Ray Hunt Clinic
My camera is broken, so the pictures are courtesy of Cathy Irwin. The first row is
of Ray Hunt. Unfortunately, we were behind a BIG fence, but you can still see that
he's an old cowboy.
The next two pictures are of Judy and I. I'm talking and Judy is looking away while
smiling pleasantly - typical.
The last picture is of Bonnie (no relation to our Bonnie) and her thoroughbred mare. The mare is 4 years old,
17 hands and actually very beautiful - and up for adoption. She was actually well
behaved during the clinic, but Bonnie had to keep her mind occupied at all times.
Bonnie did a superb job of staying aboard and pretty much in control during some
pretty stressful riding! Bonnie is the one on the ground in the background, keeping
her mare focused on her, not on all the other incredible adventures around her.
Judy, Cathy and I went to the Ray Hunt clinic that was held January 5 - 6 in
Carmel Valley. We had a great time and I, at least, learned a lot. Ray Hunt is
a good ol' cowboy who believes in patience and slow talk. His underlying assumption
seems to be that if you control a horse's feet, you control the horse. His horses were amazing:
he had them changing which foot they had their weight on, moving one foot at a time
on command, etc. What is more interesting is that he had the clinic horses, about
15 of them, doing some pretty fancy manuevering, too, by the end of the day.
The clinic ran from 9 AM to 4 PM (I think - we left early). As I said before, about 15 riders participated with their horses. Only a couple of
riders rode the same horse all day; most switched horses after lunch. I can
understand; it was pretty intense. Ray had *all* the horses moving in *all*
directions at once - going in opposite directions around the arena, interlacing
as they passed each other, suddenly stopping them all and getting "5 steps back,
10 steps forward", turning on the forehand, etc. Ali would have gone through
the roof about 10 AM. That said, there was only one Arab there, the rest were
mostly quarter horses, with a big (17 hands!) young thoroughbred mare and a mustang
thrown in for variety. Judy and I frequently turned to each other and said, in unison,
"I'm never bringing MY horse to one of these!" Let me be clear; the reason for this
was fear of embarassment, not disapproval of any technique.
I noticed a couple of things: there were exactly 2 helmet wearing riders (tsk, tsk!)
and about half the riders wore spurs. Hmmm.
The day ended with the horses cutting calves. I thought
it was going to be horrible, but most of the horses were successful and we didn't
see one absolutely panic, which is what I thought would happen.
It cost $30 to observe for the day and cost the participants with horses $500,
although I'm not sure if that was for one day or two since the clinic ran for
the weekend. I thought it was money well spent.
