Here we are starting out on a new year. I am so looking forward to our next online course. If you have any questions regarding the course, let me know, so I can answer them for you and get you started on a great journey. I design the Waterhole Rituals Online course around you and your particular horse as you learn how to use my method. It is a journey that will take you to a deep cross-species bond from training your horse through The Waterhole Rituals. The Waterhole Rituals is a journey that will benefit all, horses and humans. You will be addressing your horse in the same manner you would, if you were to meet your horse on a desert island and a relationship took place there, that lasted you a life time. To learn more about the Spring 2012 program view this page: Waterhole Rituals Online Course – Insider Circle and Extended Circle Seats are available.

In other exciting news, we have added a new Beyond the Waterhole Ritual Clinic for Spring 2012. For more information please view the Beyond The Waterhole Rituals Clinic page. Remember this is an advanced clinic and registration is limited to 11 students, so please let us know if you would like us to save you a seat!

A Certified Trainer, Robin Gates, has an upcoming 2012 Texas Spring Liberty Training Workshop. Click the image below or here to view the full flyer.

Liberty Training™

My course is about communicating and training a horse at liberty through a method I call Liberty Training™, a method I developed as a child communicating and bonding with wild horses in nature. This is the foundation I used at my training center of over 20 years training horses for show and dressage. My training method deepens the bond and removes the walls between horses and humans. Practicing my program will help you to gain a sensitivity and strength to be able to use light aids. You can develop light aids that are as light as a fly’s touch from the energy language you emote from just a vibration. Come join the fun and mystery. Be prepared to bring your beginner’s mind to learn something new!

A Story About Ora Rhodes

The lesson today: Since this is the starting of the new year I want to go back to the beginning in our simple approach in how to lead a horse that will give you a better connection and lighter aids when you ride. But first I want to share a true story with you, that will give more understanding in what it is to be gained from the lessons I am offering you. It will be a two part blog; first the story and next week the lesson.

I learned from a cowboy horse trainer by the name of Ora Rhodes, that how you go about holding a horse and how you go about leading a horse will help your connection and your horse´s response to your aids when your go to ride. Problems that occur in a horse not responding to light aids from the saddle, can come from how we lead and hold a horse from the ground.

When I was growing up and studying horse training, something happened at a horse show that catapulted me in my understanding in how much I needed to learn about light aids, in particular rein aids. I offered to hold Ora’s horse for him at a show just before his class. I was hanging around with Ora Rhodes as a kid, I admired him as being the best in training stock horses with light aids. When he rode his horse, they shared the same mind and their performance was the perfection of a connected horse and rider. Everyone in those days was awed by his performances. His performance was a cut above his competition, his aids were only vibrations.

I was about 13 and was known in those days as being gifted with my ability to take a bad horse and create a willing horse, but that became not enough for me. I wanted what Ora had. Aids that were as light as a fly’s touch. Aids that brought about a dance of magic. I wanted all that!! I wanted to be a respected trainer from using light aids like Ora. People like Jimmy Williams and Clyde Kennedy admired Ora and made a point to watch him when he competed in his classes because he was so inspirational. To this day, I have seldom seen in my life of loving, breeding, showing and training horses, this magic of light aids, straightness and collection that Ora put on his horses.

“You can’t hold my horse”… I had alot to learn.

I gained a lot from Ora, but it took a life time to come close to perfecting the lightness and straightness he offered to a horse. In the old days, stock horses were shown in a collected frame. It strengthened the body structure of the horse so that not one part of the horses was over-worked over another part. The reason this way lost favor, is that it took to long to train, you could get the spins, turns and stops without it. Stock horses were also called bridle horses and reining horses, they were used to work cows from the rider´s rein and leg aids, different from a cutting horse that works the cow on his own. Theses horses stayed competitive and sound all their lives. Ora and other trainers of his equal kept many of the horses they trained for a life-time because of the relationship they developed with their horses. Something you do not see much of today in reining horse trainers. Today it is all about winning by pushing performance into the horse and less about the evolution of development and respect to the horse. The respect, appreciation, responsibility and gratitude is high on my list in who I look up to. Horse trainers today are admired by how fast the they train a horse and in many cases how much you can push into a horse. Many horses at shows are emotionally destroyed.

Back to the day I offered to hold Ora’s horse so he could take care of an errand. He thanked me and then said that if I held his horse, I would influence the horse in a way, that would take some of the connection he had out of him for his next class and that I would cause his horse to be not as light to the aids by how I held him. He said I was not good enough yet to do this for him, even though I was training competitive Western Pleasure horses myself. This is were it all began for us . Up until this point, my connection with Ora´s teaching came from his comments about what he needed in a good horse. He had influenced me a lot by his comments and from watching him, how he moved around a horse.

Ora took a deeper interest in me from what I said to him, when I learned he did not want me to hold his horse. I did not say I wanted to learn how to be the best, like him. That would have been presumptuous and rude. I simply said to him: “I want to learn how to hold your horse and keep him right for you”. From looking at it from that perspective I would gain more knowledge. From my comment and demeanor he could see that I had what it took to learn, what he needed to teach me.

While Ora was alive, Ora influenced my training of horses as a kid from 13 on into my 20s and after his death, I kept working on the lessons he had given me. He is still leading my way. I feel him with me right now. He never knew my devotion to his influence in my approach. I actually worked with him only periodically over many years, but his lessons were not wasted. So I hope what I offer you now will help to carry on to the next generation, so his light way of being will continue to grow our ability to come close to what he had to offer horses and the dance.

If Ora were alive today, I would still be his student and I know he would be pleased in what I have brought to the horse world on the subject of lightness, straightness and collection. Many times he would comment to me, how amazed he was, in how badly I sat on a horse and held the reins, but still my horses were so whole-heartedly able to perform for me. He told me that this is what told him I had talent. He said I had a natural ability to bring out the desire of the horse to want to perform. From Ora´s influence I spent a life-time working on my weaknesses to come up with a method to help others in how to sit and ride a horse and how to use light aids.

My lesson in how to lead and hold a horse will follow in my next blog…

Remember to watch out for more new horse and human sightings and may the horse be with you,
Warmly,
Carolyn

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