Tuesday, May 15, 2012

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.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

How cool! I would love to do at liberty work and bridle-less riding, but that is in the far far future! Gotta get riding my mare with a bridle down, first.
I wish we had more clinics in my area, I would love to audit a bunch of them to just learn.

Shirley said...

??? Waiting for the next post....
I love watching good trainers work. Trick is retaining all you learn so you can apply it at home.

Dreaming said...

I adore Julie. I love watching her shows. I love her attitude, and it is so cool to see the dramatic changes that occur.
I just checked her calendar out to see where she's going to be. Imagine my surprise in finding out that she's going to be at Palmetto Bluff, SC in June. I could see the bluff from my SC house!

Shinyfluff said...

oh I am sure you have the stones!

Linda said...

I'm a BIG Julie Goodnight fan. I DVR and protect all of the episodes. I know exactly what you mean about her ways with horses--common sense! Love it!

GunDiva said...

This is the first clinic I've audited. I've sat in on a couple of her one- and two-hour expo demos, but haven't audited an all day clinic with her. She's an amazing person who "walks the walk". You'll not find her drugging or beating her horses behind the scenes - what you see is what you get.

I need more time to work on clear cues with Estes before I even consider bridle-less, but we're a lot closer than I thought we were. Maybe by the end of the summer we can do the ski road loop bridle-less. :)

Danielle Michelle said...

I need to get to one of her clinics or something sometime. I've been a big fan for a long time but never seen her in action!

GunDiva said...

Danielle Michelle - do it! She spends the majority of the year traveling, so hopefully she'll end up near you, either at a clinic, horse expo, or filming her show. I'd live to ride in one of her clinics, but then you're focusing on just what you and your horse are doing. Being able to audit is cool, because you can look around and see how it's working for other people.

Rachel said...

SO COOL!

So your million dollar idea... spit it out! :)

My mom bought me a "naked riding" lesson for my birthday!

Unfortunately, when we showed up, the horse was lame, so we rode fully-clothed instead.

My mom is convinced that Kona needs to be made a bridleless reining horse, ha ha! :)


So glad you had a great time - good for you guys!