It was very certainly a thought provoking clinic with many things to lick and chew over. In fact we were only going to go on the Saturday and maybe leave early to see to the horses. We actually stayed the whole time Saturday and Sunday (and froze our bits off!).
Being ex-Parelli he was essentially very similar in a lot of ways but he had several concepts that were different (or not as similar). The easiest way to cover these is to list them first then try and explain them. Not easy as I'm sure there were far more subtleties to it than I picked up. So, in no particular order:
- Draw first not drive
- Sit, stay, disconnect, reconnect
- Intent not "Life"
- Flexion, Impulsion, Respect in that order
- Don't rope wiggle
- Scoring who wins the game.
- Unconfidence vs dominance (ears forward, ears back)
1. Honza made a big thing about not driving the horse away at the start of the relationship. He didn't like "Join Up" or The Catching Game or The Circling Game. His premise was that if you start off driving the horse away it'll not want to come back to you, so by the time you get to Liberty if you put any pressure on it, it'll leave. If you start by establishing draw, when you get around to sending the horse away, it'll want to come back to you. The horse will want to be close to you. So instead of standing as far away as it can looking at you, it will spend the whole time saying "Can I come to you, please?". This is certainly a very attractive proposition and matches up with some of the experiences that Max and I have had with both Harley & Archie. The way he achieves it is by not driving Z1/2 away - no circling. He draws Z1 to his belly button. He plays stick to me but he backs away drawing the horse to him and keeping its nose on his belly button. The horse must not move its nose more than one degree away from your BB. If it does just re direct it back again. When you stop it must keep its nose there and relax. Safety and comfort is found in your BB. Pretty soon they seek your BB and even when their life is up, if you can get them to put their nose in your BB they will relax. This is the point at which you can introduce flexion (see point 4). Now start pushing Z2 away as you back up, but keep Z1 on your BB. When this is firmly established you can start to move backwards in circles pushing Z2 away whilst Z1 stays on your BB. Then you can move back to alongside the horse. Now you're looking towards close range circling with their nose on your BB. If you want them to circle further out you have to push them out and when you stop pushing they fall back in towards you. Basically they really, really, really want to be with you. Isn't that The Dream?
2. Ok,this is an interesting extension of Pat's Sit-Stay model. Park your horse somewhere (preferably not in too big an arena) and walk away with purpose (it should be obvious to the horse that it's not supposed to follow you, by your body language & intent) then turn around and look at Z4 with that "Turn and look at me" look. If your horse doesn't turn and look at you with both eyes and say "Yes?", start to approach its Z4 with an "I'm going to bite you" look. If you get close enough to flick it with your Carrot Stick (CS) then do so. It should then spin round to look at you. If it approaches you, back it up to where you left it, go in and start again. Start close and gradually increase the distance. If you horse leaves then intercept its Z1, stop it, disengage Z4, back it up. The horse should understand that it hasn't gained anything by moving and it's better off standing still. Usually horses will head for corners, if there are any. At liberty you don't want them to gain comfort by running off or standing in a corner, so you need to stop them, disengage them and back them up. You need to repeat this Sit/Stay exercise all over the area (including corners) and move to bigger areas, when you can do it in small areas. You should be the centre of your horse's attention all the time, but he should also know when he should wait for you. Honza says that this is his "bread", he does it everyday and uses it all the time with all his horses, even Gaston.
3. When we're learning how to do Parelli and are teaching our horses that we can use our body language, we tend over-do the life-up/life-down thing. In some ways we have to do that so we become aware of our own life energy (or Chi, to borrow from Eastern philosophy & Martial Arts). We have to teach ourselves to control our energy, thoughts, emotions and intent. Likewise we are also explaining to the horse that we are controlling these things (unlike most humans) and that it means something. "Everything means something and nothing means nothing". What Honza had his students doing was refining it, so that instead of using gross exaggerations they could just use intent. So here's how it goes: Back the horse up using the CS (see point 5). The horse should move instantly without the CS, just on your intent. If not use the CS. When you stop and drop your intent the horse should instantly stop. When you're (I initially put "they're" but it's actually both of you) doing that well then step towards the horse with the intention of rubbing its chest with your CS. If it moves back, follow it until it stops and rub it. Repeat until it doesn't move. Now use point 6 until you and your horse have totally sussed it. Expand this out in to everything else you do with your horse. No more gross Life-up/Life-down, just intent until it seems to an outsider that your horse is telepathic and you dance together.
4. Honza seemed to suggest that the Parelli system of Respect - Impulsion - Flexion doesn't make sense in the context of classical dressage and to horsemen (gender non-specific) who already have feel and timing. He seemed to suggest that once you have sufficient respect not to get killed that it makes more sense to work backwards. Achieve some flexion before you ask for impulsion. If you're working on points 1,2 & 3 then the respect will come, the enthusiasm will also be there to provide the impulsion. For impulsion go back to the Nose in the BB game and as your intention to step back starts to rise the horse should start to step forward so that you both move together. He quoted Ray Hunt "Don't Leave without the horse and don't let the horse leave without you". To teach it play it as a game where if, having given them ample opportunity to read your intent (long phase 1) they don't step with you, you flick them on Z4 with your CS&SS (quick phase 2,3,4). Pretty soon they'll be very keen to follow you. You can also do it starting a little further out and pretty soon they'll canter to you (This can be a bit scary). It's interesting to note that in Parelli one of the basic things we do once we can actually approach our horse, is to halter them and as we do it we ask for a little flexion (turn their nose toward us). Likewise when we take the halter off we ask for a little flexion. If we don't get that flexion when we put the halter on, we get brace. Mental, emotional and physical brace. Which isn't a good starting point for the rest of whatever we do that day.
5. This is a quick one. If you wiggle the rope to back a horse up, it invariably raises its head up and away from the pressure. If you tap a horse on the chest it tends to drop its head to move backwards. We are looking for our horses to relax and stretch out and down. They can't do this if their heads are up in the air. We need to teach our horse to drop their heads and stretch out & down.
6. This one is a little harder to explain succinctly. When playing the backing up or rubbing game in point 3 count how many times you have to touch the horse when backing compared to how many times the horse moves so you don't need to touch it. i.e. your score against the horses score. Again when you're intending to rub the horse how many times does it stand still compared to moving away. i.e. Horse's score compared to your score. If you then look at these two scores you have an objective measure of how much Drive & how much Draw you have. It also indicates how well you both are doing and what you need to focus on more .
7. If a horse is unconfident they are less likely to come to you and more likely to run away. If a horse is confident to the point of dominance then it is more likely to come in to you (or at you), albeit in a driving manner. Honza described an analogue scale, in the form of a meter, from Unconfident to Dominant where balanced was in the middle. He said that when playing at Liberty (or in Honza's case, doing shows) you want more Dominance because the last thing you want is the horse to leave. He also suggested that you could build up a store of confidence by pushing the meter further toward dominance and then use it up by doing things that use it, such as sending the horse away or spins etc. He asserted that the horse's ear position was a measure of this. If they are back they are driving, therefore confident. If they are forward they are questioning therefore uncertain, therefore on the unconfident side. I struggle with the second part as we've all seen scared horses put their ears back and leave. I feel that it is probably a deliberate over simplification to get the point over and that the truth is almost certainly a complex, context sensitive, moment by moment interpretation. Either way, he doesn't tend to do the "Take that look off your face".
Please bear in mind that these are the concepts as I understand them and so are subject to my interpretation. They may not be accurate (we all perceive the world through the filter of our experience) and I am still not sure with how much I agree, but Honza is a phenomenal horseman and it sure makes you think. Which has got to be good.
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