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Fun thread...Buck Brannaman Clinic...which saddle?

St Louis! If you’re coming I’d love to meet up :slight_smile:

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Going from the western world to English, one of the instructors I’ve ridden with has chastised me for this. Also for wiggling around in the saddle sometimes when we are just standing relaxing. I’m like, I’m used to greenies and babies that need practice just relaxing and hanging out in different environments, and getting used to random movement and activity coming from me when I’m not actually asking them to do anything. I never understood the “don’t use your horse as a chair” attitude, it’s honestly so good for them to be used to just hanging around. Maybe worried about the horse’s back with English saddles, but people go fox hunting and on long hacks in those saddles too so dunno.

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I’m riding in Kentucky. Hope you have a great clinic!

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They do, but it’s not day after day all day in the saddle. That is what a lot of the ranch saddles were built for. I do know that at least my horse is much more comfortable in his western saddle, now that I’m riding in it more often.

Some study said it was a myth that it distributed weight better, but that’s not what he tells me. He’s gone from being kind of girthy, a little wiggly, to standing like a rock as his girth is being tightened and being able to stand still for minutes at a time. And yes, my dressage & hunter saddles were professionally fitted.

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I read somewhere of a clinic participant being upset that Buck didn’t have lunch with the participants or chitchat outside of the clinic. I have a lot of empathy for the Clinician: it is emotionally and mentally draining to watch, process, give feedback, watch some more…all day long, day after day. He earns his breaks, let him have them :slight_smile:

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Oh for sure. I know how I feel with a busy strategy week at work when I’m expected to be in an all day strategy session and “on” then go out to eat with the team until late at night, and back into the office at 7 am…and I only do that for a week out of the quarter. It’s exhausting. And he’s on the road all the time.

I’m honestly super excited to learn, nervous about meeting someone I have watched and idolized for a long time, and hopeful that I (and my horse) won’t be super overwhelmed. Maybe a little, which would stretch us and grow us, but not so much that I can’t learn (same thing goes with him).

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You might be surprised how much you can teach him about coping with company during the ground work phrase of all this.

And from experience watching Brannaman teach a session with plenty of horses who sound like yours: Try to pay close attention to your horse’s attention. Make his job harder when his mind is wandering. Make it easy or stop with the exercise for a moment when his focus on you and he seems ready to take the next command.

If you let your horse call, you lost his attention way earlier. Try not to be the handler that does that. It’s fantastic the your horse already knows some of the exercises. You can use those to give him security-- somewhere to put his mind that is easy because it is familiar.

I have this kind of mare-- alpha, suspicious and her head on swivel if you let her. But she has never been allowed to do that when in hand or under saddle. So now, if we are somewhere busy and she starts to look away from me in a way that’s out-of-line, I can do one quarter turn with her haunches or just a couple steps back, or whatever and she ends up back with me. It’s great because it’s an incredibly quick, low mileage and quiet way to check in with your horse and relax them.

She is a dressage horse. But I want that “in park” think that the western folks put into their horses. That’s not this mare’s mind (and she needs all of that sensitivity and forwardness for her job), but I have taught her that I’ll always keep her relaxed and that her life is easier if she just leaves her feet planted in the first place.

I like a stiff rope halter. That means it “lets go” or springs back off the horse’s face when I let go. IMO, you want a very quick release because it helps make clear what the horse did right to earn it. The soft ones make the application and release of pressure “mushy” and slow or, in other words, imprecise.

I use a 14’ rope. I’m 5’1". I wanted a rope as long as I could handle without having wads of it to manage. My idea was to make it possible for a horse to be a large-ish circle (if he earned that by paying close attention). Also, I come from English world, where the horses tend to be taller, so that added to my reluctance to keep a horse on a tight circle because my equipment forced me to. Folks get used to using ropes anywhere from 12’ to 16’ or so.

I use yacht rope because it’s heavy and a tad stiff. It gets stiffer as you use it and let it get dirty or wet and it ages some. Brannaman will say that rope has “life” to it, so it’s good for conveying the movement of your hand to the horse on the other end, even if there’s slack in the rope.

I tie the rope on to the bottom loop of the halter under the chin. I don’t put any snap or ring in there, and really not a heavy bull snap. I find those to be “too loud.” “Loud” means that I send a harsher signal to the horse than I intended. That’s bad horsemanship, for sure. “Loud” would be clocking the horse on the underside of the jaw with that heavy hunk of metal (if he didn’t really earn such an attention-getting signal.). But on a more subtle level, I find that the way the metal slides against the rope deprives me of a little bit of accuracy that a stiff-ish roped tied to the halter gives me. Here, I mean that you should have a horse that sees and feels you raise your hand a little bit and picks himself up, ready to follow whichever direction you take with your hand.

My favorite halter maker is Sundance Halters. https://www.sundancehalters.com/

She does a great job, will do custom stuff and has a good turn-around time. The ropes she makes seem to have a somewhat long section at the top where the rope makes a loop and is spliced back in. I like that section in these ropes because it adds just a tad more weight and stiffness right up next to the halter.

Enjoy your clinic!

That was exactly my hope. That with my feet on the ground I’d have a shot at getting him comfortable. He’s supreme alpha everywhere, in every pasture he’s been in. I have had to work pretty hard at rolling him back away from me as his MO was “be on top of you at every corner” and I can’t give an inch on his ground manners otherwise he is all up in your space.

I make him sound terrible, but he’s actually quite lovely when you enforce the rules.

How stiff is your stiff rope halter?

Mine is to the point that it’s kind of hard to tie. My softer one isn’t squishy, but it’s a bit softer & easier to tie. It has the longer rope - I’m tall but short armed and my horses are all over 16h and long necked so I want the space too - I think my stiff one is closer to 12’ where my softer one is more like 15’. I’ll have to try some others.

Who knew this was so complex!! :slight_smile:

Ooh… I get it-- horse and halter.

You must have the “This one goes to 11” stiff halter. Mine is not hard to tie. But I do try to find the stiffest ones I can. Learned all about how the stiffness and weight of ropes and rope halters mattered from Brannaman.

And the horse! My mare is like yours. I promise you, he can be made into a good citizen, if not a great, trustworthy soldier. I did that with mine and she is really a joy to be around now.

I think Buck would love helping you with this particular problem of horsemanship. What I saw him do was finally get frustrated with all the amped up horses who were barging into their handlers or running around them in circles or calling to other horses. In other words, he saw those horses’ lack really “macroscopic” behaviors and problems that had started much earlier and also caused by handlers who didn’t know that their horses weren’t paying enough attention.

I will say that as an English rider, I didn’t realize how unbroke on the ground we typically allow our horses to be before learning about how these Bridle Horse guys want theirs to be. I will never again think that I should have to drag a 1,000-pounder somewhere or that he should pull on me. That’s too much wear-and-tear on anyone’s body.

Also, when we do less with our amped up horses-- give them less direction and fewer demands because we’d like to help them calm down-- we are kind of hoping we can make an end-run around the mind to directly change their emotions. I don’t think that works “in battle conditions”-- like if you were doing a job with cattle.
You might be able to pet your long term horse who slightly unsure of something and bring him down a notch. But if he thinks he’s got a legit reason to be scared and might need to ignore you to save his ass in a high-stakes situation, your petting him will be irrelevant to him. So you need to find a way to intervene in his thinking, show him what job he can do that makes him feel safe, and then his emotions will take care of themselves. This isn’t quite how Brannaman explained it, but I think he does want thinking horses and he sees those thinking horses as having a very solid basis for being self-confident and confident in their rider in any situation.

So when I saw Brannaman lecture someone a bit about her horse who was first running around her, and then cutting a corner of a circle and coming into her space in a dangerous way, and finally whinnying, he told everyone that the whole ring of 30 horses should be very quiet because each horse should be attending carefully to his handler and not the other horses, nor any horse outside the ring. The fact that you already know you have this horse and this problem and that you want to raise you standards for maintaining his attention will make you a better student.

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Our good halters will stand off the horse’s face at rest. And we do not have any hardware, they are tied to the good lead rope which I want to say is 15’. Hard to tie makes me think you have a good one. Bring both and on a break you could combine them if needed.

I think what you could learn and practice here is reading his beady little mind (with all love intended) and getting out in front of his moves. Even with just a ring finger jiggle, or circle if that fails, or reading him when he wants to dial it up you will be ahead of him. Tuck him in when the mind wanders, a slight feel. If you can get to them before their activity does you will make big strides. As mvp noted. If you’re reacting, you’re behind the game. If you’re preventing, you’re getting into his noodle. And I think you will have a lot of good opportunities here.

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Yes. The western world in general is much more demanding of their horses obedience-wise. I grew up in the English disciplines as well, but have somewhat of a mixed foundation. I have always been fairly rigorous with their manners, but where I struggled was when other people were handling them and letting them get away with malarkey. Now that it’s just me handling them, things are much better.

His crime usually isn’t screaming when he gets off the trailer, but it’s definitely getting “excitable”. He arches his neck like a stud and snorts like the finest Arabian halter horse. Scared the crap out of me the first time I took him to a show just because I wasn’t sure someone hadn’t swapped my horse out on me and put some fancy saddlebred stud in there. He’s been encouraged his whole life (before I got him) to be big and fancy and now I’m telling him - nah, chill out bro - tail doesn’t need to be up over your back, and no, you don’t need to snort at the water puddles, you’ve seen those before.

The “show” environment brought it out in him and the clinic is at the same location. But he may surprise me. Last time we went, he was being overfed at the boarding facility on high-octane grain, and there were lots of very exciting things even in the longing area (hackney ponies being driven, whip snapping…everywhere…so much whip snapping). This is likely to be a bit less intense.

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Yes - I’m looking forward to that. It is hard because at home, he’s mostly chill. Horses he knows well don’t evoke this response in him unless they are doing exciting stuff, and no one here at the barn is doing exciting enough stuff for me to get him into that state.

I will definitely bring both halters. I think the one with the longer lead is integrated and not tied on, so I might have to get a new longer lead for the stiff one. I definitely want my space!

Oh… on the lead rope thing, a heavy yacht line lead rope has completely changed how my mare responds in the rope halter, and also is much easier on my partially crippled right hand than a lighter lead rope. I got mine from Knotty Girlz and it is made from 5/8" Diameter Premium Polyester Yacht Braid. I am not sure how it does this, but it seems to send a more solid “stay out of my space” message. I also went to 14 feet.

There are things I disagree with from the Western side, as well as the English side. I try to take the best of each. E.g. for my mare, I want her to be able to break away if she is stuck on something, so never tie her in a rope halter, only leather. (No, she does not “take advantage” of this. 4 broken halters in 13 1/2 years, never because she just wanted to leave without a reason.) At the same time, she must not ever drag me to grass, and she knows it. She will try to “hint” but she has a very specific signal when she is allowed to graze. I’ve watched some big name trainers in the area getting dragged around by big horses with chains over their noses trying to get to grass. Ugh!

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Ooh… you have quite a horse there.

I rode a National Show horse for awhile and I also watched some Big Eq Saddlebred girls show their horses, and I learned something that I didn’t know growing up riding TBs in the hunter and jumper divisions: There is value in the horse who is quite full of himself. These ones were spicy and very much Not Stupid. They could look like they were going to blow AND never put a foot wrong.

So a horse like yours who comes out to a show acting big (whether or not he feels quite that brave) is a lot of really good “raw material.” All you have to do is teach him to channel that to where you want. Of course, this kind of horse makes you think you might die and that you have piss-all chance of channeling anything about him anywhere. But if they can think while doing all that, they can channel their minds in this direction or that.

I like to think that should want to get horse very tuned into me while taking away the bare minimum of his natural chutzpah. If he can be like one of those Big Eq Saddlebreds (and you know those horses were very broke), who looked so forward and hot that they’d rocket off in any direction, yet somehow went exactly where directed, you really have something!

But if you have dull horse, you have to create any and all of his ambition. That doesn’t usually end well. Both man and beast are unhappy with one another, and you are personally pedaling every step of the way.

So why not teach him how to focus on you like a scholar rather than teaching him to chill? I think the horse with focus will chill. But chilling isn’t the point, per se. Rather having the horse be immanently rideable is. I have come to value the spice ingredient.

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I am so glad you have experienced that because my saddlebred friends are like what are you talking about, and my sport horse friends are terrified of my horse :rofl:

So - he did go in the ring at that show and clocked around like an old schoolie. And saddlebred shows are wild. There’s stuff flapping, music playing, people banging things…we only did a walk trot class because I was a chicken, but he was a gem.

In company at the canter though he is prone to airs above the ground. I’d prefer the feet to stay…not leaping through the air. I’m too old for that :rofl:

But yes - what I really want is for him to learn to be the same horse in all the places. He is totally chill and a little overly mellow at home, which makes the show environment even more of a shock. If I can bring those dials a little closer together, that would be nice. I should add that he is quite responsive at home it just has less…oomph…to it. We can of course get better at it!

Now I’m thinking I should have done H1. Oh well, there is always next year!

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Our NSH was a freebie from a Not Quite BNT friend who was gifted him b/c other people had fried his brain. He had been stalled and then taken out to run on a track full speed a few times every ten days. He was hot as a fritter and perfectly willing to lose his mind when the mood struck but he was still such a good horse. My husband loves a hot horse that eats up the trail and this one fit the bill, which is why our friend thought of my husband and we ended up with him.

Ours would go into a zone that we couldn’t get him out of; usually on the trail heading down when he would blow butterflies and nearly be a runaway but most of the time he was steady and flashy and kind, bold. Occasionally clumsy. Prone to panic at weird times that now as I look back I understand more than I did then, as you do when you are horse people always learning. But man he would pull a pack string, or a log or pack a toddler and look like a million bucks doing it; such a cool horse.

I think your horse has not been through the trauma that ours had been…and Buck knows our NQBNT personally and maybe they have had a talk about our poor horse at some point. I think your horse will want to be pulling cues from you about “take it down a few levels” and I think that you will get some good tools from the clinic.

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I think you’ll get something out of starting with Brannaman from his most basic course.

  1. You’ll learn about the level of attentiveness you should want/expect/be able to create in a horse. As I said, this can happen on the ground and with the useful challenge of that ring full of amped up horses.

  2. You’ll learn a tad about how to deal with-- and get the most from-- Buck, the guy. IMHO, the man has some ego, will pontificate some about his views on people and life, AND does not suffer fools. The problem is that some of his earnest but slightly clueless/not expert horseman students don’t know they are fools.

In the clinics I watched, you could get help from him… if you rode up and asked. But this seemed a bit hit-or-miss to me. Sometimes you got a really great “surgical strike” piece of advice and could profitably go back into the ground and work on that. Or you got him to help you and use that to have everyone learn about some issue you were having. Other people were publicly rebuffed with some snark.

This is not my pedagogical cup of tea, so take what I saw with a grain of salt.

But! I explain all that so that if you do past muster with Brannaman, and you got your horse very broke (plus proved you were competent and a good student yourself), I think it could be profitable to go to a clinic with the intention of working through this one canter issue. I mean, if your horse is great all of the time except for cantering in company, you need “company” and a good clinician like Brannaman to set up the situation for you to train in. I will bet he’d have your horse fixed up pronto via an exercise everyone did together in a round pen.

I had another (nicer) cowboy help me and my sensitive, alpha mare this way. So many of us have horses that are “a lot” at home, so we spend a lot of time riding them for quietness and relaxation there. That’s fine as far as it goes. And it’s even valuable for them to have the experience of finding relaxation with us. But because we don’t have or seek out a distracting “exterior world,” the wheels fall off the horses in the chaos of, say, a schooling ring. And so no one wants us to come to a horse show. But I’ll never be able to train my horse to stay with me in chaos without some chaos, so I have to go. It’s fantastic to be able to get a clinician who sees the virtue of gaining a horse’s attention even in the most unpredictable of situations and who realizes that he can create the right situation for helping you learn that. I find that the Western guys who do stuff with cattle are especially good at seeing the value of teaching a horse how to stay rideable in chaos as a distinct training problem.

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Had a super great clinic in Shelbyville, it was very good atmosphere for my guy who hasn’t been in too many big crowds. Got squished into a tiny indoor in the rain on Sunday and that made him over anxious so I quit an hour early when he relaxed a bit.

In this very fun exercise (this was Horsemanship 2) we chased the Hot Heels and had So.Much.Fun.
The first time he was pretty leery, the second time he was ON IT. I need one.

Soak it in!

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So true. I think it’s going to be good, and very useful all the way around.

The canter issue’s roots are probably not just the in-company issue (which as you mention, is hard to do without actually having other people to expose it) but also the same element that has caused me to not have a lot of confidence in this horse to begin with.

Meaning - he’s broke but he’s not really “with” you, and the changing directions exercise with the rollback that I’ve already been doing at home made that clear.

Anyway - I’m looking forward to Buck. I grew up in a rural area with lots of people like him. They do give it to you straight, no holds barred. I appreciate the snark, but not everyone does. The key is to keep your panties unwadded long enough to discern if there is any truth to it, and often there’s at least a speck :smiley:

Here’s hoping I can keep mine unwadded, my horse behaves at least a little, and we have a good clinic!

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Yay! That looks like SO much fun! So glad you had a good time! A full clinic report would be delightful!

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