Wednesday and a smoother ride

I seem to be settling into a pattern now of blog-writing and picture editing in the morning and riding in the afternoon. After a session photographing the mountain views morning mists lifting off, I had a whole pile of pictures to sort through after the previous day's wildlife encounters which took me right up to lunchtime. Over lunch I met a very lovely young Brazilian woman who turned out to be a qualified vet, despite looking like she had just left school. Like many other people who care about animals, she had heard about Monty and decided she had to visit and find out more about the man who listens to horses (and people, and deer, and just about any living being on the planet).

Over lunch the conversation ranged from the political situation in the U.S. and the 'Tea Party', to the alternative medicines that Monty uses to stay healthy. The most interesting of these is a recently discovered protein extraction taken from a bush that grows in an part of Uzbekistan where the animals and people all seem to be bigger and stronger than in other areas where this plant is not present. It's not on the market yet as it's still in the experimental stages but somehow Monty has become part of the trial. It comes as a white powder that has to be taken sublingually as it is rendered ineffective by acid.

I'd really like to see how things develop with this and whether it has any effect on the connective tissue and collagen in particular. I have some sort of connective tissue disorder which may or may not be Ehlers Danlos syndrome but whatever it is, there's no 'cure' for it and all that modern medicine has to offer is painkillers and braces. Ehlers Danlos is quite a rare genetic disorder, its most common forms affect 1 in 5,000 people through to the less common forms which affect 1 in 250,000 and a few extremely rare versions that are only found in a single family lineage. However when you apply the 1 in 5,000 to a population of millions that's still quite a lot of people. So if this protein has any kind of strengthening effect on collagen it could potentially change many people's lives in a very dramatic way. Bendy Girl would be first on my list of trialists if I was in charge of things.

After lunch it was time for a ride and I had Celebrity in the Dually Halter again. The others set off for the track via the shortest route but I decided to take Celebrity the long way round to see whether he had any of the separation anxiety he had shown out on the trail but he was absolutely fine, possibly because we were still on familiar territory that he knows well. Out on the track I spent some time practising my transitions and, insipid by the dressage clinic I'd watched on Tuesday, I thought I'd see if he knew how to do side passing using just neck reining. I started off using a bit of leg to encourage him to move sideways and at the same time applying the rein to his neck and he seemed to pick it up quite well. After a while I lessened the leg pressure and just used the rein, but each time more and more subtly. We wouldn't have won any prizes in a dressage competition but for a 3 year old horse that has only been in training for 7 months, he did really well.

I'm also starting to feel like my own very rusty riding skills are beginning to come back a little. I can now canter without hanging onto the pommel for dear life. I keep thinking about a documentary I saw featuring Lee Pearson, a multiple gold winning Paralympian rider who has even less leg strength than I do. He was talking about the way he tunes into the rhythm of the horse and the different paces, with the trot going up and down and the more backwards/forwards rocking motion of the canter. I'm trying to think less about grip and more about rhythm and getting my heels to stay down and make use of gravity.

I hadn't realised that Monty had been watching what I was up to, thinking he was busy talking to other people but after I got off he made a comment that I was improving so he had noticed after all. I only wish I was as fit and as fearless as I was at 14, with an unshakeable seat and toes that pointed in the right direction. It's been hard at times to be around so many really good riders, knowing that once I could have kept up with them and would have quite happily galloped around that race track all day but now I have to congratulate myself on doing a full circuit at a sedate canter.

I spent a good hour or so before dinner out the back of the house watching the sun lower itself into the surrounding mountains and taking pictures. There's so many pictures to take here, every different angle presents a yet another image to capture, it's really a photographer's dream as well as a horse lover's dream.

The Dressage Clinic and local wildlife

The day started with a dressage clinic given by Charlotte Bredahl, a very high level dressage rider, down at the covered arena. The participants were 20 women on an assortment of horses, some of which were shiny and expensive looking through to a few that looked like they'd been stolen from the Romanys. The tack they were using was just as varied with some using rusty old bridles that looked like museum pieces, mostly they were riding Western saddles but some were riding English. I've noticed that most people who ride Western do so in jeans and without any kind of a hat, but those who ride English tend to ride in jodphurs and a proper riding hat.

Huge Squirrel poses perfectly

Since Charlotte is such a high level competitor, I was expecting the participants to all be quite advanced riders but their ability levels were as diverse as their horses. Charlotte was wearing a microphone so the spectators were all able to hear what was going on so it was very interesting to watch what was going on. She was introducing them to the counter-canter (cantering on the wrong lead), which some were able to pick up quite well and others struggled with rather more. I felt a bit sorry for one participant who couldn't get her horse into a canter at all.

Woodpecker on dead tree trunk

On the way back up to the house for some lunch, I heard a familiar sound and saw a couple of dead tree trunks with some small birds coming and going. They looked rather like the Greater Spotted Woodpeckers we get at home but much smaller.

When I downloaded the photos I realised that they have the same red caps as the woodpeckers at home, but I couldn't get close enough to see whether they had the spots. Further up the drive I came across two huge fat grey squirrels up a tree, one scarpered but the other froze in place just long enough for me to get a couple of shots of it.

In the afternoon I went back down to the stables to have another ride and arrived just in time to see Candace leading Celebrity along festooned with plastic bags. This is part of his training to become a Willing Partners horse, but he did look rather like a ballerina. He was completely unphased by this though Monty's horse Chrome wasn't at all happy about it. We started off riding around the arena and watching Monty and Chrome do their thing along with Maya who was having some lessons in reining, doing the spins and sliding stops.

Celebrity in Ballerina mode

After a while Monty swapped onto one of the Willing Partners horses and we rode out along the same route we had done on Sunday, along with the new visitor, Anna Lena. On the way we stopped at the house where the deer were congregating and Monty slipped off his horse to give them some feed. It was a different experience to watch them from horseback as they are more relaxed around the horses.

Celebrity was doing fine, plodding along quite happily behind the others and seemed quite content with it all until we tried the same separation experiment. We spread out so that all three horses were out of sight of the others and he seemed ok and put his head down to graze. Just as I was thinking that maybe he was going to relax with it, he whirled round and tried to take me back to the others. It took all my rusty riding skills to stop him from doing this until Monty came back into sight. After that he was a bit agitated and wanted to keep right up the arse end of the horse in front, until we hit the Tarmac again and he settled right back down.

Again my right leg was having none of it when it came time to dismount and I had to ask Candace to give it a shove for me. She's not a big person but she has a really springy energy about her and the leg went over much faster than I meant it to and I ended up dismounting in a rather less controlled manner than usual, whacking a knee on the mounting block on the way (btw I'm absolutely not blaming Candace for this, I should have given her clearer instructions). Both legs were rather aggrieved by all this and threatened to give way completely but I just managed to stay upright by hanging onto the mounting block until they got themselves together enough to shuffle over to the scooter.

By this time it was early evening and the others took off to watch Monty doing an appearance on television. I followed them up on the scooter with my camera at the ready as I've realised that anything might just appear out of the bushes. I spotted a huge grey heron sitting at the pond like a statue, but just like the herons at home, it took off before I could get a shot of it. Halfway up the drive I heard the whistle that Monty does to gather the deer and saw them coming up out of the gorge, across the road and on up to the house.

The Stag looks up 

Two Does checking me out

Doe and her twins looking at the camera

When I rounded the corner to the house there was a big collection of deer on the lawn so I slowed right down in order to not frighten them away. I was sitting there taking pictures when they all started to come towards me, doing their funny slow motion walk.

I managed to get several good pictures, including some of the big stag before deciding to leave them to it. The final appearance was a little rabbit grazing on the lawn right beside the house and, like so much of the wildlife around here, didn't seem too bothered by me taking pictures of it.

The stag shows off his antlers

Grazing bunny

Back inside Monty was on HRTV doing a Join-Up with a horse called Fame who had bucked like crazy when given its first saddle but within another 10-15 minutes had accepted a rider as if it was a normal everyday occurrence. By the time I'd downloaded the day's pictures, dinner was on the table but by then my right hip was complaining fiercely and it was hard to concentrate on eating. A glass of wine helped the painkillers to kick in a bit and then I was ready for an early night.

2nd week already

Monty and Celebrity - Poster Image 1

This last week has gone by very fast, I can't quite believe I've been away from home for a week already. It was a busy, busy day for Monty today so I spent much of the day online, trying to sort out my order at the Apple Store, which for some reason wasn't going through on either of my credit cards. Eventually I tried customer the customer service international line by Skype only to find out that I had missed their opening hours by 7 minutes.

Later on I took a call from Debbie who'd had a request from HRTV (Horse Racing Television) for a picture of Monty to make into a poster for a showstand and she thought I might have something useable. The problem was that they wanted a portrait style image and the vast majority of my pictures were in landscape but I managed to pick out a few that were in portrait and crop a few others down so that I had a selection to choose from. Monty chose 4 that he was happy to be used and I sent off some low res versions for her to choose from.

Monty and Shy Boy - Poster Image 2

Monty was too busy to ride but he arranged for me to go out with Maya in the early evening. She's from Dorset but is out here running his courses and is one his top instructors - there's less than 30 qualified instructors worldwide so it's a big deal to get that well qualified. I got saddled up on Celebrity and we rode out onto the racing track. After a lap or two at a walk we trotted another lap. I didn't think I'd get all the way round at a trot but I did, I suppose I'm starting to get acclimatised to it a bit better now.

Then Maya, who was riding Monty's big horse, Chrome said she was going to have a canter. I wanted to go as well but didn't want Celebrity trying to keep up with them if they started to go really fast so I held him back until she was half way around the track, then set off at a nice pace. I managed to go a full lap and it was lovely to feel the wind as we went, the full heat of the midday sun was off by then and it was just the perfect temperature to ride; Celebrity had hardly broken sweat at all.

It was interesting to talk to Maya about some of the differences between the way things are here compared to back in the UK. The average annual leave allowance here is only 2 weeks which makes me feel very lucky to have more than double that. She also told me about some of the medical expenses, e.g. around $5,000 for a root canal. I'll never resent the £20 a month I pay for dental insurance again.

After we finished the ride out and it was time to dismount I realised I couldn't get my right leg over the saddle and had to ask Maya to haul it over for me. I took Celebrity back to his stall - he's quite happy to follow my scooter around now - and went back up to the house. By the time I got off the scooter I realised my right hip was almost completely seized up, fortunately most of the flooring in the house is varnished hardwood so I could get around by shuffling and sliding, it probably looked rather strange but whatever works...

In the kitchen there's a sculpture of a long-horned steer that Pat is working on. So far it's been created symmetrically but she wanted to turn the head to one side which involved cutting a big wedge out of one side of the neck and a cut in the other, a bit like cutting a tree limb off. I got involved with holding down the board it's set on while Monty and Pat worked at carving out the clay and pushing holding wires into it to hold the head in its new position. There were a few scary moments when the head seemed to want to droop downwards but once the wires were in place and the clay replaced in the cut out wedges, it held up fine and it certainly gave the sculpture a more animated feel. She's working on it using a photograph of real steer but the sculpture already seems more life-like than the photograph and it's not even finished yet.

The day ended again with a few more Western movies complete with stories from Monty and trips to the IMDB to look up filming locations and other details.

Sunday, a day of rest?

Actually there's no such thing as a day of rest round here, but the morning was relatively quiet so I had a chance to catch up with laundry and upload all the previous day's pictures to Flickr for the ACTHA people. Debbie left to go back home for a few days and I was sad to see her go as she's been ever so lovely to me. Pat arrived back though having been away for a few days to open an exhibition of her sculptures in Lexington. She had left only a few days after I arrived so I've not really been able to get to know her yet.

In the afternoon Monty took me out for a ride, just the two of us, with two Willing Partners Horses, I was riding Celebrity again, using a Dually Halter instead of a bridle. We rode up past the house and past several other houses sitting on land that had once belonged to Flag is Up Farms and onto sandy trails through the scrub where it looks just like a scene out of a cowboy film. All the way he was pointing out the trees he had planted, oak, pine and poplars, 250,000 of them. Little brown lizards were scattering out of the way and ever now and then I'd see a bush that looked like it was made from dry twigs but up close it was covered with tiny purple daisy-like flowers with yellow centres. We came across a lama, several dogs and various other things that would have spooked Elvis (Sam's horse that is, not The King) but Celebrity was fine with all that. He only spooked the once, when a dry crinkly leaf blew under him and even that wasn't much of spook.

It was a lovely peaceful couple of hours, in one way it was rather like a devout Buddhist getting to spent time alone with the Dali Lama and in another way it was like going out for a hack with my own Father, something we haven't had the chance to do for years. They're a very similar age, Monty's birthday is the day after Leon's and from the nose up they look amazingly alike - or maybe that's just my prosopagnosia and a bit of wishful thinking. It was oddly both ordinary and extraordinary. Monty works so hard and gives so much to other people that getting on a horse and riding out away from it all is his reward and relaxation.

When we got back Monty was immediately off to give his time to yet another human being in need and I spent a bit of time with the horses in the paddocks. There's three horses in particular that I'm getting very fond of, they seem like a bunch of adolescent brothers, all have a very similar white marking on their foreheads. When I pull up at the gate they all come charging over to say hello and push and jostle to get my attention. They all love to be rubbed on their white marks and on their noses and they stick their heads through the gate and taste my jeans, my shoes, any bits of the scooter that they can reach. There's a definite pecking order and the one at the bottom of the heap doesn't get much of a look in though I can tell he's just as curious and interested as the others. When I move away on the scooter they all come running after me to the next gate, hoping for more attention.

Back up at the house I did some more work on editing pictures and correcting some of my typos in the blog. I had been hoping to get up to Santa Barbara to visit an actual Apple shop but it was starting to look like that might not happen so I started looking up prices on Macbook Pros on the Apple store and swithering about whether to buy a new one or a refurb and finally pressed the button on a top spec i7 model with the faster hard drive and high res anti-glare screen and paid an extra few quid to have it despatched more quickly to ensure it got here before I leave. I can barely contain my excitement, I've never been able to buy a brand new, top spec Mac straight from the Apple store, I've always had to buy from eBay and hope for the best, so this is really a big thrill. And for anyone reading this who doesn't know me, yes, I am a geek and proud of it.

Back in the kitchen Monty was watching old Western movies on a channel he's recently discovered that just shows wall to wall cowboy films and old black and white series from the '30s. It's fascinating to watch films with him because he knows so many of the actors and can tell just by looking at the horses whether it was shot in an authentic location or in Europe - I finally understand the meaning of the term 'Spaghetti Western'. It was interesting to look up the films we were watching on the IMDB and find out exactly where the locations were and how old the actors were at the time. He has an amazingly accurate memory and can also predict when the horses are going to do their falls and whether they were trained falling horses or tripped on wires.

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.

Friday

Shot from under the fence, lying on my back in the dust

Today was a busy day for both Monty and Debbie, with a packed schedule of meetings and office work to attend to.

That gave me chance to spend the morning photographing horses. The tree lined avenue is bordered by a series of paddocks, each with 2 to 5 horses. I thought I'd be able to stop at the gates and take pictures but hadn't figured on the friendliness of all the horses. The minute I pulled up at the gate, they would all charge towards me, jostling for stroking position. It was very sweet but didn't make it easy to get pictures.

Best Friends (and below) - these two horses came here from Argentina together

I've fallen in love with this horse - an Appaloosa, who looks like a collaged creation

Here he is again, with his best friend

The fences are all quite high as well, so to get a shot from over the fence line, I had to climb up on the seat of the scooter. I had a bit more success with what is my favourite position anyway, lying down and shooting under the wire. Even so it was hard to get the shots I was looking for because of the proximity of the horses.

In the afternoon I met a man who had come here to talk about establishing a full programme for Iraq returnees who, like the 3 in the film, had come back with PTSD and other mental health damage. It was interesting listening to him talk about fundraising and compare the way things are here with the UK. He said that 90% of fundraising money came from individuals rather than the Foundations - presumably these being the equivalent of Trusts and other grant making bodies. I don't know what the statistics for that are in the UK but I recently analysed the income we have had for DASH for the last few years and donations accounted for 1-3%.

After he left I had some more time to spend taking pictures and talking to the horses. On the way back up to the house I was thinking about the deer when suddenly I realised that there was one standing under the trees just looking at me. I thought it would flee if I took the camera out but it didn't and I got several shots before leaving it to its business. Just as I rounded the next corner there was another 3 of them and just like the other one they seemed happy to stand there posing for me. One in particular did a beautiful pose right in front of a big agave plant.

Almost perfectly camouflaged deer in the shadows

Posing for me like the perfect model

Over dinner we saw some footage that's going to be coming up on the Equus Online University soon of Monty working with one of the American Olympic show jumping medalists. It's always fascinating to see two experts talking together and how Monty can help someone who is already performing at peak level to improve what he is doing with changes that might seem subtle but have a dramatic effect. Want to know more? You'd better sign up for the Equus Online University then.

Day 3 - Thursday

Another day started with the light creeping through the shutters, which I opened to reveal the deer grazing outside. In the kitchen things were busy as ever and it gave me a chance to spend some time looking out at the landscape and attempting to draw some of the distant hills using one of the iPad drawing apps.

One of the most amazing things about Monty is that he wants to help everybody who passes his way in need. Despite the full on schedule he has, he's always thinking about what he can to help others. Other people who are as well known as he is and as busy as he is just wouldn't give the time and thought that he does. His mission to leave the world a better place for horses and for people is absolutely genuine and every minute of the day he's doing something to advance this aim.

Monty and Lomitas

The first event of the morning was going down to 'The Container' - a shipping container that has been converted into an edit suite where Dawn, his film-maker was working on a programme that needed his input. The programme was about Lomitas, a famous champion racing horse who had recently died. It was really touching to see the emotion breaking through when he spoke about the horse and there was no way it was anything but genuine. It takes a strong man to be able to show emotion like that.


Next we went down to the stables for a ride and this time I was given a different saddle, not nearly as wide as the previous one and the stirrups seemed to be aligned differently so they didn't feel as likely to slip off. I was riding Celebrity - one of the horses that was featured in the Equus Online University. In the arena I had the chance to try out the saddle and do some cantering and this time my feet stayed in the stirrups and it it all felt much better though I did realise just how extremely unfit I am as only a few circuits had me breathing hard.

After a while in the arena we went out and rod around the farm a bit, including up and down that iconic tree-lined avenue with paddocks full of beautiful horses every which way I looked. This was Lisa's last ride before she had to leave and I felt for her as I could tell she didn't really want to go at all.

Over lunch we were shown some horrifying footage from a riding school in Devon showing a young horse being brought into the ring for the first time and the young rider was being instructed to canter him round and round for far too long for a horse that was neither fit nor experienced enough to be doing that. That wasn't the shocking part through. The instructor was yelling at her to hit the horse with her crop, and not just hit, she really wanted her to lay into him - for no obvious reason - and was also chasing them around with a longeing whip. Later she even brought in second instructor with another longeing whip to back her up. This wasn't historic footage, it was recent. The story does have a happy enduing though as I heard that the instructor had been sent to work with Kelly Marks and had managed to change her ways.

After lunch we bid farewell to Lisa and I spent the afternoon sitting in on presentations from the advanced exam students. They all have to do a research project and present it as part of their course. It was an interesting experience to see novice presenters doing their thing. They had all obviously put a lot of work into it and really believed in what they were talking about, though I did wonder about how they might begin to put their theories into practice. One was talking about Theraputic Riding centres and how they might use Monty's methods in their work. She was talking about disabled people doing Join-Up before riding, but didn't say anything about how that might actually work in practice. I'd be interested to talk to her about ways of enabling that.

I had a bit of time then to edit some of my photos and upload a few to Flickr before dinner. Monty arrived back from doing his tutorials with the students and called us out to see the deer as there was so many of them gathered on the lawn. There must have been 15 or 16 of them, from the big bucks through to the suckling babies. Monty has a special whistle that they come running to and seems to reassure them that they are safe, and he can walk right up them and shake out the food and they are quite happy to stay within feet of him. During dinner we watched some old black and white cowboy programmes, with Monty pointing out the all the actors that he knew about and what had happened to them, and who did what when, like a one man IMDB.