wanted to try dressage with her, and perhaps eventually some jumping, so I needed to find a way to help her accept the bit, to learn that not all bits were twisted wire gags and not all hands were as heavy as the ones she'd been ridden with.

I started by working on very light but steady "elastic" contact with the bit, and using a "following" motion with my hands, so that the reins were never "tight," but there was never any slack in them either. I also tried about a dozen different bits, and she ended up choosing the Baucher. We began progressing slowly, but it was a frustrating process to me b/c I could tell she was learning to trust me, and beginning to figure out what I wanted, but she wouldn't hold it for very long, and she still did a lot of nosediving, which I wasn't sure how to handle. So I took her to several local dressage instructors, to see what they'd say, and ended up getting advice like "set your hands at the base of her neck and keep them there. Let her work out where she needs to be to relieve the pressure" and "don't let her dive like that; bump her in the mouth to get that head back up." On the one hand, I learned some useful techniques at those lessons, having to do with seat and leg position and how to use my seatbones to ask for a leg yield, etc, but I went home feeling dissatisfied with what I'd learned about Bailey's bit issues. I just didn't feel like those were the right approaches to take with this particular horse, even though they might be what works with 90% of all dressage horses.

So I came to Mark, knowing that dressage isn't his speciality, but that understanding the needs and issues of the horse as an individual is. Besides it was his books that got me back into riding after about ten years away, and which, in a roundabout way, lead me to meet my partner. And after auditing one of his clinics last year, I'd been waiting for an opportunity to ride with him, so I took the first one that came along.

In the first five or ten minutes of our session, I gave Mark the background I've just given you, and answered his questions, as I walked Bailey around the round pen. At first I showed him what I'd recently been told to do, to set the reins, and we watched Bailey's reaction. She chewed and opened her mouth wide and tossed her head a bit -- and never rounded up. I then eased up on the reins and started moving with the motion of the bit instead of holding against it and she softened up quite a bit, but not totally. I asked her to come on the bit by holding the outside rein steady and continuing to use light, giving contact on the inside, and she'd round up for a few seconds, but then lose it and begin working the bit again. So that answered one question: in all likelihood, the "set the hands and let the horse work it out method" wasn't going to work for this horse.

But what would?

After going through all of what would ordinarily be the "obvious" reasons for her reaction, and not finding anything he could use, Mark hit on something I'd long been wondering about. "How do you let her know when she's doing the right thing? When she's on the bit the way you want her to be?" This was exactly the question I'd been asking everyone: how do I let her know when she's got it right? And the answers I'd gotten up to that point hadn't been of much use: "giving to the bit is its own release" and "she'll know when she's in the right place b/c she can stop fighting the bit when she's there."

Well, OK maybe that works for most horses, but it wasn't working for Bailey, so Mark suggested I look for a way to communicate to her, through my body language, that she was in fact doing the right thing

I was already riding her pretty softly, and using lots of "good

girls" (which she does respond to, but not nearly as much as my other mare), so I had to think about that one for a moment.

Mark said to try and get "even softer'' in response and see what happens. So I tried that, but must've gone too soft, b/c Bailey just stopped! Mark pointed out that I had, in effect, "quit riding," when what I needed to do was come up with a more active way of being soft, if that makes any sense. So I tried again, this time responding to her coming on the bit by using the mental image of "melting like butter," and it worked. She stayed on the bit for twice as many strides as she ever had, previously. So I tried again, to make sure it wasn't a fluke, and sure enough each time I rewarded her by "melting" she stayed on the bit a little longer, and with a little more confidence ("oh! this IS what you wanted?'), until it finally became apparent that she could only go so long. We'd noticed this in the beginning, but it became much more apparent after some work that Bailey had some real soreness issues in her hips, so we ended the session a bit early and I took her behind the barn to see the chiropractor who often comes to Mark's Colorado clinics. He worked on her for nearly an hour, and then I turned her back out in one of Nancy's paddocks, where she proceeded to run full speed and buck and turn and hop (where earlier, when I'd turned her out in the same paddock, she'd just stood there).

The soreness, incidentally, can probably be traced back to two factors, improper training as a roping horse, and a 90 minute long dressage lesson I'd had the week before the clinic, using the "set your hands at the base of the neck and hold them there" approach to getting her on the bit, while going around and around in a 20m circle. Maybe that really does work for some horses, but it ended up causing soreness in Bailey that still hasn't been fully resolved.

She was trying so hard to "do the right thing" during that dressage lesson that I didn't even realize she was in pain, which makes me so sad to think about in retrospect. In fact, Mark's theory about her "nosediving'" was that she was actually trying to stretch out her back, to make her own "auto adjustment" to ease the pain and that I should just let her do it, where other instructors had been telling me to punish her for it. Quite a difference in attitude towards the horse, and with quite different results as well.

On day two of the clinic I decided to bring Jigsaw, my 12yo Paint mare, to ride instead of Bailey, so that Bailey could have some time to benefit from the chiropractic treatment. At home Jigsaw is the perfect schoolhorse, excellent with beginners and totally trustworthy, and she's my favorite trail mount, but taking her to this clinic brought out a behavior that is as disturbing as it is bizarre. When I get a chance, Ill write up a report of Day Two: Jigsaw Needs Pyschotherapy, and Mark's unusual suggestion.