Let’s not say that one discipline is inherently better or worse than the other, because it is the application of horsemanship in any discipline that dictates the success of the horse (and I don’t necessarily mean in the show ring).
THANK YOU. it’s pointless to point fingers at anyone. Three are pointing back at you. Please let that argument die.
[QUOTE=katarine;7252846]
Let’s not say that one discipline is inherently better or worse than the other, because it is the application of horsemanship in any discipline that dictates the success of the horse (and I don’t necessarily mean in the show ring).
THANK YOU. it’s pointless to point fingers at anyone. Three are pointing back at you. Please let that argument die.[/QUOTE]
I think that some seem to find the expressed goal of “connection” with their horses only, if you read their posts, in the BB type clinicians and say they don’t with dressage instructors.
I wonder, did they really listen to the dressage instructors?
Or maybe did they follow what they were asking them to do mindlessly, as adding numbers in a mathematical problem, not realizing the same “mystique” of “connection” is there, no matter what we are learning, what horse is in front of us, what saddle it is wearing?
Bluey I’ve heard(insert discipline name) instructors helping their riders find a feel/connection/relationship/life between them and their horse, and I’ve also heard the same (insert discipline name) instructors that were 100% all about nuts and bolts, no emotion or life or feel. One of my area’s most treasured (insert discipline name)clinicians is very funny and asks a lot of his riders but I’ve never heard him offer them anything remotely like ‘feel’ or life. It’s all maneuvers.
‘over his back’ is not the same thing as ‘in between his ears’
[QUOTE=katarine;7253024]
Bluey I’ve heard(insert discipline name) instructors helping their riders find a feel/connection/relationship/life between them and their horse, and I’ve also heard the same (insert discipline name) instructors that were 100% all about nuts and bolts, no emotion or life or feel. One of my area’s most treasured (insert discipline name)clinicians is very funny and asks a lot of his riders but I’ve never heard him offer them anything remotely like ‘feel’ or life. It’s all maneuvers.
‘over his back’ is not the same thing as ‘in between his ears’[/QUOTE]
In all disciplines, that you can find, even in BB type clinicians, if the task at hand is maneuvers.
I don’t think, as some seem to be pointing out, that happens in dressage as a discipline only.
It is easy to say “dressage horses stay sound into their teens and western horses are broke down by ten” - yet I’ve seen plenty of dressage horses ruined by poor training methods, endless 20-m circles, being holed-up in box stalls 23 hours a day, etc.
Well, I didn’t say that. Or mean that. I DO think there are plenty of dressage horses, hunters, breed-show-pleasure horses, ranch horses, broken down early in life from poor riding.
I think lots of people get excited about Buck being, say, less than complimentary about most ‘Dressage’ (as in modern competition) riders.
I don’t think Buck is being derogatory about dressage. Rather, he is being derogatory about people doing damage to their horses in the name of (X) ‘discipline’. And you can insert ANY ‘discipline’ there, especially including ‘natural horsemanship’, there are LOTS of clinic-teachers out there who claim to have been trained with Tom, Bill, and/or Ray…and some of whom DID ride quite a bit with them…who are doing horses no favors.
And as to the original question, regarding ‘dressage’ and ‘Buck Brannaman’: I still maintain that there is only one way a horse truly moves, truly works physiologically in motion, to stay sound. I think ‘classical dressage’ or ‘French school dressage’ or ‘high school’ are after the same thing, as are a very few competition dressage riders. I also think Buck knows more about how a horse moves, ie basic dressage, than almost anyone is capable of understanding. (And I think Ray and Tom knew more yet.) I still opine that there is no reconciliation between how a horse moves, ‘vaquero’ vs. ‘dressage’. What the horses actually DO during a ride, sure- not many cows in the sandbox.
But the more you learn, the more you peel that onion, the more you strive toward that brace-free, amazing and beautiful athletic feeling.
If it could have been laid out in logic, on paper, in black and white or on a blueprint, it would have been done by now. But you sort of have to take it by faith…it’s sort of like trying to define ‘love’.
Fillabeana, I was replying to someone else’s comment, that wasn’t directed at you. I agree about what you said in your post above.
And to Bluey’s comment about “did they really listen to the dressage instructors?” Come on. Of course I did (and others do, too). I listened in my lessons, I’ve audited clinics, I’ve watched lots of other lessons, I stand by the warmup arenas to watch and listen, and I’m always open to listening and learning and soaking up as much as I can. I want to learn. I’m open to learn. I’d be an adult working student if I could.
Don’t blame the student. While, yes, there are people who don’t try, there are just as many instructors who aren’t good at instructing, or put “performance” above partnership, who talk about putting a horse in a frame so he can look the part without understanding biomechanically what is going on with the horse. Who want their students to be dependent on them so don’t actually foster an idea of working and figuring things out for oneself, the way to truly develop one’s sense of timing and feel and partnership.
BB is one person. I like his teaching style, it works for me. He emphasizes things that have helped me tremendously. He’s addressed things that no other instructor has ever done for me with regard to feel, timing, balance. If there were just one dressage person from whom I could take a lesson and who would teach me the same things and give me time to soak and learn it, I would. The reason I like BB is that I like to figure things out on my own. So he’ll give instructions, then you go out and do it. If you have trouble, you ask. But the way for me to figure out what’s right is for the horse to give me the answer, not the instructor who, yes, may be barking out orders that the rider follows like a robot.
I had a huge a-ha moment the other day whereby I was able to recognize the thing that happened before the thing that happened happened, if that makes sense. It was about timing and something I was having trouble with in one direction vs. the other. No other h/j, dressage, or eventing trainer in my 30+ years of riding has ever suggested anything about HOW to develop feel or timing. Yes, they may have said it is important, but other than that, there was no emphasis whatsoever . . . it was like this nebulous thing that I felt was just beyond my grasp. But when I realized that I could get it, and I could feel a difference, and it could affect my horse’s movement, well - I was sold.
In the French Larousse Dictionary, dog training seems to spring to mind before that of horses. The following excerpt is google translated: " dressage- Action to develop, to right, to install:
The Taming of the tent. ( meaning circus big tent -added by me.)
Hi Everybody! I’m new here! I’ve lurked off and on for a long time but was never motivated to be able to post. This thread is amazing! I’ve trained horses for a living for almost 25 years and sometimes I feel so isolated from Thinking, Feeling horse people. It’s great to be able to “talk” to you all. I’m thinking a lot about the steering method using the outside leg forward and inside leg back. I have rented Buck’s videos and come across this different times, but i’m craving more information as to why/how it works so well. Man do I have a lot to learn!
And, Thanks!
I saw a good example of why it would work yesterday. I went to teach my first Western Dressage lesson to a woman with a top ranking barrel horse. This horse won thousands in Florida before being sold because her “mind” was blown. She can still run and win, but her new owner has spent two years getting into her mind, and they have developed a great relationship. Now she’s looking for a new direction. Sooo - when loping a circle roughly 30 ft diameter, she carried her hindquarters to the inside of the circle, overloading the inside hind and as her rider said, causing the outside hind to “disappear.” Buck’s method would prevent this and teach this mare how to depend more on her hindquarters and less on her shoulders. No set of aids is always the “right” way. Speed changes what the most common evasion will be.
[QUOTE=Pocket Pony;7253294]
Don’t blame the student. While, yes, there are people who don’t try, there are just as many instructors who aren’t good at instructing, or put “performance” above partnership, who talk about putting a horse in a frame so he can look the part without understanding biomechanically what is going on with the horse.
BB is one person. I like his teaching style, it works for me. He emphasizes things that have helped me tremendously. He’s addressed things that no other instructor has ever done for me with regard to feel, timing, balance. If there were just one dressage person from whom I could take a lesson and who would teach me the same things and give me time to soak and learn it, I would. The reason I like BB is that I like to figure things out on my own. So he’ll give instructions, then you go out and do it. If you have trouble, you ask. But the way for me to figure out what’s right is for the horse to give me the answer, not the instructor who, yes, may be barking out orders that the rider follows like a robot.
I had a huge a-ha moment the other day whereby I was able to recognize the thing that happened before the thing that happened happened, if that makes sense. It was about timing and something I was having trouble with in one direction vs. the other. No other h/j, dressage, or eventing trainer in my 30+ years of riding has ever suggested anything about HOW to develop feel or timing. Yes, they may have said it is important, but other than that, there was no emphasis whatsoever . . . it was like this nebulous thing that I felt was just beyond my grasp. But when I realized that I could get it, and I could feel a difference, and it could affect my horse’s movement, well - I was sold.[/QUOTE]
Such great points PP, and very well said!
I am learning to trace the roots of every problem/challenge I am encountering with training my horses…where is this coming from? It is quite often somewhere I would have never recognized before, somewhere I would have not thought to look.
Putting those cause/effect things together is what I feel is going to fix every issue I run into, no matter what it is. And it’s gone far beyond not putting draw reins on my horse to get her “round” as so many do, or a figure 8 or whatever, to truly getting in her head and to her feet on the ground, and then to her feet on her back. Certainly I’ve heard that over and over, but I still feel like I am only starting to truly “get it”, controlling the feet.
If I could choose only one person in the world to train with, hands down it would be Buck (and as I said, I am not going to make a bridle horse). I don’t have to do that though, so I jump with a trainer here that I love, who knows that I ride with Buck, who is coming to understand the philosophy of it. The other day she took one rein of my mare (while I was mounted) to demonstrate something and when Annie immediately gave she exclaimed “Wow she’s light!”. That makes me happy and it makes my instructor respect what I am doing. My horse feels different than most horses she works with. I know she is curious. 
I now only ride with people that I have seen teach or train, that I trust to put the horse first. I will never forgive myself for letting a trainer get on a horse of mine years ago when he refused a jump at his first cross country clinic/outing ever. The trainer never got him over the jump either and he overused the stick on my horse. He told me to bring my horse to his place and he would “teach it to go cross country”. Yeah, I bet. I failed my horse right there and I’ve never forgotten it.
Fillabeana, thanks for the comments on my friend’s situation at the bank. It certainly put me on the spot but it was good for me also. I guess one does feel like you are kind of an ambassador for this way of riding and I wanted to do right by it.
I agree, this is a great thread.
So was this mare was loping overcanted, like a western pleasure horse would “crab” down the rail as a poor means to go slower? I don’t know much about barrel racing, but don’t they use their outside leg forward to push the shoulder and inside leg back to swing the hindquarter out away from the barrel? I always thought this was plausible, but not something i did.
No, she was on a circle, not on the rail, and the haunches in was so slight that a casual observer wouldn’t have seen it. I saw it and the rider felt it. She wasn’t trying to ride the circle as if she was going around a barrel. In fact she stated that the mare swung her hind quarters way to the outside on barrels, as one would expect at speed. The odd thing is that haunches-in on the circle should engage the outside hind, but in this case it clearly didn’t. The mare was still leaning in. So the solution would be to use the inside leg back, outside leg forward as Buck describes.
Not sure if this is the right place to ask this or not, as it’s more a groundwork question, but here goes.
I think how Buck gets horses to back on the ground makes a measure of sense. At its most basic level, he is asking them to back from pressure on their nose (vs pressure on the chest as I’ve seen some people do). His reasoning seems to be it is something you can then take and build on under saddle (whereas pressure on the chest isn’t really something you can do while riding…)
My problem is that my gelding ends up with his nose practically to his chest 
His feet are moving, his head is down, I release, he just seems to almost always end up over-bent like that He’ll do better if I just walk facing the opposite way as he is.
What am I doing wrong?
You have to wait. And then, you have to release at the right moment.
Put only enough pressure to put his head where you’d like it to be. Then, just wait … wait … wait till he finds the right answer. Then release immediately. Rinse, repeat. And again.
Look for the moment when he is thinking in the right direction, and give a little release; then go right back to asking. Do less. You’re not trying to physically make him move; you’re trying to teach him to respond to a reques–without creating a brace that would affect his balance.
Another strategy I’ve seen is to put as much pressure as you’d like to use, then rock the horse’s head side to side, to kind of break up the brace. This has fallen out of favor, but if you have one who’s been ruined or toughened, you may need a little something to keep him from just going to sleep in the brace.
I have an old QH gelding who had been “bitted up” in just about every position. His coping mechanism was to check out mentally when put in one of those positions. I had to be a little more active (gently, but not so still that his mind would leave) to get a lot of this started.
Today, he can be light as a feather. It does take time.
No see that’s just it, he does move his feet, he’s not really stuck, it’s that in the process he ends up tucking his nose practically to his chest, even if my hand is just under his chin and not even really touching his halter.
[QUOTE=re-runs;7248073]
I probably “quit” a hundred times within an hour ride.[/QUOTE]
That’s a great way to put it.
If you ride a horse this way all the time, they come out looking for the right answer. Those things are exquisitely fun to ride and train.
[QUOTE=Fillabeana;7248199]
Honestly, if I got off my horse in the forest, he’d wonder why (if I didn’t stop to pee!) I climb a stump, the trailer fenders, the 4-wheeler rack, and he’s BUSY getting the saddle as close as he possibly can to help me on. And I have a hold of the mecate rein, but I don’t tell him what to do. He wants me on his back, with him. (He knows I can’t go very fast, and he loves to cover ground!) There is a profound difference between a horse obediently standing quietly at the mounting block (or at the fence, so you can get on) and the horse doing his best to position himself so you can most easily get on.
And if your horse really WANTS you on his back, getting off as a reward, isn’t that much of a reward![/QUOTE]
Wha? Are you telling me you never explicitly taught your horse to scoot the stirrup over to where your left foot is?
Being short and lazy, I have taught all the horses I ride to do this. But yeah, I did explicitly teach 'em that.
I have been following this thread and found it to be quite inspiring. My interest is dressage but I have always loved the Dorrance brothers and Ray Hunt. Because of this thread I bought Bringing it Together by Betty Staley and Ellen Ekstein. I just received it and haven’t gotten far enough into it to give an opinion on it, but I love Buck Brannaman’s forward to it and wanted to share it: "Whether A person is interested in a traditional bridle horse in the Vaquero style, or a grand prix dressage horse, there are universal truths about horses that can be applied to help the horse better understand what we’d like him do, yet enjoy his work.
A favorite term used by my teachers was “Get your horse to operate on a feel,” emphasizing 90 percent mental and 10 percent physical. Not the other way around.
While reading this, don’t try to reconcile some vast gulf between particular riding disciplines. Embrace the lifetime of experience Ellen and Betty are sharing, which makes all good horsemanship, a kinship.
[QUOTE=mvp;7256508]
Wha? Are you telling me you never explicitly taught your horse to scoot the stirrup over to where your left foot is?
Being short and lazy, I have taught all the horses I ride to do this. But yeah, I did explicitly teach 'em that.[/QUOTE]
I had a tall horse I taught to stretch so I could reach the stirrup easier.
After that, every time I got off to go thru a gate, by the time I closed it and turned around, here he was stretched and waiting for me to get on.
He figured that all by himself and it sure came in handy.
[QUOTE=froglander;7256389]
No see that’s just it, he does move his feet, he’s not really stuck, it’s that in the process he ends up tucking his nose practically to his chest, even if my hand is just under his chin and not even really touching his halter.[/QUOTE]
Ignore his head, and reward the horse moving with his hindquarters. Right now he thinks that he can answer most rein questions with his head, and that’s why he over bends. Right now his head is moving faster than his hindquarter. The minute he thinks about moving his hindquarter first, he won’t overbend.
Appropriately to this thread, this is why a lot of dressage horses have sad backups. I’ve helped a few of the riders at my barn with this…pretty much the only time they ask the western guy for help lol. They’re so worried about not overbending the head and neck that they don’t ever get the feet to free up and the horse just wallers back a couple of lama-like steps.
I can remember which Ray Hunt video answers this exact question…think maybe the tribute or fundraiser one? This is Ray’s answer though.
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