Cowboys & Indians / June 2010 / Light Hands Horsemanship

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Light Hands Horsemanship

A melting pot of ideas and disciplines, the annual Light Hands Horsemanship event in Santa Ynez, California, is as much an up-close-and-personal weekend with industry legends as a forum on the education of horses from birth to finish. Held on the rose-studded grounds of a private estate called Intrepid Farms, the event “has become the ‘gold standard’ for those who are serious and passionate about horse/human relationships on a higher level,” says Richard Winters, the 2009 Road to the Horse Champion, who will come aboard as one of Light Hands’ 2010 guest clinicians.

Joining Winters for the clinic May 20–23 are the returning “Masters of Lightness”: Eitan Beth-Halachmy, world-renowned for his cowboy dressage; Robert M. Miller, DVM, father of the revolutionary foal training technique known as “imprint training”; Lester Buckley, a champion cutter turned international dressage rider; Jon Ensign, known for groundwork and colt starting around the globe; and legendary Texas horseman Jack Brainard (he helped organize the National Reining Horse Association), who’s now passionate about cowboy dressage. The clinic, which grew from two to three days for 2010, will be emceed by radio and television personality Rick Lamb, host of RFD-TV’s The Horse Show.

Now in its fourth year, “Light Hands Horsemanship has become a 5-star event in the horse world,” Winters says. Attendees from Australia to Arkansas to England have made their way to Santa Ynez for the clinic, which was first conceived on yet another continent when Beth-Halachmy, Miller, Buckley, and Ensign were featured clinicians at an equine congress in Brazil. After seeing them together, friend and horseman Arthur “Art” Perry Jr., who was traveling with the group, got an idea that launched Light Hands Horsemanship.

“I hadn’t been to Brazil for years, so I thought I’d go,” says Perry, a longtime Morgan horse breeder and owner of Intrepid Farms. “It was my first time ever to see natural horsemanship in the flesh. I was taken by what I saw. That was the first time I’d seen all [those clinicians] work together, and I saw the progression from imprinting of the foal right through the finished horses. I think we were on the way to the airport and I said, ‘This has been quite a revelation to me. We ought to do something like this in the United States.’ That’s how we got started.”

Perry had the facility; the clinicians had the talent and knowledge. Beth-Halachmy’s wife, Debbie, subsequently took the clinic idea and ran with it. “We thought why not take this from birth all the way through the advanced horse and have each horseman clinic on his area of expertise. What this would do is offer the public a place to go and get multiple opinions, but with the same goal. They all wanted the same kind of horse,” says Debbie, whose Light Hands logo of a feather resting in the palm of a hand captures an aspect of horsemanship philosophy the clinicians share. The main goal of the clinic, Debbie says, is to plant the seed to seek more education. “It’s very hard to teach someone in three days. They are really inspiring. They don’t just give you information—they light a fire under you.”

Miller considers Light Hands the highlight of a year of horsemanship events. He should know: At 80-plus years and a couple of decades removed from his “retirement” from his veterinary practice, Miller gives lectures and clinics almost nonstop around the world. “I’ve been to so many clinics,” he says. “From the standpoint of horsemanship, this is the ultimate. Here’s this classical European horseman [Beth-Halachmy] who’s gone Western. Here’s a Texas cowboy [Buckley] who’s now a licensed dressage instructor in Germany. It’s incredible. They came to the same point from opposite directions.”

Known for discovering talent, Miller remembers first seeing Buckley two decades ago. “I saw his genius when I first saw him work colts at the Parker Ranch in Hawaii,” Miller says. “He doesn’t promote himself, so he’s not nearly as well known as a bunch of these clinicians, but I’ll match him against anybody. I knew I had to get him and Eitan [Beth-Halachmy] together. Eitan is the best horseman I’ve known in my lifetime.”

For his part, Beth-Halachmy is now devoting that expertise to giving back. “Horsemanship was very selfish for many years. A lot of people kept secrets. Every one of us [Light Hands clinicians] got to the point in our lives that we’re paying back. It’s a time to share with others.” In that generous spirit, Beth-Halachmy thrilled people attending Light Hands in 2009 when he allowed audience members to ride his Morgan horse Santa Fe Renegade after his presentation on the stallion.

“We clinicians are from different schools of thought about horsemanship and we have different ideas and ways of doing things, but we all kind of come together [at Light Hands] to wear one hat,” Beth-Halachmy says. “It’s very unique. It’s almost like you allow people to open their eyes and evaluate what they need to take home out of the clinic. When you teach, if you let them have those little pearls they can put on a string; then they create their own style, in their own time and their own direction.”

Beth-Halachmy, who plies that equine devotion on his Wolf Creek Ranch in Grass Valley, California, makes time for Light Hands in a demanding agenda that ranges from judging the March Road to the Horse competition and teaching cowboy-dressage clinics to performing in the opening ceremonies of this fall’s World Equestrian Games and entertaining at Equine Village at the Kentucky Horse Park. He’ll open the Santa Ynez event with a presentation and discussion of the advanced horse and the importance of “lightness.” His fellow clinicians will present demonstrations on multiple subjects: the early training of the horse, the steps and application of dressage principles in everyday riding, using ranch work to keep the whole horse balanced, and the preparation needed to achieve the refinement, lightness, and subtlety of the advanced horse.

“Light Hands is a phrase that gets people thinking,” says Buckley, who became a licensed dressage and jumping instructor in Germany after years of working for the Parker Ranch in Hawaii and King Ranch in Texas. “They get here and we start peeling the layers of horsemanship off and they get to see a bit of different philosophies and methods and hopefully realize [that] we’re all trying to train the horse in such a way, it doesn’t matter what discipline you’re in.” The goal, he says, is to come away with a higher respect for the horse, whether it’s a jumping horse, a cutting horse, a Western pleasure horse, or even a driving horse.

“Good horsemanship is good horsemanship,” Buckley says. “It crosses all boundaries. It will bring English people and Western riders together. The horse is bigger than politics; the horse is bigger than religions, than countries, than racial problems, than any of the problems we find ourselves caught up in today. If we’ll allow it, the love and respect for the horse and proper ways to train them can bridge those gaps. That happens at this clinic. It’s a little slice of what’s happening worldwide.”

—Elizabeth Kaye McCall

 

Light Hands Horsemanship Clinic: Intrepid Farms, Santa Ynez, California, May 20–23. Fee: $350. Limited to 200 attendees. For more information, visit www.lighthandshorsemanship.com or call 530.346.2715. Light Hands Horsemanship is sponsored by Tom Spalding of Spalding Labs and Fly Predators (www.spalding-labs.com). ‘

 

Eitan Beth-Halachmy

Horsemanship advice from the kid from Israel who became the ultimate cowboy-dressage horseman.

Eitan Beth-Halachmy’s journey into horsemanship began in childhood. “When I was a boy, I wanted to be a cowboy,” he says. “I came from Israel. There were no cowboys in Israel! The only cowboys I knew were Hollywood cowboys. The image attracted me. I looked at the cowboy as freedom, doing the things you wanted to do.” But when Beth-Halachmy came to the United States, it was to do something his dad wanted him to do: become a vet. “I came as a student and studied veterinary medicine. I didn’t want to do that. I knew I’d be better doing what I wanted.

“When I talk about my discipline today, I call it cowboy dressage. What I’m doing now is a combination. Dressage is still my discipline, but the cowboy is my freedom. I think that every time you bring a freedom into a discipline, you bring something new. You break the ice. I’m not saying be an outlaw, but in your own state of mind, follow your own feelings. If it’s horses, if it’s a job, add a bit of yourself. There is a fine line you need to cross to become an artist in a way of riding a horse or communicating with a horse. I think horses are something you really devote your life to.” —E.K.M.

Issue: June 2010

Filed under: Travel, Outdoors, Riding