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Post by el on Jun 16, 2015 1:22:50 GMT
Best buck clinic ever. He was genius - patient and happy!!
Learned a lot. Fab organisation. Hugely impressed with all. Great fun catching up also. Camilla rocked!
Write up soon....
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Post by el on Jun 16, 2015 21:56:27 GMT
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Post by breakfast on Jun 16, 2015 22:25:31 GMT
Wait, what is position #2? What is rein position #3???
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Post by el on Jun 16, 2015 22:26:36 GMT
I think rein position 1 is at withers. Rein Position 2 is sideways from your hip a little.
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Post by el on Jun 16, 2015 22:27:54 GMT
The seat position is 1 (forward) 2 (pelvis straight) 3 pelvis tipped back in stop / slow down position.
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Post by el on Jun 16, 2015 22:28:35 GMT
He was very happy and friendly at clinic. Seemed to really enjoy teaching!
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Post by snigsby on Jun 17, 2015 7:49:25 GMT
I enjoyed catching up with old friends and meeting new ones! There is never as long as I'd like to chat,though.
I think what I saw seems different to el as I have a different type of thinker apparatus lol. Mine is dead simple.
What struck me the most was how identical the exercises were to those I got from the Portuguese dressage master,Dom Francisco. Which I could sum up as - take,and maintain, your horse's proffered light contact while doing circles and serpentines - this will gradually produce a horse who finds his balance and bearing.
There was talk of self carriage (bearing) and I have a brilliant illustration of a horse's skeleton showing that in self carriage, the horse's skull practically hangs off the first vertebrae (or atlas joint). If you do the serpentines as Buck describes, there is no need to worry about balance/self carriage - the horse will find this naturally as he/she becomes more athletic.
Also, although Buck and Martin use different ways of describing it - they both do much the same thing. Kas tells me this is called the Texas Vaquero style of horsemanship.I think I might have struggled if I hadn't been to two of Martin's clinics previously.
I am happy with my total clinic experience now and am going to make even stronger efforts to take Smokey to Martin's next year (if there is one) - I don't have any notion to see anyone else at present. (Although I would make an exception for Kate if only there was one nearer to me - all this travelling to get there is getting stale!)
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Post by kas on Jun 17, 2015 10:49:18 GMT
I found it really interesting as well. Some really good exercises and some of the things he said about how to treat the horse, when to give etc every useful. Rather like Snigs, all these clinic experiences have pointed me in a direction that I'm going to follow. In my case it's the California Vaquero as followed by Steve H and Jeff Sanders. My gut feeling is that some of the things Buck teaches, for example the body positions, will be a bit conflicting with what's taught by the California crowd so I'm going to steer in that direction, rather than Buck and Martin's. Oh, that particularly applies to how the snaffle bit is used. I'm with Jeff on that one. There are different ways to get to the same goals in horsemanship, there's no doubt that Buck is a great horseman, and in addition to that he has an amazing "energy" about him that came through even in the arena. My reservations with the format of the clinic are about the numbers of people riding at once. 24 brave people riding in the arena at the same time... which meant that Buck didn't really get to connect with each of them... and I'm sure that some people didn't understand what they were supposed to be doing.. or thought that they did and they didn't... so there could potentially be quite a few people trundling off home to practise the wrong thing. In which case they stand little chance of achieving what he does. The independent learners who had done their homework appeared to get much more out of it.
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Post by tommytrot1 on Jun 18, 2015 19:38:47 GMT
I had a great time catching up with every one too, and consolidated lots of information which I had already been taught, he seemed to make things more sense now. He was very generous with his time, I went and got my Poster signed and to say hello, he just didn't scribble his name on, he wrote mine and a message, he must have been so tired. I told him I had a Standardbred Pacer and it was fun at times trying to work out were his feet were he said he found them to have great temperaments, all I could think of was Tom in full strop monster mode so mumbled something. I now feel bad as I don't give HRH (his royal horseness)enough credit, he does in fact have a great temperament. Although anyone who has seen us at Clinics having a domestic in a corner somewhere may disagree we have morphed into and old married couple! he is, as they say good to, Box (although he doesn't like traveling backwards!)Shoe and Catch, and once we have stopped bickering he really tries hard to do what I am asking, and as many of you have witnessed, very patient when I am practicing my Knitting I'm really looking forward to Canterbury and Breakfast you are going to have a great time to, almost wish I could come down and spectate again. Kaz you said you would look out some of HRH's airs above the ground pictures
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Post by kas on Jun 19, 2015 7:50:58 GMT
That's going to take a bit of searching TT, but I will do it!
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Post by kas on Jun 19, 2015 19:01:15 GMT
Some quotes from the event:
"I don't want to see you sitting around letting the air go through your ears. You can do that when you leave." He spoke of people using "crutches and gimmicks" to make up for sorry horsemanship. This referred to the garbage used in a show jumping warm up arena. He said that the goal was to have classical movement when riding with one hand. "No pressure without purpose." About ducking down towards the hind end to disengage wink emoticon "That crouching tiger/flying dragon thing - don't do that. Horsemen laugh at people like you!" On asking a horse to backup from the ground - "Don't wave the rope around from side to side. You look like you're having a fit."
This is worth thinking about - when you've got your horse halted - calculate how long the horse can stand still and be content. Then before he fails, move him and do something on his terms.
Soft feel - be still and see where your horse gives to you. Be subtle and release at the slightest change. When he asks for soft feel he just waits, he doesn't change anything, he doesn't do more. If the horse pushes just keep him straight and wait. Let him thing. Lateral flexion will make it harder for him. "You can't do too much of this but you have to be subtle. If you do too much you take the think away from your horse."
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Post by el on Jun 19, 2015 19:51:45 GMT
Great. Currently away on business but am going to go home early cos I miss working my horse roll on Monday.
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Post by kas on Jun 20, 2015 9:01:12 GMT
I'll pull this all together properly in the next couple of days and share, just posted this on my FB. I suppose my main reservations are around the fact that with 24 riders in the arena Buck didn't really have much time to look at them as individuals and give them feedback. Just think of how many minutes there are in 3 hours, divide that by 24, then bear in mind that Buck was riding a green horse and spent plenty of time working with him... and also talking and explaining the exercises. The rides all seemed very pleased, but I felt that they suffered from it being a bit "one size fits all". That's my personal opinion, it doesn't detract from the huge amount of knowledge Buck shared with them, or the amazing stuff he was showing them. For example, I did not see the point of asking every horse quite firmly for 90 degree flexion for the serpentines without first knowing if any of the horses were beyond that stage in training already. I've agreed to disagree with a couple of friends over this I just felt - why would you bend a horse around like that without checking if the soft lateral feel was there already? I know in a couple of horses it was. I also think that if you can ask a rider to remove one bit of equipment because you don't think it's beneficial or being used incorrectly, then why not another? I'll say no more about that because I know what it's like to ride in the public eye and I respect all of the riders for putting themselves out there. It's a comment about the responsibility of the trainer really. In summary I've got pages and pages of notes stuffed with things I'll use. I prefer the style of other trainers I'm working with, in terms of balance, use of the snaffle bit and hackamore, and how the horse is first approached to carry out a movement. That's just personal preference. I felt Buck was a real old-fashioned gentleman with an almost indescribable energy about him. Compared to most training we see, including in the "natural horsemanship" world, any horse he works with is getting a brilliant deal.
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Post by breakfast on Jun 21, 2015 22:04:41 GMT
With thirty of us in the arena this time around we certainly didn't get a lot of individual attention a lot of the time, but if you had a question Buck would answer it at any point, which was what I found most useful. Also he often had suggestions that applied to everyone. For me the discipline of trying to follow through the exercises and improve the quality of the work even in things where we mostly had it ( we didn't cover much ground with Buck that I hadn't done some work on with Iris and we were probably further along that road than most people there ) but a lot of the time I was also working on helping my mare feel better about being in that very challenging environment, where she did great ( except for that one time ) and there certainly were things around picking up and maintaining a soft feel that we really needed to work on. I probably covered more new ground in the afternoon sessions partly because they were oriented towards jumping - I don't think I've even ridden Iris over a pole before - and partly because they split us into flatwork and jumps groups so it was only fifteen(ish) people in the arena each time, which is still quite a few, but it meant we could do work on picking up our canter leads and the like.
I certainly got a lot out of having that much focus and that much time with Iris and Buck had one of his apprentices along to lend a hand if someone was really getting into trouble, but I think if I had been somewhere in the middle and lost in the work, I just don't know how much I would have got out of it. Everyone did seem to have enjoyed it though, so I guess maybe it's easier to get along with than it looks.
Certainly riding with someone like Steve offers better value and if someone wanted a large-audience clinic to ride in I think Mark Rashid gives you a lot more direct attention, but Buck is a very sound trainer and you could get a fair distance riding with him, for sure. You could add to it a whole lot if you had watched and worked through 7 Clinics before you went.
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