Intro to Masterson Method bodywork for horses

I’ll be posting a lot about this, in pieces, over the next week or so. I’d recommend buying the book/dvd package as, for the price ($57.65), you are getting a LOT! For example, a horse riding lesson easily runs between $30-60 nowadays and most horse books are at least $30 alone. The book is extremely dense, packed with info, and the nicely filmed dvd gives step by step how to do it.

I’d like to commend whoever designed this book. Kudos to them! There are several design features that make it really useful as a field reference guide:

1.) The book is spiral bound so it can be laid flat and remain open. Since you may be using this at the stable, this is great.

2.) Each chapter shows a 2 page spread, step by step, of the technique in photos with brief text. Again, this is great as you can lay it open and see it all instead of having to turn pages or read through.

3.) After the 2 page photo explanation, you get in-depth analysis of the muscles and skeletal system of the horses’ region being discussed and another series of photos showing the technique, with deeper information. The end of the chapter wraps up with common questions and problems you may encounter and their solutions.

I REALLY wish that the Connected Groundwork book had been put together like this one. This makes so much more sense and is able to be used in the stable so much more easily!

I’d recommend watching the dvd about twice before approaching the book. The first night I tried the book first and there is so much info that it’s overwhelming. By having the book and the dvd, you can approach the learning in two different directions. Some people do best watching videos (me) and other people prefer text reading (husband).

Like Tellington-Jones TEAM method for horses, Masterson has developed a scale of pressure that is even easier to understand: Air Gap (almost no pressure), Egg Yolk (indenting an egg yolk without breaking it), Grape, Lemon and Lime. What I’d like to point out here is how little pressure he uses. Wow! I really, REALLY need to back off and use less pressure. This hit home in watching the dvd.

You may ask how can I get results without pressure? Early on in husband’s Reiki work (energy work), some horse friends asked him to work on a horse that had been severely damaged, both emotionally and physically. He ended up using what Masterson would describe as Air Gap, as lightly as touching the hairs on your arm, and the response from this horse was the most amazing I’ve seen in the work he has done then and since. The horse’s muscles literally started trembling and shaking without him touching and the horse gave huge releases and husband was NOT touching her!

The Masterson Method (MM) is an interactive method which means you watch for the horses’ responses and work in concert with what he has given…this has some correlation with Dorrances’ True Horsemanship Through Feel which encourages the horse person to follow the horses’ lead and learn how to give as well as guide without a lot of pressure.

This interaction that Masterson uses with his touchpoints of Search Response Stay Release  also allows it to be what I call Horse-Led as the horse can determine the pace of interaction. This builds upon the relationship end as opposed to the master-servant interaction we often have with horses. It also makes this a very gentle method to use with your horse.

I also see that I need to do this work before doing Peggy Cummings Connected Groundwork (CG). Z was so sore that touching or working the right side of the neck put her into fits. The chin rest made her twist her head (Masterson calls this corkscrewing) which is indicative that she simply can’t move sideways in the vertrebrae in order to release.

I can see where the MM (Masterson Method) can help me get that released and working right, and the CG can help her relearn how to use her neck better. In physical therapy, sometimes the body has to relearn the proper muscle pattern and I can see how CG would do that.

This is what I meant when I wrote about puzzle pieces… these two groundwork systems dovetail beautifully into each other. I can see where some of my TTouch work (from Linda Tellington-Jones TTEAM system) could expand the rehabilitation such as doing hoof circles after the scapula releases (MM) or the bodywrap (TTEAM) help give a better sense of back to front connectedness  after you did the total MM bodywork from front to back.

Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a weekend clinic of MM, bodywork the horses all week, and then have a weekend clinic of CG and do connected work the horses for a week? Then a 7 day clinic of TTEAM, including bodywork and riding and culminating in a clinic by Mark Russell about riding in lightness????

WOW!! I think my brain would explode!

simple work for making change

“The simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me,” ~ Gwendolen, The Importance of Being Earnest.

More riding today of Z. We are doing some very basic stuff that is all about laying a foundation for the future. While I’m thinking of this for the future, I cannot train in the present as if I’m in the future already… I have to be present where Z is at this moment.

An interesting tool in Molly’s toolkit is this one: Z started questioning her today, by moving crookedly in the roundpen. At one point her nose would go into the panel or then her bend would be the butt into the panel. If you were to try to bend the horse with the bridle or use leg to straighten the horse, this gives the horse more to work against and can cause bracing.

Instead, Molly switched things up and just let Z go on a loose rein, making a choice where to go, but she had to keep trotting. When the hand or leg is removed and the horse moves off on their own there is nothing to work against and they readjust themselves. This took a while, but eventually Z gave up and started moving straight again.

I want to remember this for if we get sticky during my rides to just let her go for awhile and think it out. This takes a bit of courage on the riders’ part as it goes against our belief that we must have control over the horses’ face through pressure on the bridle.

When Z stops she doesn’t do it square. Often her back end is spraddled out further then optimum balance. I want her to learn to stop more under self.

Dorrance (True Horsemanship) has a horse back up by putting the nose over the front leg which he wants to move backwards. With Mark Russell (Lightness), I want the horse to bend the nose slightly to one side and then the other, with the goal of the horse stretching forward and down to loosen the poll, axis, neck and spine.

As I asked for this bending side to side at a halt, I wanted her to shift herself and get those hind legs in a better place. I kept thinking back, when I needed to let it happen without the backward pull.

Suddenly, I got a response – when I bended her to the left (and we are talking about a very small bend) I lengthened my left leg, bent her to the right, lengthened my right leg, and she became square. I’m calling this a “bellydance with the spine.”

These are the small increments of changes I’m looking for. I’ll have to play with this and see how my body can help her achieve that balance.

trainer comparisons

After we played with the horses – T-man and Dee this morning, husband and I had a late lunch. Over it we discussed Z as I was catching husband up on what happened yesterday. Being a non-horse person, sometimes things I know intuitively I need to explain out in detail… perhaps that also needs to be done here as sometimes I can be brief in details.

Since husband didn’t have a chance to view RH’s work with Z, and because we have discussed the possibility in the past that Z may have a limited future because of some of her personality traits being similar to Red, I wanted to let him know that I currently feel very optimistic about her future at this time.

Last summer we visited a young female trainer recommended to me by a horse-friend. I was told by AL that this person is who she sends her young, needing to be broke, horses too. However, upon questioning the trainer, I found out that AL had only sent ONE horse to her – so that made me suspicious as this was not the story AL had led me to believe.

At her farm, she brought a difficult mare into the round pen and then proceeded to work her in a method similar to what you would see with Monty Roberts or John Lyons – your traditional, chase-them-around-the-round-pen and get them to submit to you.

By the end of it the mare was spinning out of control and the trainer still forced her to submit. She told us the horse was dominant and difficult. She also told us that even though I had said Z was dominant that her two mares would “put her into her place.”

I left there feeling this would not be a good match for my loving but difficult mare… yeah if I wanted her to submit, let’s face it, I can do all that myself if I wanted too. I didn’t need to pay someone to beat her down and return me a sullen, resentful mare waiting for her chance to explode on me.

Now, I had given some information about RH and our experiences yesterday. Today, I wanted to contrast what I saw last summer with the young woman vs. RH. RH visited with us a little bit, asking for background on Z and then we went to the roundpen.

He stood about chatting to us for a few more moments while Z explored. There were horses right over the fence and she had a chance to sniff and check things out.

The first thing he did was get one of his toys (my word for it), which was a pool noodle that had been stiffened with some sort of stick inserted inside of it. He used it to stroke her all over her body – which was a good way of seeing how she was going to react to being touched without putting your physical self in the danger of being struck.

Other things he did was just experiment with a rope touching her body in different areas. He used a lariat on her neck and from behind gave some pressure to see if she would turn. He also used a lariat around around her ribs to see if she would react violent to pressure in her girth area – moved that further back until she did react to it touching her hind legs.

All of this was done slowly, with much talking to us about various things, and I think in the entire hour, Z may have trotted about 3-4 times and even then I don’t remember making a full circuit of the pen at trot.

What I’m trying to say is there is a huge difference here, especially in pace, intent and approach. These are the things you need to pay attention to when choosing someone to train, ride or teach you and your horses.

Rushing about and being dramatic is not the type of work I want done with my horses. Slow and steady wins the race.

Z with the neckrope

I had a wonderful day today with the horses and have much to report back to you…

Even though it was hot hot hot – and 100 by 11 a.m.

Anyway let’s focus on the good. First, after doing some liberty work with Z, we did some work in a neckrope. This is a cotton rope that is fastened loosely about her neck and during the work, the rope has plenty of float (that’s the term Dorrance uses for slack that is not dragging the ground nor is tight).

I tried this with T-man years ago (way before Z entered the picture) and it was a failure. All I had to go by was some photos in Klaus Hempflings book Dancing with Horses and not much else. I didn’t know how he fastened it, how he cued the horse (who was more used to a halter) to follow his dancing or much else. I was also vague about what it accomplished but it looked so great…!

Hmmmm

Well today was the closest I’ve every gotten to making it work and it is so exciting to see the progress Z and I have made over the last year in this video!

My discoveries and thoughts:

1.) Until you master the horse paying attention to you and following you about (like on a halter/leadrope, lungeline or liberty work), this will not work for the average (me) horse person.

I am convinced that certain folks, Hempfling among them, probably has a lot of natural animal magnetism that I simply don’t have.

2.) All the companion walking really paid off – this is where your homework will lead you to your dream!

3.) The cotton rope I used had a clasp at one end. I put it about Z’s neck and then parted one of the strands of the rope and connected it on, making sure it was quite loose about her neck but not to the point of falling off.

4.) More work is needed on changing directions so it becomes a better flow. Right now the dance has a lot of fits and starts while the two partners learn how not to step on each others toes and who the lead is.

Wow! What really impresses me is the natural, relaxed headset and movement she achieves in this video. Some of her bends flow and are so effortless – and all without anything on her face which let me tell you is far more hard then it looks.

She has come soooo far this last year! I am so proud of her!

Intuition or What is Right

I’ve been pondering the problem that is Z (rather like the old Sound of Music melody of Maria~How do you solve a problem like Maria?). While Ride the Right Horse did give me further insight into the mind of a Strong Willed horse or as she calls it, Challenging, I only gained a bit more direction, specifically about boundaries.

From watching video and in discussion with Ivy, I do believe I had let the boundaries of personal space slip so that was the first thing to get corrected. When Z was helping daddy with the fence, several times I moved her back and of course after about the fifth time she started getting mad we weren’t going to allow it and it resulted in her leaving us so she could go pester Dee.

Though I had pushed her hard in the Round pen in order to show Ivy some of her more outrageous behavior, I was not comfortable about it. My intuition told me this was the wrong direction to go with this horse and the next several days afterward, I sensed a difference in her feelings/acceptance towards me.

Sometimes you do have to listen to that intuition, irregardless if it doesn’t seem to make sense.

You also have to be truthful with yourself: My reluctance was not due to fear on the ground, Z does not frighten me at all.I knew I could get what I wanted with using the Round pen; but I also knew that I didn’t like the psychological pressure that these exercises placed upon the horse.

But, intuitively, I had always felt that in the long run, doing intense RP work with Z would harm, rather then help.

Last weekend, I picked up a book on my wish list: Gallop to Freedom, written by the husband and wife team of Cavalia – Frederick and Magali Pignon. This book came at a fortitious time for me.

It further affirmed to me that I may need to go down a less traveled path, especially with Z.

If you are into Klaus Hempfling, this would be a book to check out. I will be discussing through several of my next posts and how it has been like “coming home”.

However, for those who want training by the book, volumes this one is not that. It’s about the relationship and a philosophy on how to approach training, not training “how-to’s”. Like Hempfling’s Dancing with Horses and Dorrances’ True Horsemanship through Feel, these books are about the evolvement of how we interact with horses and our role as their Decider (Pignon’s term).

Further Disclaimer ~ The Cavalia show highly romanticizes the bond between horse and human; while that is fun entertainment, I’m not all into that so much as I do like the text in the book.