06.27.08
Riding in Tom Curtin’s Horsemanship clinic
Tom Curtin is an itinerant cowboy horse trainer, with ranches in Montana and in Florida. He and his wife Trina travel around the country coaching horses and their riders, and about a year ago we gave our deposit to take Glendale into his Horsemanship clinic on June 21-23. Tom comes to Gelinas Farm every summer and runs a few clinics, among them Colt Starting, Horsemanship, and Cow Work. We had Gilford in two of Tom’s clinics in past years. (The only reason we didn’t put Glendale into Tom’s Colt Starting clinic last summer was because he was SO young, in June he wasn’t even two years old yet.)
Joanne Gelinas considers Tom her mentor and he has coached her and her assistants for years. Tom helped us with hitching Gilford for the first time at Joanne’s when Gil was two (Tom knows a lot about driving horses too.) Hubby rode Gilford the at age 3 in Tom’s Horsemanship Clinic. The Horsemanship clinic is for learning and improving the rider’s skills, establishing control over the horse’s feet, and thus improving the communication between rider and horse.
Connie starting out with Glendale on first day of Clinic (center)… Joanne Gelinas at right of pix on one of her youngsters in training.
HORSEMANSHIP CLINIC DAY 1
There were 25 total horses in this clinic, working in Joanne’s huge (fortunately) outdoor arena. This was more horses than young Glendale had ever seen in one place in his life. Since Glen had also never been schooled in a ring with horses he wasn’t familiar with, learning to feel comfortable with all these strange horses proved to be his greatest challenge.
Glen was nervous on first entering the arena when only a few of the other riders were in, and I worked on keeping his attention on me and trying to get him to relax. He totally could not stand still, so I had him do maneuvers, move off my leg and flex his head and neck to each side to get him to soften and listen to the reins and my legs. I talked soothingly to him a lot too, but I could tell he was quite distracted and edgy; every time another horse was near, he was both interested in it and worried about it all at the same time, and he did a lot of scooting around reacting to the other horse’s movements as they were also being warmed up. It took at least ten minutes before I felt he was settling down a little.
Glendale was pretty insecure and needed a large personal space between himself and the many unknown horses he was suddenly thrown into a ring with…
When all 25 riders were in, Tom did some preliminary demos while everyone sat their horses and watched, except for me and poor Glendale who couldn’t stand still so I continued trying to maintain his focus. Then Tom asked us all to start walking circling the ring. Some of Tom’s typical instructions: “Without bothering your horse, see how slowly you can get your horse to walk– see if you can speed up his walk– see how slowly you can get him to stop– see how quickly he’ll stop, without getting him bothered– now walk a half circle to the right and keep going straight– now come with your left hand and left leg [meaning, behind the girth] and move your horse’s hindquarters to the right a half turn, then keep on walking– now see how slowly you can stop your horse– now see if you can pick up a softness and get your horse’s nose to come down and in– now take that softness and see if you can keep it while backing your horse five steps straight and stop.”
As you can tell, we were practicing control of our horse’s feet; the softness Tom talks about is getting the horse to give to the bit and not resist by stiffening his neck or tensing up and raising his head. The moving of his hindquarters is a pivot on the front end, accomplished through a leg yield. Every instruction was prefaced by “without bothering your horse…,” to keep us focused on how the horse felt about performing these tasks and how he reacted to our cues.
This is the type of chaos that my green horse was reacting to… here everyone is circling to change directions.
Glendale was too nervous to go between another horse and the rail of the arena, so I kept him towards the inside of the ring. He was nervous hearing another horse come up on him from behind. He was doing the maneuvers for me but was listening to me with only part of his mind; I could feel it in his body, and I could see his ears when one would turn toward me as I cued him with rein or leg, but the other ear would be paying attention to his next door neighbor.
He managed to deal with all this for a while and go along pretty well, reacting to another horse only when it came too close. Before long Tom asked the class to pick up a trot. Glen felt real nervous then, hearing and seeing all the other horses go faster, so I trotted him for short spells then walked him, still keeping to the inside of the ring out of the crowd. We practiced varying our speed of trot, circling to change directions (which was pretty wild for Glen when suddenly all the horses changed their directions, circling around all over the place as it appeared to him.)
Soon Tom had us walk again, and had half the class point their horses the opposite way of the ring. Then we were to walk in opposite directions by weaving our horses in and out between each other. Glen was disconcerted about this, but was doing pretty well so long as the oncoming horse gave him a wide berth, and most people were doing just that. But then Tom wanted us to do the weaving at a trot, and that proved too much for Glendale. He managed to do a couple of weaves, but then the next oncoming rider, apparently misreading the direction I was starting to take Glen, did a super-quick cow pony dodge in front of Glen’s nose to change direction, and Glen swerved to avoid him, pitching me off the other side of him when he moved sideways so fast he unseated me.
OK, I have never professed to be a cowgirl or to have the most secure seat in the world, and I don’t practice ring work but I have stayed on some pretty quick moves out on the trail (momma mare IS an Arabian, after all). This move to me came out of nowhere, although I know if I had been reading Glendale well enough I wouldn’t have gotten myself in that situation. Luckily I didn’t hurt anything (except a rope burn on my finger), and I got right back on immediately. After that I didn’t try weaving at the trot because I knew my horse wasn’t ready for that. The rest of the class was more practicing of steering control. The class was ended after 2 hours.
