LEE SMITH Clinic - Sioux Falls Horse Fair

by Shelly Finck

Dear Friends,

I have to say that last weekend was the most interesting, enlightening, exhausting and inspiring for me. I made the connections so that Lee Smith would be a demonstrator at the South Dakota Horse Fair in Sioux Falls. I picked Lee up at the airport Friday at noon and dropped her off the following Tuesday evening. In that time I spent about 98% of my waking hours with her. I did more than see her demos, I saw her perceptions and views on just about everything we saw going on around us. She did 2 demos on Saturday and one on Sunday. Monday and Tuesday I had a few lessons lined up for her here and there. There's no way I can share everything I Iearned, even if I wanted to. Some of it means so much to me personally that I feel the need for some of it to stay in my head and allow me to digest and understand. There is a great depth to this lady and what she has to offer horses AND people.

The demos were with 2 horses. One was a coming 2 yr. old that had been turned out for the winter. He had a strong aversion to having his back legs touched and kicked violently. The other was a 5 year old BLM mustang. He had been gelded last year but no one had been able to do much with him. She took this as slow as she could with these horses to show the expression of the horses and how psychology of the horse works. Both of the horses were ready to be saddled by the time she finished, but that wasn't the focus. Her focus was to work with these horses and prepare them to understand the human and to help the people watching her demos to understand. There were many things she could have done with these horses but her feeling was that she was there to help people see what they could take home to do with their horses.

The thing that struck me over and over was how she was striving to teach people and help them see what she sees. She could have wowed them with her ability, instead she chose to inspire them to give this a try and see the success. She could have loaded both horses at liberty into a 2 horse trailer, but that probably wasn't very usable by the highest percentage of folks there. What was more important to her was that everyone watching could see the changes in the horses. She slowed everything down, "about as exciting as watching paint dry" she'd say. Many people watch folks like this work with horses and they can't see the try and the changes in the horse. Lee's focus was to slow things down to encourage people and show them where and how to look for the try. What is the horse saying? What does his body tell you? What does his eye and eyebrow tell you?

Minute, little things, but it was my perception that this is what all talented horsemen can see and what many people watching the clinics don't understand. The clinician says "there's a change", "there's a try", and the people watching the class are saying "where, what changed". Her willingness to go beyond teaching the horse to teaching the people amazed me. Even when she first looked at the horses to formulate a plan in her mind as to what to demonstrate, she was thinking of which horse would be the best to use for people to understand. She chose to start with the easier horse so that people could relate better to what she did. She can use a stock whip, rope a colt, work another horse from her horse, but let's face it, many of us contagious. I want everyone to wrestle with the concepts that I saw presented last weekend. I may sound like the president of Lee's fan club, and I would be lucky to be so, but I am just so inspired by what she wants to share. If she's in your area, do your horse a favor and look her up. I've spent a lot of time furrowing my brow and thinking really hard about what I've learned from her. It's hard to let go of some things, but I see that letting go is better for me and for my horsemanship.

She said once she was visiting with someone else about this way of working with horses and the comment was "this isn't a mental thing" and contagious. I want everyone to wrestle with the concepts that I saw presented last weekend. I may sound like the president of Lee's fan club, and I would be lucky to be so, but I am just so inspired by what she wants to share. If she's in your area, do your horse a favor and look her up. I've spent a lot of time furrowing my brow and thinking really hard about what I've learned from her. It's hard to let go of some things, but I see that letting go is better for me and for my horsemanship.

The other overriding concept that I came away with from the weekend was to see the horse change it's mind and "come inside himself". Every one of the 14 horses she worked with that weekend started emotionally

scattered. They were sticking their heads our of the pen, calling to their friends, pawing, pushing, jumping, tail swishing, bucking, trying to eat the arena floor, and that was just in the horses she worked with

on the ground and not an exhaustive list of what we saw. She taught the value of looking at these things as the horse's expression. Doing these things are the tell tale signs of what the horse is thinking. This is their way to express themselves. Telling them their wrong for doing these things is like telling a crying child to shut up and be quiet. Instead, she sought to show us that these things were outward signs of the horse's unrest. It's not about figuring out what to do to get the horse to quit doing these things. It's about trying to figure out why the horse feels the need to do these things. Is it escape, worry, lack of respect (rarely, respect is a two way street, it can't be given unless it's received first) a brace? Lee helped me to see how each one

of these horses was mentally scattered. They were looking at everything they could do to be somewhere else. Instead Lee reached to the very minds of these horses and would say see, "there, he came inside

himself". The horses would settle, get a soft eye and focus on the human. Once they started to do this they responded lighter and faster to every request and to the amazement of the owners the "behaviors" they

were struggling with just disappeared. What amazed me even more as to how little it took to accomplish this. She did so little and made such an impact. It was so incredible. She would just stand and shake the coils of her rope rather than pitching it out. She would slap the popper against her leg to catch the horse's attention rather than jumping and flailing her own body around the pen. It was so slight and so minute, but every detail she explained to the people so they could understand what she was doing and why she was doing it. It was never her intent to ram a horse around in order to tire him out. Instead her question is "how well do you think, respond and react when you're tired". The idea was to do as little as possible but to really get the

horse to focus on the human. Once she had the horse's attention, the possibilities were opened.

Another concept that I'm still struggling with is the old discomfort vs. comfort thing. We all understand the basic "cause the wrong thing to be difficult and the right thing to be easy". Lee helped me to see one

step farther. I've spent too much of my time focusing on creating the discomfort, rather than offering the comfort. Horses move away from trouble and INTO comfort. Slight change in emphasis, but I think I saw

what a difference it made to the horses she worked with.

Well, that's a really basic overview of what I experienced. I was in some ways reluctant to try to convey my feelings about what I learned. But I also desire to share what Lee has to offer. I'm sure that when I read this after I submit it to you all, I'll think of tons of other things, but hopefully what I've written gives you a taste for more. When you see how strong her commitment is to help people is, it's can't do some of the things people like her can. She takes it upon herself to show what people can do with the skills they have. You don't have to learn to use a whip, build a round pen, rope a foot on the fly or work your horses from another horse to be effective. Many clinicians do those things because they work incredibly well for them, but I can face the music and see that many of those things are a bit beyond me. Instead I was inspired to see what I CAN do, not focus on what I CAN'T do.