(“It’s all about velocity and location.”)

Teaching clinics is a marvelous way to make a living . . . . flying all over the country establishing one sided intimate relationships with rubber-gloved TSA agents and, in this post 9-11 world, defending your right to pack spurs in your carry-on luggage. As one overzealous agent reprimanded me, “You could strap them on your elbows and use them as weapons!”

But once on-site, the real fun begins—not unlike a game show where they start the clock and you’re given wildly (sometimes comically) divergent problems and expected to produce a miracle before the time expires. It’s more than just figuring out each horse. Every owner/rider presents her own widely varying skill set, self perception, and loyalty to or hatred of her four legged partner.

At one clinic an auditor was overheard perplexedly muttering, “But he’s not teaching them all the same thing!” Of course, from a larger perspective, I was. But like the tale of the five blind men each reporting on the one part of the elephant he had examined—an ear, the trunk, the tail, a leg—the various creatures they had imagined bore little resemblance to each other.

In fact, when three very similar horses present themselves one after another, I go out of my way to explain to the watchers that while the solution I’m applying is appropriate for each of them, it may not necessarily apply across the board to the rest of the horse population at large.

After three “wake him up, jack him up, mash him together” horses, it can be a relief to show a “soothe him, decompress him, let him find his own balance” approach to the audience!

At this past weekend’s clinic the participants fell into two general groups. That’s discounting the off the track thoroughbred a woman was attempting to rehab after the prior owner had made an ill advised decision to use him for JOUSTING. (God save us all!)

One chunk of the roster was horses with basic behavioral issues. Fortunately, this is the time of baseball’s post-season playoffs, and I was able to quote some gristled old pitching coach I’d heard pontificating on ESPN: “Make it simple. It’s all about velocity and location.” Translation: forget every sophisticated dressage formula you’re trying to apply. Make your horse go where you want at the speed you want (with him carrying himself) and everything else will fall into place in its time.

A second group was comprised of amateur Training Level competitors—nothing awful—just a lot of low 60 percent horses with riders wondering why they never got any better.

My job: find five different ways to explain that they each were only riding the outside layer of their horses. Yes, they go around; they bend; they approximate acceptance in a passive sort of way. But if you watch a Debbie Macdonald or a Steffen Peters (or, dare I say, even your humble writer) on one of these horses, we ride “deeper” into the horse. We “peel the onion” and get down to immediacy of response, greater pliability, and thoroughness which permits the imposition of our will unmarred by resistance. Result: expression, movement, and a way of going that’s much more inspiring to watch.

Again, I was rescued by citing the season and the TV. “There was a Presidential debate a couple of weeks ago,” I offered.” Don’t let your horse be that guy who spent most of his time looking down, fiddling with his notes, and failing to really engage in the discussion.” . . . . Who’d have thought? Mitt as the alternate paradigm finally gets to contribute as much to dressage as his wife!