May2008

May 2008 Newsletter
Copyright 2008 Alexandra Kurland
The following posts were written for the_click_that_teaches email discussion list.

Contents:
MicroRiding: The Next Evolution in Riding Instruction

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MicroRiding: The Next Evolution in Riding Instruction

by Alexandra Kurland

Hi Everyone,

It's been ages since I've sent anything to the list. I haven't disappeared down a rabbit hole. I've been nose to grindstone working on not one, but two new DVDs. The first one is titled "Capture the Saddle: The Mounting Block Lesson". Yes, we are finally getting to riding!

The mounting block lesson is a much needed step in the progression from ground work to riding. At many of the clinics I give people will bring their horses in all saddled up, thinking they are going to ride, but their horses have other ideas. The rider walks her horse up to the mounting block, and the horse sidles away. The rider is frustrated, but I'm delighted. It means we get to work on the mounting block lesson! This lesson is really more about making sure the rein is connect to the horse's hind end than it is about getting on. Great mounting-block manners are a by-product of this lesson, but the main purpose is to confirm that the horse understands and is comfortable with rein mechanics before the rider gets on.

Once I have the rider up, I can't really end the DVD there, so it also covers the beginning steps of single-rein riding. The DVD covers a very simple exercise that introduces the rider to single-rein riding. The horse I feature was a very wiggly fellow, one of those horses who never really goes where his rider is intending, at least not without a lot of holding things together with the reins. By the end of the session, he's working on a long rein, staying beautifully with his rider. Because he was so wiggly, I could highlight many important details of single-rein riding. I can show you the turns where the horse was able to drift through the rider's seat and hands, and I can also show you the changes the rider made which stopped the drift. Click and treat for both of them!

I ended up with more material than I could cover in just one DVD so as soon as I finished the mounting block DVD, I started a second one: "Riding on a Triangle: From the Mounting Block Lesson to Three-Flip-Three". I'm still working on that DVD. My travel season has slowed down progress. I was hoping to get it done before the end of May, but it looks as though it will more likely be July before I get it out. These two DVDs are so interrelated that I decided to wait until both are finished to release them. So while this email so far may sound like a new DVD release announcement, all I'm really doing is letting you know why I haven't been posting to the list for the past month and more.

Clinic Themes
My real intent in writing this email was to share with you some of the discoveries that have been emerging from the spring clinics. I'm just back from the first round of this year's advanced trainings. The clinics are constantly evolving. The overall format of the clinics has remained fairly constant, but the content shifts, grows, evolves with every clinic. And every year a general theme seems to emerge for the clinic season.

A couple years back the clinics centered around the importance of good food delivery. You wouldn't think something that sounds so very basic could take on the importance of an entire year's clinic theme, but sloppy food delivery can undermine what is otherwise good training. And good food delivery can become an amazingly powerful training tool.

Last year's theme was definitely micro-shaping. We had tremendous fun with that one. Over the winter I produced the "Microshaping: Learning to See the Smallest Try" DVD which formally introduced the microshaping strategy and "Equine Pilates".

When the clinic season wound down last fall, I had no idea what the clinic theme for 2008 would be. It emerges out of the work I do over the winter with my own horses. I never know what is going to be relevant to other horses until I start teaching in the spring. It's an interesting process, one that keeps me on my toes, constantly exploring the leading edges of this work.

So what is this year's theme? In a nutshell: Micro-riding.

I introduced Micro-riding at the Toutle WA advanced training a couple of weekends ago, and again at the Groton and Calgary clinics. So what is micro-riding?

It evolved out of micro-shaping. If we're going to have fine-tuned horses, we need to make sure we have fine-tuned riders to go along with them. So now that I have people looking at the level of detail that micro-shaping horses entails, we're ready to turn our attention to the rider.

The Micro-shaping Strategy for Horses
In all three clinics I introduced people to micro-riding by first showing them clips from the Micro-shaping DVD. For those of you who have the DVD, we watched the first part of Lottie's sessions, and a bit of the third horse, Erin.

I wanted to tune everyone's eye to the level of detail that that DVD shows so well. I wanted them thinking micro, and the best way to do that was to watch the DVD together. I also wanted to remind them of the micro-shaping strategy.

The micro-shaping strategy refers to a process where you alternate between two distinct behaviors or clusters of behaviors. You have your primary behavior, the one you are working on to improve in some way, and you have a secondary behavior that you use to give your horse a little break.

The spotlight behavior can be anything. In the microshaping DVD we were focusing on freeshaping so you could easily end up thinking that the spotlight behavior has to be one where only freeshaping is used. But micro-shaping can be used in a wide variety of learning situations. When you slide down a lead and ask for a give from your horse, you are shaping on a point of contact. The question is are you a lumper waiting for a big move, or a micro-shaper, recognizing the subtle shift that is the true give?

Over the winter I used the micro-shaping strategy quite a lot with Robin. We were working in-hand. We'd do a bit of work on our primary behavior, then we'd switch over to the secondary behavior. Robin wasn't that interested in simple targeting. His secondary behavior involved modifier cues - touch left or right. That's a behavior that has a huge reinforcement history behind it. It's something he enjoys and is good at, so it was the perfect secondary behavior to use.

I'd do a bit of in-hand work. We'd be fine tuning some element that had a bit of a snag in it. We'd get a series of clicks in, then I'd drop the lead and shift to standing in front of him. With my hands behind my back, I'd give him the cue "Touch left" or "Touch right". Then I'd hold out both hands and he'd touch the one I'd asked for. Click and treat. We'd repeat this a few times, then we'd go back to work on the primary behavior.

Over the winter I was very pleased at how smoothly our sessions went, and how much progress we made. The micro-shaping strategy was clearly helping Robin get past the little snags that had crept into his work.

I think in part what this strategy does is it says "yes" to a block of work. Suppose someone is teaching you a complex task. You've worked out the first few steps more or less. You're being pretty successful so you're on a high rate of reinforcement. You're happy. The clicks are coming at a goodly clip. You feel as though you're really understanding what is wanted.

But then your partner shifts to a slightly different criterion. Suddenly the clicks aren't coming at such a fast rate. You're confused. Were you wrong? Was what you thought he wanted really not what he wanted after all. You start experimenting, moving away from your original successes. The rates of reinforcement drop even more, and now you're both feeling a bit frustrated. Your trainer isn't sure what went wrong or what to do to get you back on track. And you're feeling totally confused because what you thought was working isn't anymore. What a mess!

That's one scenario. Here's another. You're learning something new. You work out the first few steps more or less. You're being pretty successful so you're on a high rate of reinforcement. You're happy. The clicks are coming at a goodly clip. You feel as though you're really understanding what is wanted.

You offer a particularly good effort that contains within it the seeds of the next criterion. Your partner wants to emphasize that good moment and let you know that you are very much on the right track. He clicks at just the perfect moment, and then he brings out a target to touch. Click/treat, click/treat. You do a short series of target touches, then it's back to the previous behavior. Only now your partner has had a slight shift in criterion. The clicks are a little slower in coming, but you feel confident that you are on the right track. Those target touches told you that that little unit of work you just did was good. It's something you want to keep. You may be focusing slightly elsewhere, but you know that that unit is part of the larger whole. Instead of shifting away from it, you know you can use it as a building block in the next little unit your partner is working on. You don't feel confused or frustrated because the targeting has given you this strong confirmation that you are on the right track. When you get another little piece of the puzzle, your partner again offers you the target to touch. More clicks! More success. More great confidence that you are understanding the game!

I think this is how the horses use the secondary behavior. It doesn't just give them a small break. That's certainly important. Little units of process time are clearly very important. But more that that, adding a secondary behavior is a huge confidence builder.

This may be anthropomorphizing how the secondary behavior works, but however it functions, the horses have been telling me this strategy works. If you are freeshaping a new task, if you are dealing with emotional issues, if you are working through a snag in your training, it is absolutely worth incorporating it into the process.

The Microshaping Strategy for People
Over the winter I was playing with this concept quite a lot with Robin, and I was also exploring some minutia in my riding with Peregrine. I was thinking about bone rotations and Peregrine would answer with some of the best trot work I've ever had from him. He's twenty-three now so that's saying a lot.

I love a process where the horses just keep getting better and better. But how do you teach this!? I was thinking about rotating my thigh bone. Not my thigh. My thigh bone, and Peregrine would feel that and change. But if you tell someone to rotate their thigh bone, they go into "try" mode. They over do. They turn it into a macro movement with everything being done on the outside, not the inside. The results are just not the same. They get stiff and blocked trying so hard to do so little. We have to go to images, to metaphors to try to approach what I want. With just words who knows what is really going on. When I tell you I was rotating my thigh bone, what does that mean to you? It's so clear to me, but I'm pretty sure most of you reading this wouldn't come anywhere close to my interpretation - not from the words alone.

Over the winter I really wasn't thinking about how to teach what Peregrine and I were doing. I was just enjoying our time together. I was playing with an idea I had gotten from James Shaw, the t'ai chi specialist. We'd been talking as always about bone rotations, only this time it was about rotating thigh bones. James was telling me about the great changes he was seeing in riders as they learned to use this bone rotation.

So that's what I was thinking about as I rode Peregrine. I wasn't trying to rotate my thigh. I was thinking about rotating the bone itself. As I thought about it, I could feel my thigh bone rotate. Now of course, muscle has to contract in order for a bone to move, but this rotation was at the level of a micro-movement. It was thought only that created the rotation, not the "trying" action of macro changes.

The feeling of the bone rotating was clear to me, and it was absolutely clear to Peregrine. When I accessed this micro-rotation, his trot changed underneath me. It grew bigger, more suspended, and absolutely glorious to ride. I changed my thought. He changed in conjunction. What fun! We continued to play. I was riding at the level of micro-movements, a breath into a muscle and he changed underneath me, giving me precise transitions which flowed effortlessly amazing trot work and some of the best canter I've ever ridden.

The night before I flew out to the WA clinic Peregrine gave me the gift of a glorious ride. I think he was telling me I needed to share micro-riding. Robin had given me micro-shaping. Now it was his turn for the clinic theme. It was time to turn the spotlight onto the riders and bring them into sync with the fine-tuned, listening horses we were creating through the micro-shaping process.

So at the WA clinic I tested out a new teaching strategy. I must say people were wonderfully good sports to indulge me in my little experiement. We began by watching part of the Micro-shaping DVD. I wanted to set the stage, to tune everyone's eye to the level of detail I was talking about. It wasn't enough just to talk about Microshaping. I wanted people to see it in action and the most efficient way to do that was through the DVD. I think the success of the weekend was very much dependent upon the use of this DVD. Having those common images as our starting point brought everyone's focus down to the level of detail I wanted to explore. We were indeed exploring riding within, discovering a level of body awareness many have not experienced before.

But it wasn't enough to be thinking at a micro level. I wanted to use the micro-shaping strategy. This was the new piece. I wanted to take a horse-training strategy and apply it to the teaching process for people. The outer structure of what we did is easy to describe. The inner world that was revealed is harder.

Here's the lesson:

I had people work in groups of two or three. One person was the rider, the focus of the shaping process. The second person was the monitor. The third person was the coach. The coach watched for such details as the timing of the click and the mechanics of the shaping process. She also had the fun job of watching for changes in the person who was being micro-shaped.

It can sound as though the coach didn't have a lot to do, but this process is a wonderful one for enhancing observational skills. And the coach played a very important role in making sure mechanics remained clean, that the monitor was not leaving her hand up all the time or whisking it away before the click. She also sometimes needed to remind the monitor that it had been a while since she'd switched over to targeting.

The monitor was the person doing the clicking. She put her hand on her partner's shoulder. Her job was to feel through her finger tips subtle changes in her partner's body and to click for micro-responses.

There is, of course, a technique to resting your hand on someone's shoulder. If you press too hard, you'll inhibit both your ability to feel, and your partner's ability to create the subtle changes you're looking for. On the other hand, if you are too tentative, it can be distracting. I usually cup my hand slightly so my palm does not rest on my partner's shoulder, only my finger tips. And I think about the contact I might have with a cat. I could place my fingers on my cat so that her fur is pressed down, or I could rest them more lightly so that her fur is not disturbed. It is this later quality that I am looking for.

That's what the coach and the monitor were doing. Now what about the rider? How do you describe what she was doing? Her role was to focus within. She was having a freeshaping/Feldenkrais/tag teaching session all rolled into one. When I began with people, I told them to think about their shoulder blades. That's all the instruction they were given.

"Think about your shoulder blades."

I would be listening for a response through my finger tips. That's in large measure what this lesson was about for the monitor - learning to listen. I was feeling for movement, any movement, no matter how subtle under my finger tips. I was not looking for the big movement you'd feel when someone, for example, hunches their shoulders. This was much more subtle, below the level of our usual awareness. The first time I clicked, the rider usually looked puzzled. She hadn't felt anything. How could I be clicking for something she wasn't even aware of?

"Think about your shoulder blades," I would say again. I'd wait with my eyes closed, listening inside, and again I would feel that tiny hint of movement through fingers. Click.

We didn't worry about delivering any treats. The click was information. We trusted that it would be enough without any need for additional reinforcers. Immediately after I clicked, I took my hand away for a brief moment. The click was important. The release was important. They created a series of discrete learning events for both monitor and rider.

I would click my partner several times for that oh so subtle shift under my fingertips, then I offered her my hand as a target.

Now this part may sound almost silly. The targeting may make sense for the horses, but it's meaningless for people - right? Wrong. In all three clinics everyone agreed that the targeting was a much welcomed, and very essential part of the process. This micro-riding process requires intense focus. The targeting provided welcome breaks. I know in the mornings when I was the monitor for eight or nine people, I could not have sustained that level of intense concentration without the breaks and process time the targeting provided. And for my riders, I think it was even more valuable because most of them were not used to this level of internal concentration and focus.

In the clinic I just finished people started referring to the targeting as their "cookie". If one of the monitors forgot to switch over to the targeting, the rider began to demand her "cookie". I thought it was interesting how quickly the targeting took on this meaning for them.

So while it might have seemed a little strange at first to be having someone target a pen, or your outstretched hand, it very quickly became a well-integrated and much welcomed part of the process.

After the first targeting session, I would ask my rider to think about moving her shoulder blade in a particular direction. Now this was interesting. People would begin by either doing nothing at all or way too much. For example, if I asked them to move their shoulder blade up, they'd begin by hunching their shoulder up, but that's not what I was looking for. I wanted their shoulder blade to move. Our shoulder blades have been with us all our lives, but it's amazing how little direct control we have over them. What is normal is that they have become "attached" to our ribs and held tight by muscles we are no longer overtly aware of.

So the question was: "What can you let go of to move your shoulder?''

I was listening, waiting with my finger tips for the first signs of the answer. I'd feel it as a slight breath that released a bit of tension in their back and allowed their shoulder to move. It was never much. I was listening for the beginnings of movement, the micro-movement that creates the larger response.

One quick aside: I keep using the word "listening". The pragmatists among you will read this literally and be confused. "What sound could she be hearing? I thought this was about muscles moving? How does that make a detectable sound? Maybe a bat could hear these changes, but surely not a human!"

There are many ways to listen. I am using that word quite deliberately. The American Heritage dictionary defines listen in this way: be attentive, attend, concentrate. Those are good words. Listening means you are focused on someone else. You aren't formulating your next response. You are attentive to what they are saying. In this case, the listening was done through my finger tips. I was waiting for a tiny breath of movement. Click! Take my hand away. Repeat.

Learning to listen, to truly listen to your horse is an important skill, a great gift. Listening means with your whole being. This process takes you another step inside his world. Listen with your finger tips, with your breath, and he will answer with his heart.

Listening and answering takes tremendous focus so again after three or four clicks, I'd give my partner a break and let her touch the target a couple of times.

Then back to monitoring. I'd close my eyes and ask my partner to think about moving her shoulder blade down. Sometimes down would be easier than up, or vice versa. And sometimes down would not be there at all. It was all good learning.

"What could you let go of to find down?" The answer never came directly from me. It had to be found by the rider, but click! the first hint of it was clearly marked.

We explored up and down, in toward the mid-line, out away from the mid-line.

That was usually enough for the first session. Watching each rider we saw huge outward changes created from these ever so subtle shifts. Everyone looked so much more grounded and balanced. They reported that they felt great. That their usual stiffnesses and habitual aches were gone. In the afternoon sessions out in the arena their horses told us they very much liked the changes in their riders.

Day Two
We could have explored this micro-riding strategy in just one of our group sessions and then moved on to other things, but I knew it was important to revisit this lesson. Done once, it is an interesting exercise in body awareness, but it doesn't become a clinic take-away. You need to experience it over several days to see how much each person changes. Is Day two just a repeat of Day one? Or has the level of internal control and awareness increased? That was the question I posed to the group at the beginning of our second morning session.

We worked in the same small groups that we had the day before. I kept hearing from each group delighted comments about how much more people were feeling. The monitors were more confident about what they were clicking their partner for. And the riders all had much more of a range of movement in their shoulder blades.

So now it was time to take them deeper into this inner world of riding awareness. I led the group through a demo of the next stage in this process. With my hand on my partner's shoulder, I asked her to think about the top of her femur. Again that's all the instruction I gave. "Think about the top of your thigh bone."

I stood behind her, eyes closed, hand on her shoulder blade, listening for that first hint of awareness. It was always tentative, more imagined than real, but it was there none the less, a subtle change in the breath that took her thoughts beyond the habitual holding in her diaphragm. Through her shoulder blade, I could sense this slight shift in balance. Click! Take the hand away.

"Think about the top of your femur."

Listen, eyes closed, waiting. There it was again, that faint whisper of awareness. Click.

"Think about the top of your femur." Again it was there, clearer this time, more definite. Click! Target.

From this awareness I directed people to think about rotating their thigh bone out, and later in. This was very revealing for people. Some people were clearly very one sided. And of course this was reflected in the one sidedness of their horses. "Oh! - no wonder I can't get both canter leads!" I heard more than one rider exclaim.

From the thigh bone we moved on again, thinking now about the "bubbling spring", the balance point of the foot. I would wait, listening for that first sign that the rider could take her awareness past the normal tightness in her pelvis, past the below-conscious-awareness holding of her breath to find her feet. Click!

For some people this was enough for this session. We ended there, but with others we could move on to another level of this work. I could begin to ask riding questions. "What does a transition feel like?" "What does a turn feel like?"

We explored this on a micro-riding level. With my hand on her shoulder I would ask my partner to think about an up transition. Sometimes I felt nothing, or I would feel a disconnection from her grounded structure. No wonder she had to do so much on the macro level to get her horse to move!

So we borrowed some ideas from James Shaw, the t'ai chi specialist whose work I have shared before. We experimented with micro-movements of the shoulder blades which let people breath into the back of their hearts. That's one of the eight energy gates James talks about. It lies between the shoulder blades. Most of us pull our shoulder blades in or at least hold them so tight that we can't really breath into our backs. Our breath gets caught in our upper chest. We may try breathing deeper, letting our breath fill our abdomen, but we often still keep the below-awareness tension in our backs.

This micro-riding process opened up that awareness and let people experience what it meant to breath into their back, into their ribs, their pelvis, even their feet. When the rider found her bubbling spring, you could almost feel her horse springing up underneath her into a beautiful transition. What did a down transition feel like? Not a blocking or bracing against energy. It was a thought translated by breath and micro-movements, clear, quiet, powerful.

This was usually as far as I took people on this second day. Again, looking around at each of the groups, we saw huge changes. Everyone looked relaxed, but oh so wonderfully grounded. People reported feeling so much better. Various habitual aches and pains were no longer bothering them, a very welcome side benefit to this exploration of riding.

What does my horse do when I . . . ?
In the afternoon the horses again told us that whatever we had been doing in the morning they were liking very much. I know I was. I was seeing enormous shifts in the quality of the rope handling and the riding. People were softer, quieter, more deliberate. They got so much more from so much less.

We played the "What does my horse do when I . . . ?" game.

"What does my horse do when I breath into the back of my heart?"

"What does my horse do when I rotate my inside thigh bone to the outside?"

"What does my horse do when I breath my shoulder blades down?"

It's an observe without judgement exercise. You aren't trying to make a specific response happen. You are collecting data. You're seeing what response your horse gives you to each of these subtle changes.

I described this exercise in the riding book, but there's so much packed into that book I think many people miss it completely. Whether you are an experienced rider micro-riding from the inside or a more novice rider macro-riding on the outside this is a useful process to explore. It raises a lot of questions. How independent is your seat, are your hands? Can you move just your right shoulder or does your whole torso also move even when that's not your intent? How does your horse interpret these actions? What do they mean to him? Does he indeed turn when that is your intent? Or does he do something else? Do these changes in your position mean anything to him or do you need to add more information to get his attention?

In clicker training parlance what are your cues? If this were a dog would "sit" spoken softly be enough to get a response, or would you need to add a hand cue, stand in a specific orientation to your dog, be wearing a pink hat, while also standing on one foot with your left hand behind your back? How clear and specific are your cues? Or have you muddied them up over time and created superstitious links you never intended?

Does your cue have a "get ready, get set, go" component to it, or does your horse take off at the first hint of the cue whether that's what you wanted or not. If you think about cantering, is he already up and running, or does he wait as you breath into your back signaling him to get ready before transitioning on your specific "go" cue?

With the fine-tuning of awareness these questions became all the more interesting. The answers created some spectacular work. It's hard to single out any one horse. We had such great work from everyone, but one of the standouts was certainly Marla Foreman's anglo-arab, Beauty. Beauty is an exceptional athlete. Marla has gotten used to the first part of every lesson being simply about gawking at her gorgeous horse.

Beauty is always fun to watch, but the rides she had in this spring's WA clinic were exceptionally gorgeous. On the last day Marla rode her in the outdoor arena. We'd had snow the day before. It had melted away by the time we went out to the arena, but the footing was soggy in sections, and the horses had chewed it up playing in the snow the day before. It was far from an ideal dressage arena, but that was our work space. Beauty floated over it as though it was the most perfectly groomed surface. Marla commented several times on how easily Beauty was handling the footing.

Her trot was certainly spectacular, very cadenced, beautifully suspended. It was the best I've ever seen her go. And then Marla lost her micro-riding concentration for a moment, and Beauty got a little strung out. Suddenly she was stumbling over the ruts in the footing. Ground which just a moment before had made no difference, now was tripping her up. Marla and Beauty regrouped. They regained their micro-connections, and the ground evened out underneath them. It became the well-groomed surface that it had not been just a moment before. The contrast in Beauty's ability to handle the uneven footing was a wonderful illustration of the importance of looking within for riding answers.

Day Three
On the third morning we again worked in our groups of three, and people noticed even more changes. The monitors found it even easier to track changes and to feel subtle shifts. And the riders were all so much more internally aware.

When the changes we're looking for are so very, very small it seems wrong somehow to say that their range of movement was so much greater, but that's a very accurate statement. When you release the habitual tension that normally restricts joints, the ease of movement within each joint becomes so much greater.

On day three we reviewed the work of the day before, and then we explored to an even greater degree micro-riding. Again I asked my riders to think about an up transition, or a down transition.

What do you do when you think about a turn? What could you access now that you can breath into the back of your heart, now that you can think about your thigh bone and have it rotate? What happens when your thoughts bubble up energy through your feet?

When you slide down a rein or a lead, while you're waiting - listening - for a give from your horse, what could you release that would help him to find the feel you are looking for? What do I feel under my hand that I can click?

Again, no answers were given, just the freedom to explore. The click marked changes I could track with my finger tips.

I loved this process. It gave us a way to ask questions of one another. "What do you do when you ask your horse for more energy? How do you use your seat, your back through transitions?"

The language of riding is such a challenge. We're trying to transform a physical experience into words, a weak translation at best. Here through our fingertips was a way past the words into real awareness. In each of the clinic groups we had a wonderful opportunity to compare notes and learn from each other. We had some very experienced riders who added some wonderful insights into what it means to ride on the inside. What a great gift these riders shared with everyone in the group.

I hope some of the people who participated in these clinics will jump in with their own observations and ah has. What did you learn? What did you take away from these experiences. I know what I saw later when we worked with the horses - more energy in all gaits, clean, crisp transitions, softer handling with less overt action. The morning sessions certainly made my job as a riding coach so much easier.

And what did my own horses tell me about micro-riding? When I got back from the Groton clinic, it had been at least ten days since any of the horses had been worked. Peregrine in particular usually takes a few days to get back on track. But on the day after I got back I took him into the arena and was blown away by the quality of his trot. He was telling me whatever I'd been doing over the weekend - he was liking a lot.

I've shared this micro-riding process with three groups now, and with each clinic I've taken people a little further into this exploration of riding from the inside. We're learning to listen, to observe, to feel. We're learning to understand and use subtle shifts in breath and muscle tension. We're finding those little places where we hold tight and block the ease of movement, and we're learning to breathe into those places, to let go. We're finding a way past trying so hard we end up creating tension. Instead of trying and becoming tight, we're learning to think and allow, and we're discovering a connection with our horses that goes beyond the ability of words to describe.

And speaking of words. I've written enough of them for one post. I wish you all great rides, and I look forward to sharing this process with all of you I'll be seeing at this year's clinics.

Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com