Ridecamp: Re: [RC] [RC] Equine Clinicians Compete

> > >I woulde LOVE to talk to someone who has taken one one of these
> > >wonder-horses after one of these 'miracle' sessions!
> >
> > Me too!  Anyone on this list have a horse that went through a "miracle"
> > session?  Report, please!

Well, I guess I'll add my two cents.  Some years back when I was at Cal
Poly, they sponsored a training demonstration of this type.  Never mind
exactly who the trainer was, he was as big a name and sold as many of his
trianing books as these other guys.  I was in charge of providing a suitable
young horse that I knew hadn't been handled.  So I arranged for a friend to
bring her three year old warmblood colt, who'd basically been out in pasture
his entire life with other colts.

Yes, the trainer did have him "joining up" and doing all that stuff within X
minutes.  Yes, he did have a rider on his back, walking, trotting and
cantering both ways of the arena within another x minutes.  Very impressive.

However, after all the crowds had left and the colt had been taken home, I
really don't think a whole lot of that trianing session really stuck.  In
fact, I don't think a whole lot stuck once he was outside the arena, being
handled by someone else and faced with a whole new Scary Thing.  He just
acted like a three year old colt that hadn't been handled much.

Over the next few weeks, my friend worked him in a round pen, each time
starting with the same sort of routines---turning back and forth, the
joining up thing, all of that, and then moving on to lessons appropriate for
a young horse.  Neither of us saw very much 'residue' from the original
wonder session, other than it really didn't take much time at all for him to
stand to be saddled and he didn't buck or act very silly once my friend
climbed on.  Yes, she could kick him and he'd go forward.  But he still
didn't have much of a clue what leg pressure meant, what a bit was for other
than for mouth-gaping, flailing turns and so on.  She later took another
young horse of hers to another similar clinic and had the same
results---lots of short-term progress that didn't stick without constant,
daily reinforcement and progress.

I guess based on this one experience, my opinion is that the one-day wonder
sessions are kind of like cramming for a test---you can stuff an incredible
amount of information into the short-term memory banks and get through a
one-time test (of course, this doesn't apply to terrifying experiences that
you only have to see once to learn just fine).  But, if you really want to
learn something and have it stick there forever, you have to repeat those
lessons in tiny tidbits on a regular, consistent basis time after time.  I
think those clinics equate to a cram session, but not a
learn-it-for-a-lifetime experience.

 I was once told that humans have to do an action (like buckling a seatbelt)
about once a day for a month before it starts to become habit.  It seemed
reasonable to me that horses should learn good habits more or less the same
way---small, frequent, consistent lessons, just like Jim was describing with
Magic.

JME.

Susan G



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