Day 3 was my highlight day. I’m not sure if I was trying to hard to follow Buck’s direction, but i decided to just ride as i know how and everything came together. I got a walk to die for, he was swinging his front legs in response to a really light rein. He would stay straight, super straight.  I was afraid to ride day 4 because day 3 was so GOOD. I would ride 20 Days if they all could have been like days 3 &4. Especially day 4, everyone is the class was riding so smoothly, all doing different exercises simultaneously but still, there really was this sort of rhythm to all 30 horses and riders.  We all worked on getting one foot at a time to move, either forward, to the side or back. I can’t say enough good things about the good.  Buck is funny. Buck is nice, he doesn’t “yell” at you, like “What the hell are you doing??????”. Mostly he gives input when asked; he doesn’t pro-offer.

 

The bad – I really get tired of all the “pot shots” at other clinicians left nameless of course, pot shots at other disciplines.  I have a hard time with un-quantified terms that could make more sense if concrete.  “Feel” is  a difficult one, but one can talk about a rubber band, or a person on a tight rope. One that irritates me is “bring the life up”. I think of that term as “forward” or more movement in the feet, more motivation to move. I think of the physics of our weight in the saddle and what our weight translates to the horse via the saddle. There have been studies done about exactly what physics travel through saddles. So when you ride with your seat, you are riding with some sort of physics that could be translated to a rough equation of your weight, 25lbs of gravitational force, the absorption of the saddle tree, the leather, the pad or numerous pads, etc. How exact do you think the answer to that would be?  But then again, some don’t believe in science as I know it or was taught it in school or in college or in reading articles or  even by Googling.

The ugly ..First let me say, the ugly has to happen sometimes to make a safe horse.  What is annoying to me is that oft clinicians don’t say just how ugly it will be to some of the horses. Some loose hair on their faces from resisting on the halter, some will have their hair fall of their feet from the lariat and fighting having a foot controlled.  The colt starting class uses all of the techniques of the “natural” movement plus some good ole cowboy technique.  Whether it is a flag or a rope, horses first response is resist, resist, resist.  Horses that had been spoilt by their owners are the worst, they see humans as lesser horses.  Starting a horse in 4 days isn’t for the faint of heart. Some grunted like a wallering cow, bucking from the first pressure of the cinch.  The grunts got the attention of all the horses; they know the sound of being preyed upon.  You can’t guarantee what a horse will do; these horses were supposed to be “un broke”.  I could tell, Buck could tell, some of them had ideas of how a person should be treated, others were just scared. You can’t make that not be true no matter how kind and gentle one is or one claims to be.  Domesticating an animal if 4 days, it really has its pit falls, domestication if not begun properly and early can look just plain cruel. But, It isn’t cruel it is just we humans making use of other species, over powering or out thinking or both.

Buck Brannaman Clinic, San Martin / Morgan Hill, Ca. 2015