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Mark Rashid Clinic Report - Beaver, Oregon
By Rick Roll
Hi folks -
For those who are interested the following is a brief summary of the events which occurred in Beaver, Oregon when Mark Rashid was here for four days.
The clinic was full and had a waiting list, from the moment it was announced.
It was unbelievable. It rained every day, all day long, It got colder each day. The first day it was 60. The last day it was 50. It was just like early winter. But, around here, summer does not start until mid July. We do use a covered arena for just that reason. So everybody was damp and cold. But no one got soaked. The round pen was inside. There is a big arena which is about 87' by 132' so there was lots of room.
We had 7 horses each day for four days. Five were colt starts and two were horsemanship sessions.
The first was a 2 year old Morgan colt. The owner was having trouble on the ground. But by the end of the first day the round pen work and longing had calmed the horse down and it was trying to work with the owner. The mare wasn't really as bad as the owner had thought. The owner was just focusing on the negative stuff. She left with a soft and gentle colt.
The things I learned from watching work with that horse were that the round pen isn't a place where you always run your horse around. Most of the time Mark just used the pen as a place to try to persuade the horse to start paying attention to him. 100% attention was never the requirement. It was enough that the horse was enough attention to get the job done.
The second horse was a mustang mare harvested about 4 years ago. The owner had gentled her and, according to Mark, had done a pretty good job. He got a really good mare and she is very forgiving. He was there because he could not get his horse to go forward when he got on to ride. Mark worked her on the ground just like a restart.
On the fourth day, the owner saddled and rode her. She had trouble going forward, but it was because she had not yet learned to carry the live weight of the rider in a balanced way. So Mark had the rider bond her head a little, until she felt she needed to move her feet to re-balance her body with her head position. She had to walk to do that. Then she would walk to the fence and lean on it for balance. Mark said it was her fifth leg. After awhile, they were going quite nicely in the round pen and the mare had a real good expression.
The things I learned from those sessions were that it is great not to have to bang on a horse to get it to go, especially when it is unsure of its own
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ability to balance and move. The owner also reported the horse was not willing to back I learned that all of the basic riding maneuvers can be tuned up with long line work. The result was quite impressive. I also learned that, if we can understand what is going on with our horses, we can use that understanding to give them what they need to work through their specific issues.
The next was a palomino mustang owned by the same family that owned the mustang mare. This palomino mare had been in a wreck which involved long lines. She got tangled up, ran through a round pen panel and ran 2 miles to town with the ropes chasing her. She then ran 1 mile back before being caught and stalled. As a result she was terrified of ropes. Mark spent the entire four days getting that mare used to ropes.
The mare's posture and expression around ropes pretty much said it all. At the end she was starting to accept ropes tossed on her back and tossed around her legs. Mark spend quite a bit of time showing the owners what to do and helped them do it. He told them it would take a period of consistent work to bring her around to where she was ok with ropes. Although the horse was much improved, the jury is still out on that situation. Both owners and their horses will be back next year.
I learned a lot about patience, consistency and small steps during these sessions. Mark stated that, in his opinion, it took people about 6 hours to soak on the people lesson and that it took the horse about 12 hours to soak on the horse lesson. He was very good about pointing out how each improved during each successive session.
The rider had a big bay mare that wouldn't lope and would take over and pick the direction and speed of travel. Mark had this rider fix her rein to her thigh when the horse pulled on her and had her go straight when the horse did not pull. He had her circle when the horse wanted to run off and go straight when the horse moved at the requested gate. At the end of the fourth lesson the horse was much more responsive to the rider and both were loping and both were happy.
The next horse was a pretty little (as in very little) filly who was running over the owner and who would strike at clippers and would not bathe without a major fracas. Mark started her with longing and long line driving. He worked on teaching her to pay attention to the human and also started her getting used to clippers. Best guess was that the owners had just asked this little mare for too much too quickly. When the little mare left, she was about 80% improved and the owners were about 80% improved. Mark suggested that if they kept working on their part (patience and rope skills) the little mare would improve right along with them, because the mare was happier with that approach.
My wife did a colt start on a two year old she just bought. Her colt, Lucille,
did very well. She was very light right from the beginning and very quick
to learn.
She worried very little. So he started her using longing and long lines on
the first and second days. The third day we started to saddle her and found out she had come up lame. Saddling was postponed until the next day to give us time to figure
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out what the problem was. On that third day, we got her used to the pad, the saddle and taught her to accept the bit. There was an interesting thing about the bitting process. At first, the little mare would just raise her head up in the air. My wife is vertically challenged so she could not reach the horse's head. Mark started by letting the horse pick up the lead rope, until she was comfortable with that. Then, as Mark started to introduce the bit, the horse raised its head to avoid the bit. Mark put his hand on her chin and pushed her head up. After a minute or so the mare decided she did not want her head up and began to try to put it down. Mark would let her do that. They went through that process for about five minutes and then there was a pretty big change in her. She would still raise her head on occasion but not as far and not for long.
We saddled her the next day, because she was much better. She humped up and all four feet left the ground two times and then it was over. She is still a little bumpy under the saddle so we will just drive her in the saddle for awhile. We are not in any hurry to get on. We have lots of things to work on, including bitting and saddling. We will worry about getting on, after some of the other things get better.
The last rider was my friend Jeannie, who posted her clinic report earlier.
This year's clinic was a lot like last years clinic. A lot of horses and riders went though. There was never a harsh word about a horse or rider. No horses were whacked or smacked. It was all fun and the horses and people learned a lot.
We will be doing 7 days of clinic in Sept 2001 with Mark.
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