Saturday and the ACTHA Crew

Today was all about a visit from a group of people who were all ACTHA regional winners. ACTHA (American  Competitive Trail Horse Association) seems to be more about pleasure than heavy duty competition and to have a relatively nice attitude to their horses. Several were involved in rescues.

The visit started with a tour of the house with Monty regaling the group with stories. The house is full of amazing collections of all sorts of horse related memorabilia, including a long line of old bridles, each of which has a tale to tell and he knows the origin of every single one, down to the composition of the bits and who made them. Pat's sculptures were also the subject of many stories about the horses that they are based on, how they are made and how the moulds are broken after a certain number of bronzes have been cast.

After the house tour it was down to the round pen for a demonstration of Join-Up. First Monty did a Join-Up with Shy Boy, who has done thousands of Join-Ups in his time. Most of the ACTHA people weren't aware of the story of Shy Boy so they were treated to the tale of how Monty joined up with him in the wild - and it's quite a story too.

The group listening to the story of Shy Boy

While Shy Boy waits patiently for his moment in the spotlight

The Join-Up

And the Follow-Up

Monty then did a Join-Up with a much younger, greener horse and, as always, it went exactly according to plan, the horse perfectly demonstrating the four signs - inside ear locked onto him, licking and chewing, head dropping and then coming off the wall to make smaller circles. Once the horse has effectively shown all the signs, Monty drops the pressure and turns away, inviting the horse in. By this time the horse has done about a quarter of a mile round the pen and is ready to stop work and become friends.

Another text-book Join-Up

And a perfect Follow-Up

The magic moment is when the horse comes up behind him and touches nose to shoulder. That's the moment that makes most people, seeing it for the first time, find themselves with tears running down their cheeks. It infuriates me to think that humans have brutalised horses for so many years in order to get them to submit, when all this time, if somebody had just taken the time, as Monty did, to study the way horses interact with each other, we could have spared the horses centuries of pain and trauma and many injuries to humans. Not only are these techniques kinder and more gentle to the horses, but they are also so much faster and more effective than the old-fashioned ways of doing things.

Side passing across the barrels

After some lunch all the ACTHA riders were given a Willing Partners horse to ride. These are horses that, unlike many horses that are sent to Monty for remedial work, have never been ill-treated and are selected for the programme for having the right mind and spirit. Most of the horses they were using were only 3 years old and with less than a year's worth of training but they are all better behaved, more responsive and with a bigger repertoire of commands than most horses, trained with conventional techniques, would show after years and years of training.

The group went off into the arena where a series of obstacles were laid out and they had a chance to try out the various things, plastic bags on a stick, bushes and rollers on ropes to drag along, barrels to side-pass across and pallets set up with poles in the middle to create a horse see-saw. It was interesting to see their faces when first encouraged to try these things out, thinking "Oh yeah? Really?" and then change to amazement when they saw the horses doing exactly what they were asking them to do, with very subtle cues, just a touch on the reins, a nudge from the leg and a lot of clucking.

Dragging the bush

Horse See-Saw

Herman the dummy helping to demonstrate the calm and gentle nature
of the Willing Partners horses

After a while in the arena they went out for a ride around the track. I was surprised to see them all riding around at a walk, I think I'd have been tempted to try a canter at least. The final treat for them was back in the arena where Monty had swapped horses and was riding Chrome, putting him though his paces with the spins, flying lead changes and sliding swaps. They were all fascinated by this and had lots of questions to ask.

Out on the track

ACTHA riders pose for a photo on the track

Q&A session

Chrome demonstrating flying lead changes

Monty demonstrates the lightness of touch required
by Chrome by riding in a bridle with the reins
joined to the bit by thread.

The group all then went off to change for dinner and I had some time to download the day's pictures. I noticed that some deer were congregating on the lawn and was out taking pictures when Monty arrived back. He showed me a better place to sit and shook some food out onto the wall so they all came down out of the shadows and posed perfectly in the evening sunlight.

One of the things that has most surprised me here is that there isn't a big staff of people doing things behind the scenes, Debbie and Monty were hard at work, making the dinner. After what was already a long day, doing Join-Up, demonstrating, answering dozens of questions, there he was standing at a hot grill, cooking steaks for the visitors. During dinner he was again bombarded with questions, each of which he was answering at length. Like all natural speakers he talks in stories, and he has a seemingly bottomless pit of stories to tell.

After the meal the group were shown the programme about the Iraq veterans, then they were all given goody bags with books and DVDs which Monty signed for them before they departed. And that was the end of another fascinating day.