In 1991, when I lived in Ashfield MA and was teaching in the riding program at Smith, I bought Another Horsemanship by JC Racinet. I grew up in SoCal watching Hilda Gurney and Charles de Kunffy. I had seen Reiner Klmke at the 84 Olympics. I had watched Dominique Barbier when he was at the Sun Valley Equestrian Center in the late 1970s. I saw George Morris and Robert Dover do their Pas de Duex demos at Madison Square Garden. I had taken some lessons with Janet Moulding and audited a lot of dressage clinics; Todd Flettrich, Dorothy Morkis, Sue Blinks, Charles, Hilda, many others. I always liked watching dressage. I also grew up watching the Foxfield Drill Team. I love to jump and did the h/j thing in the days before everybody put their asses skyward and we sat our canters. I also did the equitation and specialized in that with my students so they darn well sat their canters and did balanced changes and countercanters etc.
The 'drive in to the hand' and constant half halt/rebalance thing never made sense to me in a physiological way. A horse moving in balance shouldnt need to be constantly corrected. I saw so much misunderstanding of 'contact' and in so many cases it just meant holding while you kicked. I also have always had an interest in soundness and rehabbing and wondered why so many dressage horses had hock and neck issues.
Another Horsemanship really interested me. The relaxation of the jaw being the key to balance seemed very interesting and from an anatomical point of view made sense to me. I also met people on rec.eq who had worked with Racinet and the whole concept intrigued me.
So I read the other things I could find as Racinet wrote them and I read Baucher. It just made sense to me.
That reading led me to Phillippe Karl. Between Racinets book Falling for Fallacies and Karls book Twisted Truths of Modern Dressage I was really interested the differences between what I saw at many barns and what I was reading and seeing in the Karl and in Lisa Maxwells DVD about Racinet.
But nobody was following the work and I had to try to figure it out on my own.
Three years ago I think Kit West of Twelve Oaks Farm in La Cresta CA, about an hour north west of me, posted on Facebook her interest in PK and that the were going to be getting Bertrand Ravoux for a series of Trainer Course clinics. The first clinics were in Flagstaff AZ and I was not able to go. Weather was an issue and Kit offered to host the clinics at her farm in La Cresta.
So I started auditing them. They are four days long, with Bertrand giving lessons to the participants and then the participants practice teaching on test riders. I audited for a year and a half, a total of five four day clinics. One of the Trainer trainees dropped out and Kit asked if I wanted to try for the spot. I have not ridden much in the last two years and not at all in the last year cause of my tendon surgeries but Bertrand understood and said I could just walk or do what I could. He had seen me attend on crutches and in a boot for the last year so I think he could tell I was genuinely interested and committed >;->
So I did.
It is very interesting work. It is not easy work.
The best way I know to explain the difference between PK and Legerete and the standard I guess I can call German system is that the French classical motif would be Balance before Movement, and the German would be From Movement Comes Balance. The French school believes everything start with a relaxed jaw and straightness. Everything. So from the beginning you ask/show the horse to relax the jaw and seek the bit/contact. The intital work of teaching the horse to relax the jaw is done on the corners of the mouth, not the bars or the tongue. This is why there is this perception/misconception that PK riders just fall around with their hands in the air yawing on the mouth. This could not be further from the truth.
I have watched the DVDS and read the books for years and years. I have audited the Bertrand clinics and also Nicole Weinague (sp) But being in the clinic on one of my own horses and having Bertrand talk me through the flexions and the work was really good. I understood so much more clearly the theory and the application.
I rode my KWPN giveaway Lover, aka George. George was a Craigslist freebie who had been imported as a young horse and had a solid show career to 3rd. He had grown very unhappy in his work and had ringbone and had bucked his rider off badly. She love him but was afraid to ride him again. I brought him home, took off his shoes and degree pads, addressed his body issues, rode him bareback and in a bitless or halter, and then gave him to a friend to ride while I was off with my foot stuff. I got him back about two months ago and started trying to do the PK work with him in his KK jointed snaffle. He has become totally sound and very safe and quiet and happy. So off we went.
Bertrand refined my efforts and technique and many things became clear. This work requires very independent body parts...and a lot of timing and feel. I can see why it can be challenging for people... have to have an independent seat and very independent hands, arms, legs. If you can't feel the instant your horse yields in the correct way you are just going to be hopelessly pulling and flailing. But if you can, its immediately clear when the horse really takes the soft contact and changes his balance. There is no holding or pulling.
So the two misapprehensions I always hear about this work is that it is Hand Riding, which it certainly is not. The other is that it is incompatible with competition riding. It certainly is not. So far I have seen two of the Trainer trainees do their examinations for the first level of certification, which includes riding, lunging, in hand work, and also presenting a student who has been with them for the three year duration of the clinic. Both trainees produced a test that would have scored really well at second level, (which is the First level of the Trainer program...you continue to work in the program to upper level work).
Some of the horses in the program here are quite plain. There is a western trainer who brings a difficult and poorly built Appy mare. There is a girl on a very drafty Halflinger. Every horse that I have seen in this program has changed dramatically. They truly do become light, balanced, and beautiful. I get the biggest kick out of the Haffie...her first canters in the clinic were like the cartoon in which the legs just become spinning circles, you know? >;-> and now she is out there like some little German Riding pony, balanced and happy. Its really nice.
Oh, so I was accepted.
I cant WAIT till March.
I strongly encourage anyone who is interested in another way to balance and lightness to pursue this work. Living where I live, I see really good riders who use the different system and training scale. I could never fault them. But I see way too many riders really clutching at the concept of contact and lightness while the kick/drive the hind in to a fixed/holding hand. Horses really pay the price for that physically and mentally.
The lunging work in PK is nice...its really just in hand work at a distance...there is none of the just going around in circles in side reins that is the end game for many riders/trainers. Its transitions, changes of direction, reinback, everything. Its quite lovely and actually beneficial, which a lot of lunge work is not.
I am so lucky to have someone of Bertrands stature be accessible to me and to have horses I can do it on! George was a star. The last day was a short day and after my lesson I rode off of Kits property in to the hills. What a nice end to that great four days.
George has a really funny bellow that he does when he thinks if grain time. I have never heard a tyrannosaurus rex but I I did I would iimagine it sounds like George. Its hilarious. The clinic horses were living in paddocks between the arena and the house and every time I walked by George would do his big bellow. Kit has a mini donk. Every time George did his thing the mini donk got all happy and started his heehaw thing...he must have thought "Oh! One of my people!" It was too silly
