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[RC] September horsenews: Pacey Walkers - Mike Sherrell It turns out that Liberty Island, at the downriver end of the Yolo
Bypass
just before the Sacramento enters the delta, is always under water, even at
the end of summer. I called all around to a dozen different bureaus,
Department of Water Resources, Flood Operations Branch, the Trustees of
Liberty Island, Department of Fish and Game, nobody had been out there in
the month or two previous, although several people said that a few years ago
the levees had failed. So I had to go see for myself. It was still under
water, sigh, so I drove on upriver a little bit to Road 155 and unloaded and
Traveller and I headed on into the Yolo Bypass. A car coming down the road
stopped and Darrel got out and leaned on the door while his wife rolled down
her window. They were assistant trainers to some racing thoroughbreds, who
said if we turned right by the tree we could go across some old boy?s field
who wouldn?t mind, but don?t go into Dr. Smith?s duck club because he was
very mean about that. We did as suggested, and ended up going along nice
fields, nice ditches, nice canals, probably crossing over into Dr. Smith?s
duck club without knowing it for sure. Ultimately we got to where it floods
too many months of the year to make cultivating or grazing pay, and it was
wild, wild, it left burrs in Traveller?s tail. It was nice to be surrounded
by no pavement, no houses, after months of civilization?s psychic white
noise in Contra Costa.
Last weekend of the month we pushed a couple of miles up the left bank
of
the Petaluma River from the Highway 37 bridge. It?s easy to see why it
floods here seems like every other year: the river is shoulder high to a
rider in the hayfields behind the levee. It?d be lovely if you could go up
the river all the way to Petaluma, probably ten miles, but it?s Private
Property, which in this country is sanctified. The ride being so short, we
went on to the Lower Tubbs Island ? 2.5 OK miles in, then a transportingly
beautiful 2.5 mile loop through a marsh, to Midshipman Point, and along the
shore, high tide, winds blowing, surf tossing up spume, pieces of driftwood
from old storms alongside the track. If you go all the way to Highway
37/Sonoma Creek, you can get 14.5 miles of gaiting.
Got ahold of the video ?Smoothing Out the Pacey Horse?, by Lonnie Kuehn
(www.pleasuregaitfarm.com), a Tennesee Walker trainer from near Nashville. I
thought I?d check it out because Dancer and Traveller, two of our Peruvian
Pasos, tend to the pacey. It turns out that the Walker crowd uses most of
the same techniques as I?ve garnered from PP trainers and my own
experimentation, although I hadn?t thought of using cavelettis to break up
the pace and teach the horse to think about placing its hinds separately
from its fronts, and they evidently haven?t thought of quarteoing for the
same purpose. Lonnie uses half-halts, but never mentioned sit stops. She
demonstrates how to tighten and loosen circles to break up the pace, but for
my part I think that?s too dangerous to the horse?s lower legs ? I know a
lot of paso people still do this, but I?ve seen more than one horse come
back with appalling windpuffs from trainers reputed to use tight circles as
a major tool.
The most telling similarity between them (Walker riders) and us
(Peruvian
riders), I thought, was that they say things like, ?drive him up against the
bit?, ?squeeze him up against the bridle?, get him to ?slow down and go at
the same time,? i.e., holding the horse in with your hands while urging them
on, be it with your seat, which I think is the PP way, or with your legs, as
Lonnie teaches. (All this Walker gait training seems to take place in the
bit, rather than the bozal (or sidepull) that we use at this stage.) Both
disciplines speak of ?collection? and ?rounding the back? vs. ?hollowing?.
?Take a hold of him,? Lonnie says: i.e. shorten up on the reins to collect
him
I got three main points from her. First, different methods work with
different horses, so you need to just try things and see what seems to
help ? that is, there is no single path that always works. Second, it seems
to be a good rule to never let the horse go badly ? if it starts to, make it
walk, and if it won?t walk, make it stop. Third, it is likely to take a
couple of weeks or more to break the pace. (Then you have to ride the horse
carefully for a good while longer to ?lock in? the gait, i.e., to make it a
matter of habit.) Another, rather scary piece of her advice: some horses
will never get it, so you may have to just give up in some cases.
The one thing she never mentioned, something which maybe is not
relevant to
Walkers, is rhythm. I believe that getting the horse to gait requires it to
learn two things: how to adjust the timing of the motion of the hind feet
and the fore feet separately, and what your aids mean vis-à-vis those two
independent motions. I think what the Peruvian trainers train the horse to
is that their hands give the timing for the forefeet and their seat gives
the timing for the hinds; anyway, this is what works for me. Once you?ve got
that, the rhythm you set with your hands and seat will be the rhythm the
horse steps to.
The biggest single difference between properly gaiting Walkers and PPs
that
I could see from this tape is headset ? they want their heads to be what
they call ?on the vertical,? with the line of the nose pretty nearly
straight up and down and the neck close to horizontal, while we want the
head higher. Both breeds want the horse to break at the poll, though, so the
angle between head and neck looks to be about the same. The Walkers? heads
bob when they go as desired, and I?ve heard PP people denigrate that, but I
think somehow PPs? heads also go up and down, or in and out, or their
forequarters go up and down, or something like that, anyway. The Walkers?
forelegs bend a lot in gait, which Lonnie refers to as ?high in the knees,?
?popping those knees,? or ?trappy up front,? which looks as unnatural to me
as I gather termino does to a lot of people (I?ve heard it called ?paddling?
more times than I like). I think the Walker foreleg motion has a similar
effect to termino, namely that it increases the amount of time the foreleg
is in the air before it sets down. If you watch tapes of paso show gait
classes in slo-mo, you?ll see that usually both feet on one side leave the
ground at nearly the same time, but the forefoot takes twice as long in
flight so that the it sets down much later than the hind.
Just so us Paso owners can feel better about having a Peruvian rather
than
a Walker, Walker riders routinely wear spurs, and when they use things like
tie backs and draw reins they pat themselves on the back for not using their
nastier techniques like soring and heavy-weighted shoes. They?re brothers
and sisters, though ? when Lonnie was describing the gait of a horse she was
trying to fix, she said it was so uncomfortable ?I might as well ride a
trottin? horse.?
The horsey set seems to have suddenly discovered Rush Creek (an
excellent
gaiting venue, if not long enough ? but nothing ever is), so now the
bikers/joggers/stroller pushers have to dodge a lot of horse-dukey ? I used
to get down and kick mine away, admittedly partly for the exercise, but
there?s so much of it now there?s no real point.
Late in the month, with a certain streak of sadistic satisfaction I
deprived Sepherad of her mother?s milk. The little filly was making herself
irritatingly hard to catch, and the only arrow I have left in the quiver is
teaching her that to get fed she has to get caught first.
Mike Sherrell
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