Visiting the Triple Creek Ranch

Mom and I went to see Julie Goodnight at Triple Creek Ranch for a one-day Horse How-To clinic focusing on:

• Ground Manners for Young or Fractious Horses
• Advanced Groundwork and Liberty Work
• Riding Right: Balance Rhythm and Feel
• Training Solutions

I'm always so impressed when I get to watch Julie work.  She's hilarious in person and is so down-to-earth.  When I work as part of the crew, there are so many things going on that I can't focus on one thing.  Taking Mom as her birthday present was totally an excuse for me to sit in the audience and focus on what Julie had to say.  (I did feel a little guilty about not working, though.)

What astounds me is the immediate difference in the horses.  I know that there are some nay-sayers who don't believe that change happens as quickly as it does on the TV show.  For those people, all I can say is, audit a clinic.  She takes horses she's never seen or worked with before and in a few minutes produces dramatic positive changes that the owner can reproduce.  To me, that's the most important thing: to be able to reproduce the results the trainer gets.  It doesn't do me any good to send my horse to a trainer if I don't learn how to get the same results at home.

What I noticed was that the horses - all of them - immediately responded to Julie's take-charge attitude.  When she says, "Horse, this is your Captain speaking", they listen.  It's been my observation that as soon as the owners take the same attitude and expect their horse to behave a certain way the horses take notice and toe the line.

Mom had a big ah-ha moment and put it into practice the next day with Jesse, apparently with positive results.  I'm pretty sure she'll get around to writing a post about it, so I won't blow it with a spoiler. 

As for me, I hadn't realized how close Estes and I are to being able to do simple at-liberty work and bridle-less riding until I watched the Advanced Groundwork segment.  Poor Estee has a lot of learnin' to do when she gets home.  First, we'll work on my million-dollar idea (I haven't posted about it yet) and then move to at-liberty work and bridle-less riding.  I'm not certain I'll attempt bridle-less out on the trail, but I'd love to.  I just don't know if I've got the stones required to try it outside an enclosed area.  Baby steps.  Gotta work on my million-dollar idea first and go on from there.