Do You Speak Equis? E-Book

Antonello Radicchi

• Herausgeber: J A Allen
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Do You Speak Equis?? outlines a method of communication with the horse using the head collar and the bit in a way that is non-coercive and based on mutual understanding and reciprocal respect. The aim of the method is to develop a horse who carries himself with lightness from the outset of training. Topics covered include communicative action and receptive reaction; natural flexions; aggressive horses and how to work with them; interaction with head collar and finally, introducing the bit. This comprehensive guide is aimed at horse owners, trainers and riders and is fully illustrated with 154 colour photographs, 14 diagrams and 5 cartoons.

Leseprobe

DO YOU SPEAK EQUIS?

COMMUNICATIVE INTERACTIONSUSING THE HEADCOLLAR AND BIT

ANTONELLO RADICCHI

Translated by Julie de Joncaire Narten

J.A. ALLEN

First published in 2017 by

JA Allen

JA Allen is an imprint of

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2017

© Antonello Radicchi 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 90880 961 2

Photos

All photos, including the cover are the property of ©Francesco Busignani, except the following: Page 13 Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Creation of Adam (detail), 1508-1512; Pages 16, 19, 30, 34, 35, 37, 49 Drawings by Carlo De Joncaire Narten; Pages 69, 70, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 161 ©Antonello Radicchi Schemi tecnici; Page 16 ©Antonello Radicchi; Page 103 Fossil of Marrella splendens. Released under the GNU Free Documentation License; Page 104 Haikouella lanceolata. Creative Commons. Wikipedia.org-User: Archaeodontosaurus

Translation from the Italian: Julie de Joncaire Narten

Disclaimer

The content of this book is the author’s opinion only. The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any damage or injury caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book. JA Allen encourages the use of approved safely helmets in all equestrian sports and activities.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

CHAPTER 1The Primary Requirement – Energy

CHAPTER 2The Herd and Private Property

CHAPTER 3Communicative Action and Receptive Reaction

CHAPTER 4Space

CHAPTER 5But What Do We Want From Him?

CHAPTER 6Who Am I? But, More Importantly, Who Are You?

CHAPTER 7Timing

CHAPTER 8Grammatical Concepts

CHAPTER 9Desensitization

CHAPTER 10Opposition

CHAPTER 11Interaction

CHAPTER 12Working at Liberty

CHAPTER 13Channelling Energy

CHAPTER 14Working Together: Going Beyond Requesting or Asking

CHAPTER 15Natural Flexions

CHAPTER 16Aggressive Horses – Let’s Not Harm Ourselves!

CHAPTER 17The Modulation of Pressures

CHAPTER 18Interaction with the Headcollar

CHAPTER 19Surcingles, Saddles and Other Strange Things

CHAPTER 20Inseparable

CHAPTER 21Interaction between the Headcollar and the Bit: Introduction

CHAPTER 22Interaction between the Headcollar and the Bit: an In-depth Look

Appendix: FEEL

Index

Acknowledgements

If only I could steadfastly hold on to my principles without ever being untrue to myself … but I am only a little man accompanied by a great hope, which leads me by the hand when I get lost. This is a hymn to hope, the only certainty in life!

To all those who have helped me write this book, who have shared the hard climbs, the vertiginous descents, and the desolate plains all the way to our comfortable clearings – to all of you I can only say ‘thank you’, which hardly expresses my feelings. So to all those who know me, I simply ask that you look for the gratitude in my eyes each time I look at you. I am certain that you will see it.

To Count Antonio Bolza, Count Benedikt, Donna Nencia, with whom I have shared much. To Catia and Silvia – how lucky I am to have met them. To the man who freezes the moment, Francesco Busignani, assisted by Samuele Radicchi, who will forever be squabbling over the right to be called ‘Trinity’. To our translator Julie de Joncaire Narten and to Carlo de Joncaire Narten, producer of the drawings, who have taken this project so much to heart. To Gianni Gamberini and Alberto Capogreco, who corrected and edited the book. Carlotta De, Alice Arcangeli, Sara la Grassa, Bruno Dorigo, Irene Boriosi, Noeme Statuti. To the Divine Matilde … (I add nothing more). To my muse and companion Maria Francesca Patrizi.

To them, who have given me so much, asking only for understanding in exchange. To them, to the horses I have encountered and will encounter in my life. In the knowledge that I will never be worthy of them but that I will never be able to do without them.

Introduction

‘The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.’

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Money, without sacrifice, cannot buy culture or learning. But it may well purchase horses and equipment, rendering the horseman poorer than he thinks he is.

ANTONELLO RADICCHI

RESCHIO

The stables at Reschio.

An array of emotions overwhelming the senses, one after the other! Sight, first of all, unveils the views whose real beauty is then confirmed by touch in a more direct and tangible way, in the way that Reschio was in fact first conceived and developed. Believe me, it is difficult to describe the concrete beauty of such a place, beautiful in all its honesty. I could describe its centuries-old trees, the houses, which although luxurious, are humbly led to the altar, to marry an unspoiled environment, creating a union of harmonious and perfect shapes. Everything is like this; all has been conceived as if it were the natural result of its realization. That house is there because nothing else could be. If I drew a perfect picture in my head, I would do nothing other than repeat exactly what I see there. There is no need to think ‘maybe if …’ or ‘maybe it would have been better …’. No, it’s perfect; I wouldn’t change a single thing. I wasn’t surprised by forms or striking details – in fact, the first time I set foot in Reschio, I was surprised not to be surprised. The sensation that I would like to describe is that of being fully aware that everything there is not common, but so indispensable that it should be. How often do we thank those we love for loving us …? But how nice and indispensable it is to be loved … and especially if you feel loved by something really wonderful and sincere, then it would be hard not to fall in love. The point is, that to live in such an environment is all too easy, but to conceive it, certainly a little less. The Bolza family were able to do it, firstly the Count Antonio Bolza and then his son Benedikt. The thought of conceiving an idea so simple and at the same time so ‘huge’ frightens and amazes me. Clearly it is not the idea that frightens me, far from it, but its implementation. We all have beautiful ideas, but how many of these become reality? They require courage, faith and perseverance over time.

Why am I writing all this? And, moreover, what has it got to do with the language of horses?

Life is surely made up of encounters, places and people who leave a deep mark on our existence whether good or bad. Count Antonio Bolza for me is certainly a very important person and Reschio is a very important place. In fact all the studies and the techniques that I developed are none other than a consequence of this meeting. I would never have been able to make such in-depth studies without his support. Developing new theories and new systems of communication requires time, concentration and collaboration.

Count Antonio Bolza on Casanova di Reschio.

This adventure began fifteen years ago. At that time I had started to learn the techniques and concepts in lightness from the maestro Philippe Karl, whilst Count Antonio Bolza was just starting out in equitation, but we didn’t yet know each other. Our paths crossed when Count Bolza called on me to resolve some of the problems he was having with his horses. Reschio was already a reality but the stud farm didn’t yet exist. I was working in my riding centre in Umbria about 40km from Reschio.

The lightness techniques appealed to Count Bolza and we began to see each other more frequently until, one evening, after a lesson, driven by the same ‘insane’ passion for horses, we began to talk about starting a small stud farm. We both had clear ideas on what the ‘ideal’ horse should be; the problem was how to find one.

We would need a rather elastic and harmonious horse, like an Iberian, but at the same time he should be strong and solid like a German one. Count Bolza asked me if there were purebred horses with such characteristics, without cross- breeding. I replied that we could begin a search starting from the breed characteristics that we would like to preserve as dominant. Undoubtedly, he would prefer a horse that had dominant characteristics of elasticity. I could only agree with such an idea!

Then, we decided, our next stop would be Spain.

Do you know the old saying ‘There’s many a slip twixt cup and lip’. Well, never has a saying been truer. To keep things short, we went to Spain and visited innumerable stud farms but it appeared that our horse had not yet been born. We saw many beautiful, elegant horses, but they were always too baroque. There is nothing wrong with horses with those characteristics; I personally adore them, but we wanted something different, something much closer to the concept of a ‘sport’ horse. Certainly our idea was ambitious and how many before us had thought of it …? But, as I said before, an idea remains just that, until it is transformed into reality and, often, mere willpower is not sufficient to make that happen. Faith is needed and, if you wish, a bit of luck. So, on the last day of our stay, we went to visit the last stud farm on our programme. It was the prestigious breeding centre of the Candaù family.

There he was – I remember it as if it were just yesterday, Uranio VI, a magnificent four-yearold grey stallion 17.2 hands high, built slightly ‘uphill’, powerful haunches, correct shoulders; neither too oblique nor too upright, perfect neck-line, quite long but not at all heavy, a high, light head, with a proud gaze … we couldn’t believe our eyes. The next question was: ‘how will he move?’ He was fabulous, harmonious, with the right amount of extension and elevation. He was perfect, the horse for whom we had searched so long. Not only this, but, at the same stud farm, we also found a mare who had similar characteristics.

Uranio VI, progenitor of the Reschio stud-farm.

Donna Nencia Corsini on Il Magnifico.

Of course we selected another three brood mares to see the ancestry, but our main idea proved to be correct, that is, Uranio VI with Lentisca. This was the solid base for our breeding. An idea that became reality.

Il Magnifico was the name chosen for the first foal born at Reschio. Many more followed: Aurora, Magnolia, Punto, Cassandra, Serenissimo … I can’t remember exactly when, but at a certain point at Reschio, there were at least forty horses descended for the main part from Uranio. And so our little group of brood mares started to grow and became a herd of more than fifteen individuals lovingly cared for under the centuries-old trees in the hilly pastures of the ‘earldom of Reschio’ (as I like to call it). The herd brought us great riches, clearly not of the economic kind; whoever has or has had breeding experience knows that the decision, indeed the improvised madness that brings a person of sane mind to undertake such a journey, is driven largely by passion and results in a lot of spent money. Often the only profit is the privilege of spending time with one’s horses. No, the wealth I received from the herd was of another kind. It was the opportunity to observe and, after a lot of observing, maybe to sense the grammatical structure of the language of the horse and to appreciate its blatant simplicity and concreteness. The harmonic whisper, or impetuous gesture of authority, the loving touch, the patient tolerance, the hierarchical rebellions, the sense of belonging, the collective consciousness, the consciousness of oneself …. Without the herd, without watching it repeatedly and continuously, it would be difficult to understand. It requires a lot of time to start to sense, to understand, to start to speak, to express oneself in a fitting way. I can’t remember how much time I spent in watching them. In summer I would sit myself under an old oak tree at the top edge of the pasture, in the hottest hours of the day, when it was impossible to ride. I remained there with a sandwich and a bottle of water, sometimes napping, in good company, sharing with them the heat, the sultry air and the insects. Every moment I could, I escaped to my little corner of paradise. I often brought many of my texts on ethology with me, searching for a direct confirmation of what I was reading. Books helped me, but the herd taught and educated me. Unlike money, the type of wealth that I received never runs out – indeed the more it is spent and used the more it increases. The best investment is always the one made on ourselves. Don’t take your horse to be trained, or rather do, but find a person who can help you, but, above all, help you understand, how to do and how to make the horse do.

A good instructor is not one who makes the horse do complex exercises, but one who can transmit his own art to other people as well as to the horse. In this way the work bears fruit, otherwise it is and will always remain a sterile gratification of one’s ego. Gratification is important, but not fundamental, in that it creates competition and competition goes arm-inarm with the ego, which doesn’t train us, but just claims to. I say this because I fall into this trap every time I have to prepare a horse for a competition. In the end I will learn. I will learn to do this whilst always respecting the horse. Perhaps I will learn … competition is an ugly beast, really difficult to keep under control, at times useful, but often damaging. Useful in that it pushes one to improve; dangerous because it can lead one to constrain. At least that’s the way I look at it.

Don’t think, however, that everything was a bed of roses; we had to endure many storms, some of which seriously tried to sink us. The biggest storm came about a year after the horses arrived at Reschio. Uranio suffered a clostridial muscular infection in his right hind leg from a simple injection, which left him with permanent mechanical lameness.

Nevertheless, with the supervision of veterinarians, we continued to work the horse. He managed to carry out all the dressage movements with ease but with an evident mechanical lameness, which could only be seen in walk.

The Reschio Herd.

I take this opportunity to thank all the staff led by Dr Marco Pepe at the University Clinic of Perugia, who worked with their hearts as well as their intellect, saving the life of the horse. Clearly he couldn’t take part in sporting competitions, but we still had our stallion and the pride in his gaze never left us. Pride which I have seen many times in his offspring, including in Orlando di Reschio, who died two years ago from colic at the clinic of Perugia. He was eight years old and was ready for competition.

Orlando, I can say that you were the most beautiful and honest horse I have ever had and you will never return. It breaks my heart every time I think of you.

If life could ever return something to me, if I could make only one wish, I would like to have my horse back, because he was, to all effects, ‘my’ horse. He belonged to me, in the noblest sense of the word. Never in my life have I felt such intense pain for a non-human being. Pain that I feel even today, and, I am convinced, will remain with me for the rest of my life.

Leaving storms aside, there were many happy moments shared with Count Bolza, who has always helped and supported me in my work. And when I say helped, I mean that he was always ready to get his hands dirty whenever needed, never holding back, managing with great sacrifice and strength of will to learn new training techniques, often mounting lively youngsters or horses in an advanced level of work, mastering the technique, and in the end he himself becoming the main source of learning for his horses. I owe all my respect to a person who approached this world at fifty-five years of age, showing a technique and an innate sensitivity beyond the norm. I just wanted to say that most of the techniques described in this book and consequently their experimentation, took place at Reschio: as well as the development and sharing of them that occurred with Count Antonio Bolza.

Count Antonio Bolza on Baron De Lis, Antonello Radicchi on Casanova.

Contact is the principle on which communication, all interaction and sequences of events are based. It is everything.

WITH TACT

Change and mutation are the forces that are driving us, and to unharness ourselves is impossible, at least in the world I know or that I believe I know. This forces us to evolve, in fact, to return to the primary need to communicate.

We men have great difficulty in communicating with each other and even more so with our inner selves. We are unable to understand ourselves, yet presume to understand the next person without the slightest notion of the facts or the necessary means to penetrate the human soul, at times straying beyond the comprehensible and losing sight of the understanding already acquired by our often forgotten and undervalued empirical heritage. In brief, we look up at the peaks, beautifully luminous and full of mystery, forgetting where our feet are planted. To untangle oneself from all these sensations is often a difficult but not impossible undertaking if one manages to establish a ‘contact’. I will speak of ‘contact’ before moving on to ‘communication’ per se because contact is the most important thing: the basic link that ties beings and, though very variable and unstable, it becomes equally reliable once we have mastered it.

It needs time, care and an ongoing commitment in refining the senses of feeling, and all our initial efforts must be lavished on the development of this, which is more or less deeply rooted inside each one of us. It is up to us to explore it and develop its infinite capabilities. Without this well-developed ability, all our efforts to understand, act or impart instructions will be useless.

But what is contact? Contact is the essence of feeling, of knowing, and of understanding. It is the principle on which communication, all future interaction and sequence of events are based.

Simply put, contact is everything!

The best definition and one that raises another fundamental concept, is perhaps obtained by splitting the Italian word for contact (contatto) and translating and analysing its component parts individually: con meaning ‘with’; tatto meaning ‘tact’, which is what we have to use to obtain it.

In fact we need to use tact and taking away the space between the words, in Italian we arrive at con-tact.

With tact, with-tact, contact. The awareness of feeling and being felt.

If there is no contact, there is no communication and without communication there is no rapport. But if the contact, as often happens, is too strong, it is extremely damaging and, even though we may not want to, it causes innumerable sufferings to, and adversely affects, our horse.

We are not perfect and therefore we will make mistakes. To err is part of our learning process, but to understand and recognize our own mistakes is the basis of growth and development towards a closer and friendlier rapport based on respect.

To understand contact and to develop it, we must initially understand what the horse feels; how and when he feels it. It is important to understand the ‘how’ –that is, which methods we can use to establish contact through our actions.

CHAPTER 1

The Primary Requirement – Energy

Energy is precious for all living beings and all living beings have an awareness of this, except one; man. We are not speaking of electric energy or renewable sources, which is another subject, but of the energy we need to move, to breathe, to survive, to overcome disease and, in the case of horses, their predators. We are speaking of the food from which this energy can be obtained, which is easily available at the supermarket and rather less so in nature.

Let’s imagine the case of a wild herd. Those who will have the best chance of surviving the cold or predators are those who, in identical conditions, will have available to them a larger energy supply on which they can draw in times of difficulty; in fact a horse with a good layer of fat can tolerate the cold more easily than a thin and malnourished horse, who will find it difficult to pass the winter.

Energy and food are linked.

Energy and food are linked. By nature, a horse spends most of his time eating or looking for food, which is a precious thing and the awareness of this is, for the horse, logical and natural. Much less natural is feeding ‘rations’, which obliges the horse to eat concentrated meals (feed) and measures of ‘forage’ (a little hay). We content ourselves with giving our friends the correct calorific provisions without taking into account the way the horse is used to consuming them.

The horse tends to conserve energy and it is not natural for him to waste it.

Apparently, our habits are rational: if we give the horse concentrated feed, we might then reduce the total amount of hay and, in so doing, we have two big advantages; the first is that we will need less storage space for hay and the second is that the horse will pass fewer droppings, having less quantity of waste to expel. The negative aspect of all this is that we de-naturalize the horse, keeping him closed in a box or small paddock, therefore no longer with a herd or social rapport, without regular access to grazing, and therefore nothing to do for days, weeks, months or even years. We have thus created a favourable environment for the development of depressive pathologies, which will then be the cause of stress with all the consequences connected to it, such as cribbing, weaving and so on. The horse should eat in an almost continuous manner, never without hay but always having it slightly in excess, especially in cases where social life is totally or almost totally absent. This topic is linked to language even if it doesn’t seem apparent, but it is, inasmuch as we can never understand language without a deep awareness of the mechanics of its existence and therefore of all the mechanisms associated with it. This awareness in fact reveals something really important that we can use as leverage during our training of the horse. The horse tends to conserve energy and it is not natural for him to waste it: as a consequence, it will guide us on how to act.

For example: in training we can say that short exercises will be the most efficient, hence those that we interrupt immediately every time they have been correctly executed. We will be certain, that with this method, we will impress a really clear message in the horse’s mind so that he will gladly do this again under identical conditions. We should continue to ask and to put him under pressure until we begin to have his response channelled in the desired direction (he will show us the intention of doing), then immediately cease to ask (yielding), bringing him back into a ‘comfortable situation’.

Now, we know that this mechanism works, but moreover we also know why and from whence it derives: from the unconscious need to save energy.

We must not make the mistake of confusing all of this with laziness. I don’t mean this at all – in that laziness is the consequence of bad training and of faulty communication: lazy horses do not exist, but badly educated ones do. The natural attitude of the horse to conserve energy is fundamental to having a horse with good impulsion and ready willingness, but we will look at this aspect in more detail later on as, at this point, we are still missing too many elements without which it will be impossible to understand.

CHAPTER 2

The Herd and Private Property

To be part of a herd is rather like living in a small village where everyone knows everything about everyone else and where everyone is useful but no one is indispensable.

Hierarchy and respect are the cornerstones of the law of the herd, which all members respect through an education imparted to them from the first days of life. Every member has a well-defined social position of which they are aware, as they are aware of the social position of every other member; knowing to whom an individual owes respect and from whom he should receive it. A concept that has helped me to understand this, is that if ‘Frank is dominated by Julie and Julie is in turn dominated by Louis, it doesn’t absolutely follow that Louis dominates Frank’.

Each horse has a private property, which it takes with it wherever it goes.

Each horse has a private property, which he takes with him wherever he goes. The dimensions depend on the location, on his social position and the circumstances. This property is off-limits to members of a lower position and intrusions are not normally tolerated unless authorized, whilst it is largely ignored by members who occupy a higher social position. This same property will, however, always be protected even from higher-ranking individuals, not by defending its boundaries but simply by moving it elsewhere, far enough away from the boundaries of the more commanding members. If a horse enters the living space of another who is superior to him, this could lead to a physical confrontation, but for this to happen he would have had to ignore all the warning signs and therefore the pressures which are increasingly manifested:

• Look

• Attitude

• Attempt at aggression

• And finally, aggression

The really important thing for us to note is that these signals, except in special cases, are given in a progressive way and are immediately interrupted once acknowledged.

I emphasize: interrupted as soon as acknowledged.

All of this goes back to the first law: the primary need to ‘save energy’; don’t do more than you need to. It serves no purpose for you to shout if I hear you! But with horses we are always shouting and often show aggression before warning. We are not consistent with their way of communicating, and yet we seek to interact with them, expecting that they adapt to us and, contrary to what we may think, they adapt to our requests/inducements and they do so more often than we imagine.

But there’s a limit beyond which the adaptation or adjustment fails to bring benefits and it will therefore become sterile and illogical to go on, inducing as a consequence, rebellion, non-collaboration or insensitivity to commands; all of this because we don’t understand each other.

If we are the more evolved species it is up to us to study and understand.

Isn’t that simple? Study in order to understand, to learn, to communicate, but we hardly ever do so. Why not? Laziness and pride are the main factors. There are books, studies and logic that would lead us to understand and conclude that the continued and widespread use of archaic, violent and constrictive methods of training will indeed make us the masters: but only of the ignorance that enriches merchants, always ready to rob our cultural wealth in exchange for bits that purport to give miraculous results; or the many instructors for whom it is easier, more remunerative and far less strenuous, to convince us to change horses because the one we have doesn’t work and we deserve something more, something better, more suited to our ability. Our ego emerges victorious. Hooray!