One of the masters whose books I read through suggested that we should remember that we’re speaking to our horses in a foreign language (I think it was Bert de Nemethy). So I’ve found myself suggesting to a couple of students that they think of their aids that way. I’ve suggested to them that they consider what it would be like if I were teaching them in French or German. I’ve suggested to them that, since we’d be talking about horses, they might understand a few concepts, especially if I used gestures, but that they’d understand best what I was trying to say through repetition of exercises, as I nodded “yes” or “no” while they rode. (If I were speaking a foreign language, I’d probably say, “oui” and “non” or “ja” and “nein.”)

Except that while we’re on our horses’ backs our communication with them is largely non-verbal. We communicate with our legs, seat, back, weight and hands, although, obviously, we sometimes use our voices or artificial aids (spurs, whip). We speak to our horses in a way that only the horse we’re riding can “hear” or understand—even a horse next to him doesn’t “hear” our non-verbal language. We really are having a secret conversation with every horse we sit on, although, if we’re well-trained and our aids (or signals, as de Nemethy liked to call them) are clear, it’s a language we can use to speak to any horse we’re riding. If you think about it, that’s really amazing.

It’s our dedication and ability to master the foreign language of the horse that does (or does not) make us good riders and, especially, good horsemen. It’s our ability to use the right amount of leg pressure, at the right moment—in concert with our back and stomach muscles and our fingers—that balances our horse for a turn or a jump or a transition. Through training and repetition, that right amount of pressure makes sense to the horse. It tells him what to do.

And it’s through that training and repetition we learn what the horse is trying to “say” to us—that he’s understanding our aids, that he’s anxious about something, that he’s confused, or something else. It is, however, a language that we never become completely fluent in, just relatively more fluent compared to other people.

The other aspect about our aids about which I’ve become increasingly aware is the need for them to be fluid and clear, to not just chatter incessantly at our horses. I often see people who try to drive their horses forward like they’re squeezing the last little bit out of a tube of toothpaste. It’s a never-ending push, and then they complain about how exhausted they are, because the horse just stops listening to them, kind of like you stop hearing your kids complain or cry. Or they try to move their horses laterally (leg-yield or shoulder-in) with a constant push of their inside leg. Again, the horse just doesn’t listen.

Or they use their legs and seat (even spurs and dressage whip) to urge or drive the horse forward, but at the same time they inadvertently prevent the horse from going forward by pulling on one or both reins. Usually, they don’t even realize it. Sometimes it’s a subconscious situation—they know the horse has to go forward to work correctly, but deep in their minds they’re afraid of creating that necessary forward energy because of a frightening experience they’ve had (being bucked off, a horse spooking). And sometimes they simply don’t realize that they have to improve their coordination to be able to use their legs without using their hands or to be able to tap with the whip behind the leg without pulling on the rein. The subconscious problem takes a lot of time to overcome; the coordination problem is a matter of developing a secure enough seat to allow the rider to use his or her aids independently.

We must always remember to use our aids with our horses, in concert with our horses’ movement, not against them. We must move with our horses, and we must reward them when they respond by softening or relaxing whichever aids we’re using. If we don’t use our aids that way, our horses just stop listening and stop responding.

Last month Deb Balliet, the vivacious and highly effective chief executive officer at the ELCR, sent me the Great Outdoors America report, compiled by the Outdoor Resources Review Group, a non-partisan group headed by two Democratic U.S. Senators. The report is a follow-up to a report last done in 1987, on the status of federally and state-supported conservation efforts in the United States. The conclusion of the report is that government programs have been woefully under-funded during the last two decades, so, despite the diligent efforts of hundreds of organizations like the ELCR, we aren’t doing enough.

You can download the entire report for free at http://www.orrgroup.org/report.html.

This evening as I write, I find myself pondering many, many things related to land conservation. One is our world’s amazing ability to renew itself. Heather, Wesley and I live about 65 miles north of San Francisco, and the typical weather pattern can be described like this: In the winter it rains, and in the summer it doesn’t. So in May the grass turns from bright green to “California gold” (really, brown) and goes into hibernation, but when the rains return in October or November, the grass immediately turns green and grows again. And that’s what’s happening right now. We got 4 inches of rain last week (an unusually heavy storm for October), and I swear that while I was riding last Friday I could see the grass turning green and growing. It’s amazing.

Many, many people wouldn’t notice that change, though. Why do I always notice it, other than that I eagerly await the return of grass so we can feed less hay each fall? I think it’s because of the education I got from my parents and, to a lesser extent, from the school system I attended as a child. I grew up in central New Jersey, just a few miles from the Great Swamp, which is a national wildlife refuge and outdoor education center. I can recall many trips there with my parents and with my elementary school, which was basically across the street from the Great Swamp, learning about the trees and animals as we journeyed along the boardwalks. That was where I began to learn about, to appreciate, animals and plants, even though a swamp isn’t the most beautiful place in the world.

My parents also took my sister and me to the Florida Everglades and to the Florida Keys (and to other natural wonders) many times, and then we’d make scrapbooks of the hundreds of photos we’d taken of the birds and the alligators when we got home. On those same Florida vacations, my father and I used to get up early each morning to go fishing, and that’s where I learned to enjoy and appreciate the activity of the natural world early in the morning. In addition to the fish, the herons, egrets, pelicans, cormorants and more were out and about. We’d often see bottle-nosed dolphins cavorting, and there were always lizards running about. The morning is still my favorite time of day.

My mother, sister and I also would take long trail rides together, and when I was 11 we started foxhunting several times a week. Both of these cherished activities furthered my appreciation of nature and gave me an enduring love of riding a horse through it. I found that a horse’s back is a tremendous vantage point to get up to close many wild animals.

And, now, as I write this while holding my week-old son in my lap, I wonder—and worry—about how I’m going to instill these values in him and about how much of nature he’ll have left to admire in a few years.  We’re fortunate to live on a good-sized farm in a relatively rural area, so the chance to experience nature is just outside our door every day. We have living here coyotes, bobcats, wild pigs, deer, turkeys, ground squirrels, frogs, an assortment of birds from finches, to barn swallows, doves, herons, falcons, hawks and vultures.

I wonder how I’ll teach him about these wonderful creatures, how I’ll instill in him an appreciation and understanding of them and the varied land that supports them, without being too preachy, too overbearing, too much of an old codger? Will I be able to counter-act the pressures of his classmates to just play video games or “dude, let’s hang at the mall”? We have a great system of parks here in Sonoma County (and elsewhere in Northern California), so there won’t be any lack of other places to take him to walk or to ride, at least not in the next 20 years. But will whatever children Wesley has be so lucky in 40 or 50 years?

I certainly hope so. I urge you to read the Great Outdoors America report and to think about what you can do to help preserve the future that’s so important to all of us.


The birth of our son Wesley has made me ponder many subjects.


Riding a horse is my favorite way to experience nature. I hope my son will like it too.

The removal of the two phases of roads and tracks and the steeplechase phase on the second day of a three-day event has put great pressure on the cross-country course designers for major events and championships to create courses that will decide the competition. And that pressure has unavoidably trickled down to the horse trials that are supposed to prepare horses for three-day events.

The test of speed and endurance that used to be the second day of a three-day event has now become a test of cleverness and concentration, an extension of the much more demanding level of dressage now required of event horses. Especially at a dozen or so events over the last half-decade—honestly, mostly on courses designed by Capt. Mark Phillips, the U.S. team coach—some of the jumps have bordered on being deceptive tricks or optical illusions, with dramatic results. And last month, at the Burghley CCI4* (England), one of the world’s most important annual events, Phillips cut 1 ½ minutes off the normally required length for four-star courses (12 minutes), he said to prepare riders for the shorter course they’ll get at the 2012 Olympics in London. (The 2008 Olympic course was also shorter than standard and had a dramatic effect on the way riders tackled it.)

The Burghley report in The Chronicle of the Horse quoted several riders about the course. Karen O’Connor, who’s represented us in four Olympics and won numerous three-day events, first rode at Burghley in 1986, when the steeplechase time was 4 minutes and the cross-country time was 13 minutes. She said, “I started on the big, old-fashioned courses at Burghley, with huge fences and ditches that scared the hell out of us but were such fun to ride. This is a different sport, and I’m not sure what I think about it. Now we have to accept that we must train for accuracy.”

British rider Sam Griffiths, who finished second this year, didn’t think his ribbon was all that special. “I completed Burghley in its last year of the long format. That felt like a great achievement. This only feels like a good one.”

I know what he means. I’ve ridden in four classic-format events at the one-star or preliminary level (placing in the top 10 in three of them), and in 2006 I finished 19th at the Jersey Fresh CCI2*, run in the short format. Even though Jersey Fresh was one level higher than the four classic-format events I did, it wasn’t at all the same feeling. I didn’t have that tremendous sense of accomplishment and bonding with my horse, of wonderment at his stamina. And throughout the warm-up (in which I did my own version of roads and tracks and steeplechase), I kept wondering if Merlin would understand and be physically prepared for the longer and more testing course that lay ahead. All but four or five fences on the Jersey Fresh course required total concentration, with less galloping room between them. There was only one section of big fences where you could gallop along, have a mental breather, and savor your horse and the course.

Ever since this changeover to the short format began in late 2003, almost all international riders have sort of shrugged their shoulders and accepted it, mumbling something about “well, the sport is changing.” My response has always been, “Yes, everything, and every sport, evolves. But why does it have to change in a way we don’t want it to? Why can’t we, the people who are actually competing in it, shape that evolution? Who says we have to just accept it?”

The primary (mostly European) justification for this plot has always been that it’s for the sake of the horses, that it’s less physically demanding because they won’t have to be as fit. But my own (and many other people’s) observation, along with the first scientific research into the physical effects of the two formats, has shown that justification to be a giant pile of horse manure. Our horses have to be just as fit, maybe even fitter, because speed is now all-important and because the jumping efforts have become so much more technically (and thus physically and mentally) demanding. At least our fear that warmbloods would take over from Thoroughbreds and Thoroughbred-crosses hasn’t proven true—because speed and fitness are still required.

So we here in the United States are the last bastion of the long format, and this weekend (Oct. 16-18) and in two weeks (Oct. 29-Nov. 1) the only two events in the country (and the world) that host classic-format preliminary and training-level three-day events will take place. The first is at the Hagyard Midsouth Three-Day Event in Lexington, Ky.; the second is at the Galway Downs International Three-Day Event in Temecula, Calif. Midsouth will have more than 45 starters at the two levels, and Galway is expecting about 70 starters, sizeable increases for both events from last year and from the previous few years.

Both events are members of the U.S. Eventing Association’s Classic Series and are supported by the Long Format Club, created by a group of eventers who hope o return the classic format to its rightful place in the training and testing of event horses. I’m proud to say that I’m one of the riders entered in the training-level three-day event at Galway Downs, and I’m proud to help the cause I so truly believe in by doing the public-relations work for Galway Downs and the LFC. I look forward to more and more eventers learning why we’re so dedicated to the classic format—and to them speaking up with us to bring it back.

Two people who used the comment space at the bottom of my blog agreed with my points.

Equiart wrote, “As a former eventer, mother and now-retired art teacher, I fully agree about trends in today's youth. Many are quitters whose only aspiration is toward Wall Street and get-rich-quick schemes. They have lost touch with nature, and no wonder—their yuppie parents looked upon pets as expendable. Even children have become accouterments to a Hollywood lifestyle. Sports are seen as scholarships to top universities.”

K. Grant wrote, “I think you have nailed it. The upcoming generation is not up to the sacrifice of world-class competition that cannot be purchased by Mommy and Daddy. U.S. equine sports need to examine all the things about which you wrote. Perhaps some new minds should come in with new ideas. Or examine the years of success and hone in on the methods and passions that lead to those successes.”

Meanwhile, over on the Chronicle Online Forums, a reader posted my entire blog and started a 10-page thread (about 200 responses). Most of the posters talked about their experiences while working with or supporting up-and-coming riders. Jsalem, from Georgia, was one of many who said she sees fewer and fewer kids willing to spend all day at the barn, learning about horses and their care. She wrote, “At 20, they should be working—maybe not being paid to ride the big-time horses, but being paid to groom, clip, exercise horses or maybe being paid to manage the office.” But she’s seen few who want to ride the difficult horses or groom or clean tack.

A 20-something, who calls herself spirithorse22, offered,

“I agree that ‘most’ young people these days want to play Wii and be handed work opportunity. I see it all the time in school and compare them to the riders I know! I think in a certain sense the horse world (I'm an eventer) is a last holdout against this type of mentality!”

If you’ve been reading my blogs and my brief biography on the front page (or you know me), then you’ve figured out that eventing is my primary sport. I was specifically writing about the Burghley CCI4* in that blog, although I said I thought my points applied to other disciplines. Interestingly, this thread was on the hunter/jumper board, not the eventing board. People’s comments showed that the problems facing us in training and developing horses and riders really are spread across the disciplines.

A woman who calls herself magnolia73 made some fascinating observations in her post:

“I think most people who go on to jump start in the hunters. It is the very lowest level of riding—hunter crossrails and crossrail equitation. It’s good to have people learn the basics of an even pace, good turns, and neat riding before playing with speed. They are the basics you build on.

“I guess what is happening is not that hunters are bad, but the quality of instruction at the lowest levels can be pretty lacking, which means an auto-pilot horse is required because the instructor has no skills to train the horse or teach the kid, or the student is not patient enough to develop a horse and wants the instant gratification of showing.

“It all falls on hunters sucking—but not because the practice of finding eight jumps perfectly is wrong. It’s because everyone starts in a lesson program at a hunter barn, and many get bad instruction. It would be neat if the international disciplines of dressage, eventing and show jumping had more entry level opportunities to their sport. But when was the last time you saw an event barn with 20 schoolies or a dressage barn with longe-line lessons to get kids started right?

“I think if the Olympic disciplines want to capture riders, they need to start the lesson programs. If eventers want kids to kick on and sit up, they need to start them over the first crossrail. If dressage riders want kids with educated seats, they need to start wee ones on the longe. You can't just keep relying on the local hunter trainer to start kids to succeed in all disciplines—they teach what they know.

“The problem is that the kid who wants to ride the jumpers and is starting out does not have access to trainers and lesson horses to prepare them for jumpers until they reach a degree of proficiency and financial commitment (read: buy a horse) in a hunter program. What if we had lesson programs that started with the foundation of the (for lack of a better word) European style? And they rode retired jumpers and dressage horses—and learned from the start that type of riding? I bet we'd have more gutsy kids stick to the sport.”

Magnolia73 has made a fascinating suggestion. She’s suggesting that we change the system we’ve relied on for the better part of a century. Relying on hunter/equitation-type stables and instructors to introduce riders to riding has been our system because it’s the most popular English-riding sport and a sport that’s conducive to concentrating on the rider, as magnolia73 notes. It’s how I had my initial introduction, but then I joined a Pony Club and also spent about eight years working with a former hunter trainer who’d become fascinated with dressage, so she melded the two together. Plus, I grew up foxhunting once or twice a week from September to January. My wife, Heather, started riding Western and then decided she wanted to jump and go across country, so she started with two European trainers who’d just launched what would become a very successful business. They had school horses, and she did get longed just about every day for a year. We now have three schoolmaster horses, and we longe our students and take them across the countryside as much as possible.

But, even if we had the funds to change the system, as magnolia73 suggests, it wouldn’t change the culture we live in. How do we change the values while engaging the interest of kids and, just as importantly, their parents? Most of our peers—whether you’re a late Baby Boomer like me or a 20-something—have been raised in a culture that has moved farther and farther from nature and agriculture and become increasingly splintered and often disconnected from others, even though, ironically, we can communicate like never before.

The two are related, I think. We can keep “in touch” with dozens to thousands of people (or more) via cell phones, text messaging, Facebook (or similar sites) and even sedate old email. But so many have forgotten how to converse, how to express themselves, how to talk with other people. (It drives me crazy when a person I’m with is busily texting with two or three other people.) Similarly, we can spend endless “busy” days, but what have we accomplished, all the while than sharing our daily lives with people across the country, who may or may not care?

I’ve probably gone off on this rant because I’m waiting for my first (and only) son to be born this week, and I’ve been wondering what his world is going to be like for him in 10 or 15 or 20 years? Will he share our love of the outdoors and horses? What values and beliefs will we be able to impart to him? What can I shape in his world to encourage him to be passionate and productive, not just busy? Can we teach him to truly communicate, not just talk? I sure hope so, but it worries me.