Personal Horse Story - The story of Scooter and why I chose "Save a Horse Australia" as a charity

You have probably seen a lot of the fuss at the moment about the sale of horsemeat for human consumption.  This industry is an awful industry, and the cruelty to horses is unbelievable to say the least.  I recently posted a petition on my FB wall against the sale of horsemeat for human consumption, which prompted someone to ask "who would sell their best mate and work mate for meat?"

This is a very logical question, as I am sure no-one who is a horse lover would intentionally sell their horse for human consumption, however, from personal experience I do know it can happen by accident.

It is for this reason that I would like to share with you the story of "Scooter".

Scooter was one of my first horses, those of you who have read a little bit about me may remember my first horse "Caddillac" (yes DD) who was a polo cross horse, and threw me at every opportunity.  Well, when I was living in Wagga and studying Equine Science, one of the jobs I did for work experience for my degree was driving Pacers.

I loved this job, if you have never driven one, try and find a way to have a go one day.  It is one of the biggest adrenalin rushes I have ever experienced.  You are so close to the ground, and right behind the horse watching the power of their hind end, you really get to see how fast and how powerful these amazing creatures are.  I was lucky enough to drive on the actual track a couple of times, including one time with an older horse who actually held the track record, and he really let fly!  (I wasn't supposed to do that, it was an accident)

The trainer I worked for was a good friend of mine's (Whitey if you are out there :) Uncle.  They treated their horses well, and always tried to find a good home for them when they had finished racing.  One day Whitey rang me and told me that "Scooter" was ready to finish up, and did I want him?  Of course I did!

I took on Scooter, I can't remember how old he was, but not very, and of course he had not been broken to saddle.  So, that was my first project.  I had never broken in a horse before, so it was a great opportunity to learn on a horse that was dead quiet, and already used to lots of gear.  It didn't take long at all, and within about a week, I was riding him around the paddock.  He was a really kind natured horse, and soon enough I was taking him on trail rides, up and down steep hills, over small jumps, through creeks and easily traversing anything I put to him.

I had not had him very long when I decided to move to Queensland, maybe three months or so.  Moving to Queensland is not a cheap exercise, and moving two horses just was not financially possible for me.  I had to make the decision to sell one of them, and Scooter being the newest and easiest to sell I decided to sell him.

I put an ad in the paper, and had two or three people come out to see him.  Two people wanted to buy him, one was a young girl who wanted him as her first big horse, and the other was an older gentleman who had been leasing a horse but had to give him back soon.

The girl was lovely, but, as we all know, green horse green rider is not really the best mix.  The old bloke came out for a ride with me, took him up through the forest, up the hills, through the stream, over the logs and showed me that he rode very well, and Scooter was quite happy to do everything asked of him.  During the ride he told me all about the Paint horse he had been leasing, and how the owners wanted to take him back, and how he was devastated because he was his company since his wife had passed away a year earlier.  He even took me to see the Paint, because I wanted to see what condition it was in, if it was well looked after etc, and I wanted to feel confident that he would be a good owner for Scooter.

He also told me that he was on a pension, and wouldn't be able to pay the $500 I was asking, but he could pay him off at $50 a fortnight.  A good home for Scooter was far more important to me than the money, so I agreed to that, on the condition that he would feed and agist both horses for me for about four weeks while I went to Queensland to find somewhere to live, and a place to take Caddillac to.  I was very happy with the arrangement, because it meant I could go with no worry about what to do with Caddy while I was away as well.

So, a week later I left for Queensland, and had a relaxing holiday, as well as finding somewhere for my girl to live.  I found a great pony club that had facilities, as well as stables etc, applied and was accepted that I could bring her up there.  It was about August/ September at this time.

When I came back to Wagga to pack and get organised I went to see Caddy.  She wasn't there, and neither was Scooter.  As you can imagine, I started to panic.  I drove to where the Paint horse had been, and he was not there either.  By this time I was in such a state, I did not know what to do.  A friend of mine offered to take me out the see the local "Horse Dealer/dogger" to see if he knew anything.  It had never occurred to me that these people even existed, naive as I was.

We drove out to the dealers place, and there sitting on the back of a truck smoking a "rollie"  was the old guy I had sold Scooter to.  I was freaking out completely, charged up and demanded to know where the hell Caddillac was?  He told me to settle down, and stop freaking out, and told me where she was.  He said he had moved here because he found somewhere cheaper to keep her.  It did not occur to me to ask if Scooter was there as well, I just assumed.

We drove to the address he had given me, which was a paddock that backed onto a house about 500m away.  I could see Caddy, she was still in her winter rug, even though it was the middle of the day and getting close to 30 degrees.  Again my level of panic started to rise as I looked around the paddock and realised there was no grass at all.  It was all weeds.  As we were walking up to her, a car screeched up beside us, a lady got out and started hurling abuse at me!  How dare I abandon that horse in her paddock!  The horse has been starving and never has it's rug off and she has been throwing her bits of hay!  I could not understand what was happening?

I pulled her rug off, and could not believe what I saw.  Caddillac was now a bag of bones, her coat was dull and matted, with bits missing out of it where the rug had rubbed her raw.  I will dig out the photos and add them in here later.  I also took numerous photos of the ground, to show there was no grass at all.  She was literally starving to death.

It dawned on me to wonder what had happened to Scooter.  We went back to the horse dealers place and confronted the old bloke.  He told me it was none of my business as he owned the horse and could do with him what he liked, he had been making his payments and there was nothing I could do about it.

After doing some research, I found out that the Japanese market for horsemeat was booming at this particular time, and the average horse was being sold for about $1000 for meat, so he had doubled his money.

I went to legal aid, I tried to file a claim against him, stating that he had defrauded me, that there was cruelty to Caddillac, and tried every angle I could think of.  At the end of the day, I had nothing in writing regarding Caddy, and he owned Scooter, so bad luck.  He had no obligation to keep Scooter, nor to disclose to me what he had done with him.  As long as he kept up his payments, there was nothing I could do.

The lovely lady who owned the paddock where Caddillac had been dumped, luckily agreed to feed her up for a couple of weeks so she would be strong enough for the truck trip up to QLD.  I am so grateful to her, that she fed and cared for Caddy in those couple of weeks before she was well enough to come up on the truck.

When she arrived at the Pony club, she was a mess.  It still took another couple of weeks before she looked anything like herself, and she never quite fully recovered. I wonder if the stress and anxiety of the situation ever left her completely.

As for Scooter, I can't imagine how he must have felt.  He was such a trusting gentle horse, and it would have been terrifying for him.  One of the classes I took involved dissection of horse legs, which were purchased from the knackery.  I have seen exactly what damage these horses are subjected to when they are taken to the knackery.  Their legs are covered in bruises and cuts, some of them would be lucky to be still walking by the time they are killed.

Please take the advice of the lady who asked the question "who would sell their best mate for meat".  Please make sure you are certain where they are going, and please do your best to ensure they will be loved and looked after.

The "Save a Horse Australia" horse rescue and sanctuary do a great job of placing horses into "forever" homes.  They ensure that if the horse is no longer wanted, or is unable to be kept, that it comes back to them and a new home will be found.  They do an amazing job, please sign the petition, and please support horse rescues all over the country.

Improve your horse riding - shoulders back

How many of you find it easy to keep your shoulders back?  For some people it is easy and natural, they don't have to think about it, but for the majority of us, it is something we have to work on and train our bodies to do.

One of the things that makes us lean forward and round our shoulders is fear.  When we are nervous or scared, often our first response is to lean forward, grip with our knees and grab the neck.  If you watch people riding for the very first time, no matter what age they are, they will spend a lot of time crouched forward, and you need to convince them to relax and sit up straight.

Only a few weeks ago I was giving a lesson to a new student, and the horses in the paddock next door decided to have a big gallop around.  It was a very windy day, and the girl's horse started to put it's tail up, go into a lovely piaff but with his nose in the air and generally pay no attention to the rider whatsoever!  Her first reaction was to lean forward, grab on to his neck, grip with her knees (heels come up), and look scared (it was also her first ride on this particular horse, although she is a fairly experienced rider, she had no knowledge of how this horse would react).

I tried to explain the "emergency stop" fast, but of course, as soon as we are scared, it is very hard to change your bodies automatic reactions, and also to actually listen to instructions.  Your brain goes into "reptilian brain" which is instinctive and reactive, rather than logical.

The problem with this is, that if you try your emergency stop and you are leaning forward, looking down, and your heels are up, YOU WILL FALL OFF!  It is VERY important that you look up, push your heels down and even a little forward and lean back slightly.  Test it! get someone to try and pull you off your horse, try it with your heels up vs down, shoulders slumped vs chest up.

So how do you change your fear response?  Changing an instinctive response is not an easy thing to do. It takes awareness, time, and practice practice practice.  Please read "thoughts on unconscious incompetence" for more information as to how to bring things into your awareness.

Have I gone way off track?  What were we talking about again? that's right! Shoulders back :)  ok, so the reason I brought all that up, is because I want you to start thinking about how that response feels to the horse.  The horse is a prey animal, we are a predator.  Often times this fear reaction happens when the horse is scared too, then we clamp on to his neck and throw our weight forward, do you think this makes the horse feel more or less scared?  I think it is the Parelli people who talk about this in further detail, and it is fascinating to understand further the behavioural principles behind why we ride the way we do, and why certain movements will elicit the correct response from the horse even though they have never been "taught" it.

Refining this response, when your horse starts to get a little bit faster than you want in your trot circle, are you tilting forward?  When your canter starts to be a little bigger than you want, do you lean back or forward?   When you go into a jump that is a little bigger than you are comfortable with, do you wait for the horse to jump? or do you find yourself in front of the movement?  Does your horse stop at jumps regularly?

Even the slightest tilt forward will affect your horses ability to engage the hind end (put more weight on the hind end).  There has been an example given where someone has used four bathroom scales, and a saddle stand to see what affect it has, and has shown that as soon as you round your shoulders, you put a whole lot of extra weight over the front feet.  Armed with this knowledge, we can now use this as an aid as well! lean back a touch when you want to slow down or stop, BEFORE you use the reins.  If you do that every time, pretty soon your horse will be stopping without reins at all!

Round shoulders will also affect the way your elbow and arm moves, and will make it more difficult to have that lovely "elastic elbows" feeling of connection between your horses mouth and your hand.  You will find it harder to find the rhythmical forward and back movement we talked about in the "hands still or moving" article.

Make it your first response to look up, sit back, and lean back a touch!


Exercises to improve your shoulders


Sometimes the easiest way to fix a problem is to exaggerate it first.  REALLY round your shoulders, then bring them back, feel the difference?

The problem with bringing your shoulders back is it can make your shoulders tense and block the nice flow of energy down your arm to the reins.  So, another way to do it, is to think of something else instead.

I often use the thought of bringing my shoulder blades closer together, and lifting my breastbone.  This also has the double benefit of engaging the small muscles that hold your spine, which will give you better posture in the rest of your life as well.

I also use a fantastic visualisation that is amazing.  This one picture in my mind has made a huge difference to me personally, she talks about the Spanish Riding School.  I was in Vienna about 18 

months ago, so this particularly hits home.  If you have seen pictures of these amazing Lipizzaners and their riders, you may remember the gorgeous jackets they wear.  They have a double line of gold buttons down the front. Think of the proud way they hold themselves, and think about those gold buttons, do they point down to the ground as the rider slouches? NO!  Of course not! so, when you are riding, imagine you are riding in the Spanish Riding School to an audience of hundreds of European Royalty, and make sure they can see the gleam on all those golden buttons!

Good Luck, please let me know how you go with this, and feel free to request what you would like to see next!

Improve your Horse Riding - Balance

Ok! who feels like they need better balance when they are riding?  How do you know?  What are the signs of needing better balance?

Some of the symptoms you might have that indicate an improvement in your balance would help are;

1.  being in front of the movement, 
2. getting left behind the movement, 
3. horse keeps falling in on the circle, 
4. or if your horse is tossing his head a lot when you keep hitting him in the mouth.

These are just a few examples!  When jumping it is even more obvious when you are in front of behind the movement, because you will either "starfish", thump on the horses back when landing, or fall off a lot!

"starfish" is what one of my coaches used to call what I did when I would go over a jump with straight legs, straight body, a mile off the seat, and generally I would end up with no reins on the other side because I was terrified of hurting my horses mouth so I would let go instead . . .  not really the cleverest thing in the world!

I knew it was terrible, but I could not figure out how to stop myself from doing it.  She could yell at me all she wanted, to try and make me stop, but I found that until I trained myself with an alternative movement, it was still my habit whenever I was nervous.  

SO, I am going to address this issue in two parts, first for flatwork/dressage, and second for jumping. 

Flatwork

Improving your balance for flat work is actually not that difficult (yeah right, wait till your legs are jelly). No, seriously, the exercise is simple, but your muscles may take a bit of time to get used to it, so you may have sore legs for the first week!

The best exercise for improving your balance is, on your horse, to simply stand up in your stirrups.  Now I don't mean to stand up in a two point seat, I mean to literally stand up with straight legs in your stirrups.  Make sure to try it at halt first, it is not as easy as it sounds.  Then move your horse to walk, then to trot,  then to canter.  It may take you a few days, or even a week before you are comfortable doing this at trot and canter, but your seat will have improved a mile once you can!

I would also suggest starting out trying it in a round yard on a fairly loose rein.  You don't want to end up using the horses mouth to help you stay up there.  You will find that your weight will drop down into your feet, and lo and behold, that is what it feels like when you have "weight in your heels"!

It might be that you can't do it for long, but that is ok.  Even to start with, go for four strides up, four strides down, five strides up, five strides down.  Again, be very careful that you are not using your reins to balance on.  

Once you are good at that, then start doing some exercises on your horse.  You know the ones you see all the little kids doing?  there is a good reason for that, it really helps you improve your balance out of sight.  

1. Hands out like an aeroplane, 
2. touch both shoulders, 
3. touch one hand to your nose, then the other
4. touch one had to your knee (are you still standing up with straight legs?)
5. Touch one toe then the other (make sure your other leg stays still or you will fall off when you try it at trot and canter)

Once you can lean down at canter and touch one toe, you have AMAZING balance! just ask any Vaulter!

Jumping

OK, your jumping balance is going to be improved a lot by all the previous exercises.  The next step is to help your timing as the horse jumps, so you don't get the "starfish".  I can't tell you how many videos there are of me doing a "starfish" over a jump, and it makes me cringe every time.   I still do it every now and then, if I get particularly nervous, but I have improved out of sight.  

It really took me a very long time to change this habit, but now I know how to change it, hopefully I can make it faster for you to change.  For a start, I knew that it was a fear response.  It always happened when I got scared, my body would stiffen, and I would not flow with the horse.  I couldn't stop myself from being scared sometimes, but I could change how my body reacts.  I used a technique called NLP to give myself a new pattern of behavior.  I wont go into to much detail about this, but I can give you a bit of an idea how to apply some of it to yourself.

First of all I picked a random word, mine was "rabbits", then I practiced squeezing my thumb and forefinger together (thumbs on top) and saying "rabbits", then, folding at the hips at the same time.  It does work to practice this standing on the ground, because when you go over a jump, your position should be such that if the horse was taken away, you should be standing well balanced on the ground anyway.

I will find some pictures of a really good jumping position and post them on here later.

Now when I am going towards a jump that I am particularly nervous about, you might here me counting, 1 2 3 4  5 6 7 8, to keep my rhythm, and then as I go over the jump, you will hear me yell out "rabbits"!  Sometimes I forget, and then you might see me "starfish" but I guarantee, if you see me "starfish" you will hear "rabbits" the next jump!

Also dont forget where your heels should be.  They are extremely important in jumping, if you have done your flatwork exercises you should find it fairly easy to make sure they are down.  Sometimes almost thinking of pushing slightly forward with your heels may help.

Both

Now the other things to remember for BOTH flatwork and jumping, is side to side balance as well.  This is where you want to be aware of the relative distance of various parts of your body to the ground.  eg, is one shoulder closer the ground than the other? is one earring closer than the other? is one foot closer to the ground than the other?

One of my favourite ways to improve side to side balance is making use of your hat brim.  ALWAYS be aware of your hat brim and how it relates to the horizon.  It should always be parallel to the horizon, if one side is lower than the other, you can guarantee that something else in your body, and therefore you horse, is going to be wonky.  When this happens over a jump, your horse will drop a leg, and it is likely he will drop a rail.  When you look to the next jump, make sure your hat brim stays even!

    

Are your hands still or should they move?

How often have you been told "keep your hand still"  "your hands are moving too much!"?  Well, come to a lesson with me, and you are more likely to hear, "move your hands, MORE!"  my students will attest to that.

Even more you will hear "MOVE your ELBOWS, open and close your elbows, MORE! - I want you to open and close your elbows so much it feel silly, exaggerate it so much you think I am going to tell you to stop.  Then you are probably doing it enough!"

Why is this so?  Why am I telling you to move your hands and elbows?

I want you to think about what your hands are attached to.  They are connected to the bit in the horses mouth.  The bit in the mouth moves with the horse's head.  Does the horse's head stay still or move?

Walk - allow your reins to go fairly loose (safely) and just let your horse walk out naturally.  Make sure it is a fairly forward active walk.  Think about how his feet are hitting the ground.  See if you can count the beats.  1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4.  Count it out loud, sing a song, row row row your boat, keep in time with his feet.  

Now look at his mane, notice how it is flopping as his head goes up and down?  Which foot is hitting the ground when his head goes up?  

Each time his front feet hits the ground, his head comes up and back.  So what is happening to the bit?  So what should your hands be doing?  Your hands should be moving back and forward in time with his head, this may take some practice, some people can just do it, some people it takes a bit of work.  Please make sure you persist with it, and please make sure it is coming from your elbows, not your shoulders.  Keep your chest up and elbows by your sides.

The easiest way to learn how to let your hands move with his mouth, is to start on a long rein, hardly touching his mouth.  Look up, chest up, relax, allow your hips to follow his movement, and allow your hands to move back and forward.  As you get the rhythm, slowly start to shorten your reins.  If you lose it, lengthen them out and start again.  

There is a time when you want to stop moving your hands, so experiment with it, get the nice forward rhythm, hands moving, steady contact, then make your movement smaller.  What happens?  What is this called?  No I am not going to tell you! go get on your horse and try it! then come and tell me :)

Trot  At trot, what does the horse's head do?  Does it move or stay still?  That's right, it stays still! so what should your hands do? Thats right, stay still!  The reason this is difficult, is that most of the time, we are in rising trot, so we are going up and down, not staying still.  

So the hard thing at trot is to keep our hands still while we go up and down.  Again, think about making your hands stay with his mouth, rather than moving with your body.  

This is not the easiest thing to get the hang of, but there are a few exercises you can do to help make it easier.  

1. Practice off the horse - get a dressage whip, hold it so the handle is touching the ground, you hold the tail, then rise up and down, keeping the handle on the ground and not letting the whip bend and flex.  You need to change the muscle memory, so if you are serious about developing great hands, do this exercise three times a day for five minutes, for two weeks.  Then you wont have to think about it, you will just do it naturally.
2. The next level of the same exercise is to take the whip, and get on a trampoline.  Keep it going at 150 bpm.  This is one of the best exercises I ever learnt from Colleen Kelly.
3. When you are riding -  touch your little fingers down and touch the horse's wither.  Be careful to keep your thumbs on top, your chest up, and don't tilt forward.  Now try and keep your fingers touching lightly as you rise up and down.  You cannot do it without opening and closing your elbows.  Once you have got it, lift your hands to normal position, and keep the elbow movement happening.  I will often have students do half a circle fingers down, half fingers up, half down, half up, till they can keep their elbows going without thinking about it too much.

Canter At Canter, your hands will move the same as in walk.  Think about how your horse's head moves, he has a big head nod at canter right?  So if I restrict it by keeping my hands still, what happens to his canter?

Again, you can use a similar tactic to what you did in walk.  Please make sure you are safe to canter, and please make sure if you are going to try this, you are in an enclosed area.  I started out in a round yard, on a long rein going into canter.  Sitting up straight, eyes up, chest up, and allow my hands to move in time with his head.  Then, just like at walk, slowly shorten your reins keeping your arms pumping back and forward.  

When you can confidently canter in the arena, your hands pumping back and forward, you can start using this to lengthen and shorten the stride.  That is for another day though, but I hope this helps you with the dilemma of "should my hands be still or moving?" question.