Dave Ellis Day 2

• Help your horse think through trouble


• "Every ying has a yang."


• Horses are horses. It's their job to perceive danger and run.


• Don't knock your horse down to your level, instead improve yourself. Dave gave a very inspiring speech about this. He said that horses will wait a lifetime for you if you keep trying to improve yourself for them. Dave said that if he tries things at too high of a level for his horses even he has days where he puts his mules up and they have that look in their eye like "maybe tomorrow he'll get it."


• Whenever your energy is down, your horse should not go anywhere no matter what you do. That is not probably not going to happen in Level 3, even, but that should be your end result. Dave furthered that by saying that when you play Friendly, make sure your energy is down or you're desensitizing them to the point of danger. Like he said earlier, it's a horse's job to perceive danger and run, and if you desensitize him to your energy being up that is the equivalent of desensitizing him to a mountain lion. He mentioned too that when you watch Pat play extreme Friendly Game with a horse, he always looks at the ground, because he wants the energy to go nowhere.


• When you say "Don't trot too fast!" and so slow your horse down, that's bringing your horse down to your level.


• Your horse perceives comfort will be found in what he does, so use comfort-discomfort to motivate him


• "What pushes my horse's buttons? What really makes him tick?"


• Dave quotes someone when he said this, sorry I can't remember who: "None of us dig in deep enough to find the real horse. Most of us don't have the confidence/maturity to accept the real horse." So, what we end up doing is making the horse we have into our dream horse. On the same note, "Look down that line and if what you see looking down that line doesn't make you feel wonderful, get rid of it."


• What my horse is like while I'm learning is completely different than after you've learned.


• "At any time we should be able to walk up to our horse and ask them to do something."


• The horse who gets in the last word is in charge, so the last word should always be yours


• Match the opposition. Opposition = how much effort she is putting in to being resistant.


• Your horse should quit going to the degree that you quit riding.


• "The best way to fix anything is to be aware." -Linda Parelli


• When your horse moves without you asking, play tit for tat. For example, if your horse walks 2 steps forward without you asking them to, have them back up 4 steps.


• Dave had one clinic participant bring her horse out and play Circling Game. He wanted her to pick a foot on the outside of the circle and move her hand to the rhythm of that foot. To speed her horse up, she picked the outside back foot and just asked it to speed up the tempo a little. To slow down. she picked the outside front foot and just asked it to shorten its stride. All of this was done with just her energy, or ki. The results were incredible to see, because the transitions seemed effortless. Dave furthered this by having her push an outside foot off the circle one step only (but again only using her energy) and having her horse still keep the same rhythm. Dave wanted everyone to think about only moving that one foot, because if you try to move the whole horse that's about 1,200 lbs (give or take), but the hoof only weighs 5 lbs.


• "Don't allow the horse to be wrong for so long they think they're right."


• If your horse doesn't put his/her foot where you want, you don't have his/her respect.


• Ill respect = not disrespect, but clearly didn't do what you want


• "I don't make anything happen, I just don't go away."


• If a point is too small, make a vicinity to put his foot in so it's easier


• Pick a focus and go. If your horse is resistant, then he's saying "hey, we made a deal here that you won't ask much and I'll do just enough to get along."


• Have an attitude of "Can you help me get to that?" or "We need to be over there."


• I can't remember who Dave quoted for this one either: "Don't leave without your horse and don't let your horse leave you."


• When you're moving his foot to a specific place, have an attitude of "I see where I wish this foot would go" not "move your foot."


• If you talk to the HQ, the front feet should do nothing different.


• The reason for focusing on the outside legs is because if you focus on the inside your horse will probably disengage.


• When you keep in time with their feet, you don't necessarily have to be in every single foot fall. For example, if you're trying to keep in time with the feet with a Paso Fino, you might pick every 4 strides or something like that.


• Horses don't like to be out of sync.


• Neutral in the Circling Game is not dead. When you put your car in neutral, is it dead?


• The rhythm you have in your body determines what gait you want. It's our responsibility to put the energy in our body.


• Horses are approximately 100x more sensitive than humans


• In Freestyle, the hand holding the reins should be the direction you're going.


• Freestyle to Finesse shouldn't change your horse's gait at all


• Trotting is the easiest gait for the horse, but the hardest for the human


• If you want to get a good stop, then get a world-class back-up. Get your horse thinking back up not stop. You know you've done it enough when your horse steps back to regain his balance.


• Feel of, for, and with your horse


• Do Step #1 in 9 step back-up. Does your horse do anything? Then do step #2. Feel of him. Then step #3, feel for him. Then #4-7. Step #8 and 9, feel with him. Steps #1-3 are preparatory commands.


• If you're riding your horse through 2 barrels and he purposely knocks one of the barrels over, bump him with the rein on the opposite side of the barrel he knocked over. The reason you bump him it so that he gets a consequence for what he did. The reason you bump on the other side is because if you were a fence post and your horse turned his head to knock the barrel over, he'd run into the rein on the opposite side.


• Linda once said that a level 3 grad should be able to do any transition within a 2 step maximum. So, since this clinic was level 2/3 Dave said to aim for 3-4 steps.


• If you're riding the trot and you bring your energy down to a walk (and your horse doesn't listen right away), sometimes our inner ear gets in the way and causes us to think we're going to fall off because we're bouncing. To counteract this, put your hand on the horn/pommel so you stay secure in your seat.


• When you ride, the more your leading hand is bent, the more tight you've been.


• When you have a backing up energy in your body and your horse doesn't listen, bump 1 rein if you're riding Finesse, or comb the reins underhanded if you're riding Freestyle.


• When your horse changes the game on you, say "let me show you how well I can play this game". (For example, I tried to teach Moose to back by the tail yesterday and after I did it a few times, he started moving his HQ out of the way to get out of doing it. So, instead of saying "don't move your hiney," I just moved it more than he wanted it to move. So, the answer was to just back up when I asked). Another option is to play the game with different criteria, make up rules that he didn't know existed. Just remember that this is not a dictatorship, it's a partnership, so your partner has the right to express him/herself. You don't have the authority to say "no, we're not doing that right now! We're doing this, so quit it!"


• Another thing to try is to quit the game sooner than she/he thought you'd quit. In this case, a girl had a question about her mule, because her mule would do really good for her, but then she always had a point where she would become resistant because she wanted her leadership back. Dave said it was simple, just quit before she gets crabby. And he did a simulation to prove it. Dave held onto one end of the 12' line and a different girl held onto the end of it. Dave said that when he said 'now' he wanted the girl to pull as hard as she could on the end of the rope. He said now, and right as she pulled Dave let go of the rope and walked away, saying "oh, look at the sand" or something like that. He did it with such nonchalance, too, like he couldn't have cared less that the girl just fell over. It was pretty funny (and completely unexpected), but also a very good lesson: It takes 2 to argue.


• And lastly, undemanding time establishes the relationship. It doesn't necessarily improve it.