27th June 2010

I am back in Connecticut after a wonderful, wonderful week. We spent the last day of the clinic working with the horses and watching Robyn give a demonstration on how to start handling a very young filly foal. She was only a few months old and Robyn showed the group how to put on and use a simple body rope made from the catch ropes that we use. This is an easy way to help teach a foal to lead without applying any pressure on their head. It also helps to balance the foal through the body and in fact can be used on any horse. This technique was used on Knick Knack and it enables the handler to show a horse how to organise his body more effectively without hanging on to his head and I can tell you from experience it is brilliant for teaching donkeys how to be calm for the farrier.

  We were fortunate to have Lili on the course who is a bare foot trimmer. Knick Knack was brought into the feeding area and whilst he munched happily on grass in a raised bowl, Lili, Mandy and Robyn continued with the trimming work and the result was pretty outstanding. The four year olds were led out to pasture where they will be turned away for a few weeks to process all the information they have learnt. Six days before they had to be herded in and out of the corral and watching them lead quietly out in a string to new grazing was a wonderful sight. I find this work as exciting and inspiring as I did when I first started learning this unique technique in the Bitterroot Mountains over sixteen years ago, and I wonder what on earth I would be doing with my life if I hadn’t met Linda Tellington Jones and her sister, my dear friend Robyn Hood. I love all the connections that this work brings. I have so enjoyed meeting up with my old friends and making new ones too. Louise - I hope you enjoy this blog - it was a pleasure to meet you and I am so glad that you have discovered Horse Hero through Linda’s website. This is what it is all about. Sharing, learning, growing, helping horses and having fun.

It was really sad saying goodbye to Mel and all the wonderful people that I met. I don’t know when I will see them again aside from Barbara and Robyn as they will be in England in the autumn. I may just have to go back to Bitterroot next year. I had to leave before the final group supper as my flight was early this morning and Barbara and I headed down to Jackson to dine once more in what is now one of our favourite restaurants. We got to bed around 1.00am and were up at 4.00am. I flew out of Jackson on the first morning flight and slept all the way to New York.

This entry was posted on 19. July 2010 at 15:28 and is filed under Sarah Fisher. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.