HARRY WHITNEY Clinic

by Grant A. Walske

First off I must say that I hadn't heard of Harry Whitney prior to his frequent mention on this list. He got such good press that I thought it worthwhile to fly clear across the country to see him. I am very pleased that I did. Not only did I get to see a great horseman, but I met up with some old friends, made some new ones and got to put some faces to names and compare the walk with the talk.

The format of the clinic, devised by Ross Jacobs, was interesting in that the riders came on in shifts of 3 for 2 hours each day. One of the disadvantages, I see, of riding in a clinic is that you tend to get focused on your own problems and maybe those of the guy next to you and so don't get to benefit from those of the rest of the group. This format solves that problem. You get probably more individual attention from the clinician in a small group and then you get to sit back and reflect on what you did and to watch and learn from everyone elses problems. An excellent format. If you wanted to stay in the arena and play with your horse after your session, Harry didn't mind. Only a few did though. Interestingly, some just went home!??...other commitments I guess.

The Friday night session was a 'demo' with Harry playing with a couple of young horses. It was billed by Ross as going to be a session on how to teach your horse some tricks but due to the volume of questions not much hands-on horse work was done but I feel I got more value from listening to the man, with pertenent demos using the horses, than I perhaps would have had he simply tought some 'tricks'. Not that tricks aren't valid. They can be useful and are another interactiion with your horse that strengthens the bond. The talk was centred on how a horse 'thinks' and how best to communicate with him. CPR/R. As far as the tricks were concerned, Harry showed us how to teach a horse to shake and nod his head. Impressed the hell out of my daughter when I asked my horse some questions and got the correct answers yesterday.

Most of the riders were fairly green, as were most of the horses. There were more females then males, both in the peanut gallery and participating with horses, as is usually the case. Why is that? Do females know when they don't know? Are they less afraid to let others know that they don't know? Why did the males attend? Because they are Sensitive New Age Guys? Because all the women they know were going to be there? Or did we just go to learn more about horses?

As I said, the participants came on in shifts of 3 and Harry asked each what they wanted to work on. As I said, most were pretty green riders with green horses and some weren't too sure about what they wanted to work on...not surprising and I'm not knocking it...so pretty much everyone started on the ground, working on such as controlling the horses movements, having him respect the handlers space and having him keep his attention on the handler.

It was interesting to note that many were quite 'gross' in their cues. By that I mean they started off with a lot of pressure instead of "starting off where you want to end up", to quote myself. They tended to offer very little in the way of subtlety as a place to start. It seemed to me that those most caught up in this were the ones who'd obviously been to PHN clinics (you could tell by the movements). Harry explained the importance of offering the cue in a subtle manner and the importance of getting a result, explaining that to do that you start light, increase the pressure until something happens. Something happening most definitely included the horse having a try, even in an undesired 'direction". When the horse is having the try, the pressure should be kept there, but not increased, until the try is in the right direction then and comes the release. Therein, in my opinion, is the most difficult part of training horses - to recognise when a horse is trying and to have the feel and timing to release early enough and quickly enough for the horse to recognise it and relate it to what he just did. Often we are too late and thus reward the wrong thing.

A thing that was of interest to me was bending a horse to a stop. I have always had the idea that you bent a horse to a STOP. A stop being when the feet stopped moving. Harry pointed out that if you encourage your horse to stop in this way with a bend then you are isolating the hind feet from the reins instead of connecting the two and you will create problems further down the road. Harry reckons that the horse should stop under and over with the hind on just a cue from the rein whereas I had the idea that you should add leg to get the hind end yield. I struggled with this for a bit and am still not totally convinced it seems to be working for us ok, since I've got back home.

I thought that I would have trouble with my horse yielding the hind end to ONLY the rein without aid from my leg since we have been operating that way for all of his life but found, when I got home, that there was no problem for him. He will either stop his feet or yield his hind end with only a head and neck bend. I can only put this down to the horse being very sensitive to me and the small difference in signals I put out when I want no movement and when I want him to yield his hind end. Not surprising, I guess, considering all the time we have spent together.

Harry also stressed the importance in getting some softness in the horse before releasing him from the bend and reckoned that planted feet indicate a brace in the horse. He said that too many people released the horse too soon and thus rewarded this brace and resistance in the horse.

A lot of time was also spent in getting softness on the move from the ground by moving the horse around you but close enough to where you had some control over his head, shoulder and hind with the idea being to get the horse to moving in an arc around you. You really cannot get this, at the start, out on the end of a 12' lead. To follow on from this while mounted the riders started with the hind end yield from a rein cue, as above, then when this was happening he had the riders open the rein some to where the horse was starting to yield the front across a bit and the horse then stated to circle with his body in the arc with some softness. When this happened the rider could open the arc and direct the horse elsewhere. I've tried this with my daughter's new horse (who can be a bit heavy in the hand) and it is having some effect already. I like it. Harry also stressed the importance of rather than riding down to a stop, riding down to a backup with the idea again being to get the back feet connected to the rein and under the horse.

There was lots of other really good stuff covered but these were a few of the highlights for me. It was good to see the changes in both horses and riders in the two days.

I found Harry to be an excellent communicator as well as a top horseman. He is a very friendly guy and was quite willing to hang around during lunch and after the sessions to answer questions. This is not something that I have found everyone, whose clinics I have attended, willing to do.

Anyway, enough from me. I will let some of the others such as John Crago tell you how it went from their point of view.

Oh, yes, the Exploding Box. This came up while Harry was discussing how important it was to have your horse keep his attention on you...safety, keeps his mind off other distractions, etc. As I said, directly related to what we were talking about the past few days. Picture a round yard with box in the middle. In the box is explosive and you have the button to make it explode. Horse comes in to the round yard and sees the box.. He watches it for a bit, walks up to it, smells it, not a big deal, just a box, so he ignores it. As soon as he takes his attention off it, you press the button...BOOM. The next time, same yard, same horse, same box. He comes in, sees the box and really starts to watch it. He watches and watches but nothing happens so he gets bored and looks over the fence. You push the button...BOOM. Do that a few more times; everytime the horse takes his attention from the box, you push the button. Very soon he will work out how to stop it from exploding. JUST KEEP WATCHING THE BOX. After a bit you replace the explosive with a bit of string that just moves the lid of the box a bit. Do you think the horse will start to watch the box again when he sees the lid move?

That is a paraphrase of the parable of the Exploding Box from Brother Harry Whitney. Get along to one of his clinics if you can.