c 2018 Trafalgar Square Books: North Pomfret, VT. 376 pages.
ISBN 978-1-57076-832-3
Most newly published authors do book tours—but for Tik Maynard, author of the 2018 memoir In the Middle are the Horsemen, it somehow seems appropriate that he has instead been doing clinic after clinic up here in New England, offering guidance not just on riding but also ground work exercises for horses of all ages. I’m not really sure how well known he was up here before giving a keynote speech at the Area I Annual Meeting in January, but after this year, you would be hard pressed to find a New England event rider who hasn’t at least heard this Florida based trainer’s name.
Tik Maynard at the Area I Annual Meeting January 2018
Maynard’s approach to training is positive and pro-horse. It is fair and it is humane. And what he has been able to do so successfully is fuse the perspectives of trainers who are from the “classical school”, who are usually focused on producing animals for sport, with the viewpoints of trainers who are from the “natural horsemanship/cowboy school”, whose training objectives tend to be more utilitarian. This book chronicles Maynard’s journey to get to this place.
I first became exposed to some of Maynard’s ideas through an article he wrote for Practical Horseman, in which he detailed ground work exercises for event horses. I was struck then by both his thoughtfulness and introspection in the descriptions he gave of the work and rationale. I enjoyed the piece so much that I pulled it for future reference, something I would suggest doing if you come across his articles in the future.
Izzy and I had the opportunity to work with Tik at a clinic at Fox Hill Equestrians in Barnstead, NH, in May 2018.
Normally I don’t expect that someone who is only in their mid-thirties has really lived enough life to warrant writing their memoir, but in this case, Maynard has done a great job of focusing his story on the years that followed a cross roads in life which most readers (and riders) can identify with—picking up the pieces when the direction you thought your life was going doesn’t pan out. Maynard chose to take advantage of this unsettling life phase to become a working student, and aimed for the top. It is through his three years of experience as an underling to some of the best equestrians in the world that we watch a young man turn into a truly independent, self-confident adult who believes in himself and his training philosophy.
This book is an easy and engaging read. Maynard writes in a clear prose and with the wisdom of being able to look back a decade later on his experiences, he is able to offer deeper insights into his motivations, his thought processes and the lessons that he took away from it all. As he moves from one apprenticeship to another throughout the story, the reader can almost feel the growing pains he experiences as he works to integrate new knowledge and understanding with preconceived ideas and beliefs.
What is perhaps most impressive is that Maynard lets us see his journey in full resolution—unlike some memoirs which only focus on the positive highlights, In the Middle are the Horsemen travels through the potholes and valleys, the moments of darkness and self doubt, the times where choices made had unexpected, negative consequences. It is perhaps because of this honesty that the other elements of the story have greater resonance.
Overall, In the Middle are the Horsemen is a worthwhile read, enjoyable and insightful, funny and engaging. I suspect that there is something in here which most readers—both equestrians and non—will connect with. Perhaps it would make the perfect gift this holiday season?
So keeping up my record as “world’s slowest blogger”, I wanted to give everyone an update on Izzy’s first official off-farm outing, which happened way back in May. Better late than never, I suppose!
DRF Isabela, better known as Izzy to her friends, just turned three at the end of May. Last year, she learned the basics of longeing, went on short trail walks ponied off her friend Marquesa, and practiced wearing a bridle and surcingle. She had the winter off, and for this year, my goals were to build on this foundation by solidifying her longeing skills, introducing a saddle, working on long lining, and maybe, if all went well, getting on and doing a few short walk abouts by the time school started in the fall.
Izzy ponying with Marquesa summer of 2017
So this spring, when I started the process of getting her back into a routine of being regularly handled, I was quite surprised to find that she had gone rather feral. Leading her had become like trying to walk a dragon. She wasn’t being mean or naughty per se, just overly joyful. It was as though she had learned to leap and buck over the winter and wanted to show off her new skills.
The problems for me were several. 1) Most of the time, I work with Izzy alone, and I didn’t want to get hurt. 2) My arena is only partially fenced, and I wasn’t confident I could hold onto her. 3) Winter hung on a LONG time this year, and the ice and snow didn’t officially clear out of my partially fenced ring until the very end of April, meaning that even if #1 and 2 weren’t issues, I didn’t have great footing to work with.
My ring in late April, featuring a newly purchased round pen (the acquisition of which was motivated by Izzy’s joyful behavior).
All of which left me SERIOUSLY QUESTIONING my mid-March decision to sign up for an in-hand clinic to be held at the very beginning of May with eventer and natural horsemanship trainer Tik Maynard. I much enjoyed Tik’s presentation at the Area I Annual Meeting in January, and when I saw that Fox Hill Equestrians in Barnstead, N.H., would be hosting him, I was immediately interested. Tik is based in Florida, and so opportunities to work with him for a northerly based equestrian are not likely to happen often, and Fox Hill is an easy twenty minutes up the road (as in, I turn right out of my driveway and then right onto the street with the farm, more or less). It seemed like the perfect first ‘off the farm’ outing for my youngster.
Tik was offering a lecture on horsemanship theory each morning, followed by private and small group in hand sessions and jumping lessons in the afternoon. I decided the sensible plan was to audit day one through at least the morning session, then bring Izzy for day two.
Despite her joie de vivre, I went ahead with my plan to bring her to the clinic, and I am so grateful that I stuck with it, as we both learned a great deal.
Lecture Summary: Day One
The horsemanship lecture focused on the theme of how horses learn best and gave an overview of Tik’s training philosophy. One of the main components is that humans must learn to think like a horse; when one can do that, it is easier to set up questions which horses are willing to answer.
Horses have evolved to quickly evaluate which stimuli are worthy of response, and which can safely be ignored. Only those animals which have correctly and efficiently solved this riddle survive, and we must respect that our domestic animals retain these wild traits.
Here is Izzy, demonstrating that she is not all that concerned about crinkly tarps. This is her friend Devyn, who has given us a great deal of assistance as a second set of hands!
To this end, horses pick up on visual cues and details that we miss, and they may react to them in unanticipated ways. We all have been guilty of responding to these behaviors defensively or angrily, but the truth is that getting emotional in this situation doesn’t do much to improve the relationship or communication between you and the horse.
The things which motivate horses to do a certain behavior, including ignoring an unpleasant or unfamiliar stimulus, are not the same things which motivate humans. Horses seek safety, food, comfort and play, in that order. Smart trainers use these motivators in their work.
Because horses seek comfort, creating situations which increase a horse’s comfort when they provide the desired behavior automatically reinforce that outcome. A common example of this in practice is the use of the rider’s leg; the pressure is slightly uncomfortable, but when the horse goes forward and the pressure goes away, the horse’s comfort level increases. Praise itself doesn’t mean much to a horse, but the release of pressure does.
Izzy learned to wear a saddle this June.
Horses are scared or nervous of things which act predatory; this includes anything which comes running towards them and things which are going fast, being loud, or behaving erratically. They prefer to be approached slowly, which might not be the way we enter the paddock when our minds are preoccupied with catching a horse for a lesson—explaining why a normally cooperative horse might refuse to be caught.
Tik encouraged us to think in a positive frame of mind when asking the horse to do something. For example, think “Let’s do this” instead of “Stop doing that”.
One of our goals is to encourage our horses to play. To this end, ground work is like creating a series of puzzles for the horses to solve through trial and error. Just as with humans, horses respond to these types of mental challenge differently. “There are those which already know the answers, those which try to solve the puzzle, and those which wait to be told the answer,” said Tik. “Problem solving gets inspired when they are young.”
Hey, can I help you with the weedwhacking?
Solvable puzzles introduce to the horse a little bit of pressure; some pressure is needed for growth and learning, but finding the right amount is key. Too little and no learning occurs, too much and the horse may become so anxious they can’t learn at all. Because horses seek comfort, they are going to look for the release of pressure, whether that pressure is physical or mental. “Pressure motivates but the release of pressure teaches,” said Tik.
Day One Ground Work Sessions
With these thoughts in mind, we moved into the hands on portion of the morning. My friend Hilary brought her bay Thoroughbred, Tom, and Tik took the line from her. “When I first work with a horse, I want to know how interested in me he is,” said Tik. “Does he like me?”
Hilary and Tom
Tik approached Tom at a slight angle, reaching a hand out and waiting for the horse to touch him first. Then he began to rub Tom’s head, neck and rump, which the horse seemed to enjoy. “Some right from the get go want to play and run, and some want to snuggle,” said Tik. “You need to play to their strengths but address their weaknesses.”
Tom wanted to be a little too much in the handler’s space, so Tik spent a few moments working on teaching Tom to back up from a soft pressure. He showed us how to use the rope as a cue in three levels of intensity: first, you flick it with your wrist; if there is no response, you then flick it with your elbow, and finally with your shoulder. Every cue with the rope starts with body language. “You may need to go through all three levels, but stop when you get the result you want,” said Tik. “When the horse is learning, go through the levels slowly and in sequence. Only once the horse knows how to do something is it OK to skip a level or two in your signals, otherwise you will desensitize the horse. Try to get BIG without getting MAD.”
Tik works with one of the group horses.
When Tom gave the right response, Tik angled his body slightly away, shifted his weight onto one leg, and exhaled. They took a break. The pressure was released.
“There are three parts to this that the handler must understand,” said Tik. “There is your body language and intention. There is the handling of pressure changes. And then there is the timing of the release.”
For ground work, Tik prefers a rope halter, a heavy, dense, long rope, and a sturdy stick similar to Parelli’s Carrot Stick. Depending on the situation, Tik might choose a rope that is 12’, 22’ or even 45’ long.
Practicing waiting while not being in each others’ space.
Tik emphasized that consistency is key. Handlers should always start at level one in terms of pressure, and add to that baseline as needed. The only exception is in the case of dangerous behavior. “When the horse is checking out mentally, you need to get their attention back on you through the use of an exercise which you have established in a quiet time,” said Tik. “There are three goals I have for any training session: the human is safe at the end, the horse is safe at the end, and the horse is more relaxed at the end than at the beginning.”
The next set was a group lesson with five horses working in hand at once. The animals were at different stages of training as well as mental focus, which gave Tik the opportunity to speak to a variety of exercises and possible outcomes. But he started with having the horses get comfortable with their handlers standing about six feet away from them, with slack in the lead rope. “On the ground, you sometimes want the horse’s eyes and ears towards the handler but sometimes you want to direct them and their attention elsewhere,” said Tik.
One young handler and her sweet steady eddie type schoolmaster worked on learning to give from pressure on the nose. “For a lesson horse or a kid’s horse, you need to think about how sensitive you really want that animal to be,” said Tik.
My friend Sarah works on sending her Thoroughbred, NASA, over the tarp. He is for sale, by the way!
Several horses in this group played with a tarp that had been laid out in the arena. “There are a few different ways you can ask the horse to cross the tarp,” said Tik. “It is like asking a riddle. You can lead them over, send them over, draw them over or back them over, if you have it secured down.”
Turk, an elegant bay Thoroughbred gelding, tended to speed up once in motion on the circle and needed to slow down and refocus on his handler; Tik helped her to cross his front feet and back feet over each other. “At first, it is about moving the whole horse forward, backwards, and then on a circle,” said Tik. “After this is established then we start to move the front half relative to the back.”
Horses can be responsible for four things: to maintain their speed and gait, to maintain their direction, to be looking where they are going, and to act like a partner. As trainers, we should not be doing these jobs for the horse. “But horses must be taught how to do these things,” said Tik.
Izzy’s Session
Other than going for short trailer rides around the block last summer, Izzy has not left our farm since her arrival on a bitterly cold morning in March of 2017. I am not sure who was more nervous for the outing—Izzy or me! Two of my students, Julia and Nikki, tagged along for moral support, education and extra hands if needed.
Izzy is enjoying a “release” moment after getting a riddle right. Note Tik’s unevenly weighted feet and relaxed arms.
I don’t think anyone else brought an animal as young as Izzy; I held her in the barn aisle while Tik wrapped up his morning lecture on day two, and although she danced and jigged a bit while waiting her turn, I felt she was really trying to be good. That said, I had no idea what to expect from her when we got into the ring. I think Tik fairly quickly assessed that her brain and energy needed to be redirected, and so he came back a little early from his post-lecture break to get started.
“Do you mind if I work with her for a few minutes?” he asked. I was so relieved! Yes, please!
The first thing he did was swapped out my long line for the sturdier rope line he had been using on other horses. He then let Izzy move out onto the end of the rope, where she leaped and ran and displayed the athleticism which I hope will be used for good things in the future. He wasn’t expecting her to be totally focused on him all the time; in fact, that day he said that he would be happy if she was with him 30% of the time.
Izzy is actively backing away from Tik in this video grab.
“I am looking for the moment where she wants to stay still and relax,” said Tik. “I am not punishing her at all for her loss of attention or focus. Instead, I give her something else to do.”
It was truly amazing to watch Tik work with Izzy, who he had just met, in such a respectful yet constructive manner. She had moments of simply moving around him at the end of the line, and other moments of youthful behavior. He could halt her and turn her. They went and checked out the mirror together. As she started to visibly relax and become more mentally calm, Tik led her to the tarp and a wooden bridge which had been used in previous sessions. She inquisitively just walked right up to and over both objects. I was not surprised that she handled them so well, as this has been her typical response to something new, but it was lovely to see that she had the same attitude in a new place once the zoomies were behind her.
Once Izzy became more relaxed in her environment, Tik was able to enjoy some snuggle time with her. She is clearly miserable.
Tik wrapped up his work with Izzy by playing with some halt, walk, halt, back up transitions, teaching her to cue into his body language. He tipped his shoulders forward to encourage her to walk, squared them over his hips for the halt, and inclined them slightly backwards to cue her to back up.
After this, I took over for a few moments, practicing the same in hand transitions, and finally ending with her just hanging out all the way at the end of the long lead, while I turned my back to her and stood weighted more on one leg. I’m told she did lots of yawning, but of course I wasn’t allowed to peek!
I’m trying so hard to not look at her while audience members asked Tik questions about our session.
“The more emotional something is for the horse to learn, the longer the break they get,” said Tik.
While he described his work with Izzy as being a “typical three-year-old session”, he also acknowledged that she was a pretty self-confident animal, as was evidenced by her overall response to the new situation and stimuli. “Horses like this which are clever and smart and brave are great but also a challenge,” said Tik. “You must find ways to help them learn and stay interested.”
Coming to this clinic, as mentally stressful as it was for me to do it, was absolutely the right choice to make at this stage of her training. Izzy was like a changed woman after interacting with Tik, and both his feedback and watching how he used his body language to interact with her helped to give me the confidence to do what I had sort of suspected she needed me to do—get a longer line and really send her forward when she wanted to act up. So long as your response to her is fair—I am sending you away to work a little bit not because I’m mad but because we have a job to do—she responds positively, and rather quickly settles down.
Izzy has learned the basics of long lining this summer. This project was definitely not do-able until after our clinic! Thanks Devyn for the photo.
I have continued to play with some of these techniques this summer, but I will admit that I have much more to learn. It was a fascinating opportunity to do something totally different with one of the horses, and I am pleased that it was such a positive experience!
I had the occasion to attend the US Eventing Association (USEA) Area I Annual Meeting out in Holyoke, MA on January 7, 2018. I try to make it every year to attend the event organizer’s meeting, and getting to stay to hear the guest lecture each year is an added bonus. I was quite enthused to learn that Canadian event rider Tik Maynard had been asked to speak at this year’s meeting. Recently, I read a piece Tik wrote for Practical Horseman about the ground work training he had used with his Retired Racehorse Project mount, Remarkable 54. I found the article well written and thoughtful, and had a sense from it that Tik was an educated, thinking horseman. In his presentation, which he called, “7 Big Picture Ideas to Get Along Better with your Horse”, he did not disappoint.
My overall impression of Tik as a horseman only improved upon hearing his introduction—the son of a show jumper and a dressage rider, he attended college in his native British Columbia before embarking on a quest for absolutely top of the line horsemanship education by spending nearly two years apprenticing with riders such as Ingrid Klimke, Johann Hinneman, Anne Kursinski and David and Karen O’Connor. The work was hard and sometimes he didn’t measure up—in fact, he was asked to leave Hinneman’s barn for “not being good enough”. He worked hard to spend time with some of the best in different disciplines, even though eventing became his main passion. At the O’Connors, he had his first exposure to natural horsemanship, which completely changed the way in which Tik approached horse training.
Tik Maynard at the Area I Meeting.
This experience inspired him to do a working student position in Texas with a western rider who specializes in training cow horses using natural horsemanship techniques. I may be getting the exact timeline wrong here, but you get the general idea. In working at this facility, Tik says that he didn’t learn so much about riding— he learned a lot about horses. He became more interested in the behavioral side of horses—how they think, how they respond, and how they process training.
Through his practical education, Tik developed the perspective that all trainers have a philosophy which is the result of the unique combination of their personal training in technique and theory combined with their own instinct or horse sense. Each trainer’s philosophy will be unique to them, which he thinks is a good thing. It is sort of his premise that a student becomes a sum total of their teachers, and every experience has something to teach us, even if what we learn is what doesn’t work well. It is only once a trainer has a solid foundation and philosophy of their own that they can begin to use their imagination to, in Tik’s words, “do something better than it has ever been done before.”
Tik’s personal philosophy would seem to prioritize a horse which is engaged in the learning process. He talks about “The Look”, the moment when the horse looks at the trainer with both eyes and ears focused, seemingly saying, “What are we doing today?” He emphasizes a difference between communication and control in training. And though he was told that there was no way that he would be able to combine natural horsemanship training with developing competition horses at the highest level, he has not allowed such negativity to dissuade him from his path.
In his presentation for the Area I Meeting, Tik highlighted seven concepts which he has found to be important in working with his horses in training.
Taming versus training. Tik argues that there are horses being ridden and shown which are barely tame, never mind trained. For example, when the horse is showing even a slight fear reaction to certain stimuli, or grossly overacts to a small stimulus, these can both be signs that the horse is not fully ok with what is going on. “It is like you have this horse simmering with energy just below the surface,” says Tik. “The horse reacts to the sound of a twig snapping, but that is not the cause of the horse’s tension.” Tik gave as an example of one of his horses, Carollina, who needed to be taught to really think forward.
“There are lots of ways to communicate with horses, but they only have two main ways to show how they feel—either more anxiety or more relaxation,” says Tik. “Too often people learn to compete before they learn how to ride, and before they learn how a horse thinks.”
Start with something you can Your goal may be huge (compete at Rolex) but to get there you must learn all the skills which come before. When training, start with the skills that your horse can do well—even if they are quite basic—and build from there. Tik used the example of teaching a horse to handle a bank. Start with: can my horse look at the bank? Get closer to the bank? Look across the bank and realize that there is someplace to go? “You must be patient,” says Tik. “For example, almost all water problems with horses are the result of someone pushing too hard with the horse’s first experience.”
When working with a horse which has lost confidence, it is important to take a step back and do many small things successfully before revisiting the thing which is hard. “People often get into trouble because they skip steps,” says Tik. “There is still an attitude out there that you ‘have to win’. You need to know that what you get into is something you can get out of. Do not have a battle. Back up to something you can do, and then repeat it.”
Becoming exposed to unfamiliar stimuli should be like a game.
Make your session with your horse like a song. When working with a horse, your training session should contain moments at different levels of intensity. The warm up is gradual, and then you may progress to a new skill or lesson which is higher intensity, before the energy gradually comes down towards the end of the session. “All moments are not created equal,” says Tik.
Horses can only learn when they are relaxed. Tik says if there is a scale of tension, a horse must be under a level three in order to learn. “You need to be polite, and do little polite things to help the horse be more invested in you,” says Tik. “If you touch the neck on one side, touch the horse on the opposite side at the same time. Approach a crosstied horse with the same care as a hard to catch horse.”
Tik tries to end each training session by dismounting in the area where he rode, facing away from the barn. He then loosens the girth and might remove the bridle, and waits there until the horse lets go and takes a deep breath.
“Rule number one is the person is safe at the end,” says Tik. “Rule number two is the horse is safe. Rule number three is that the horse is more relaxed at the end of the ride than at the beginning.”
Learning to cross tie is one important basic skill which all horses should be taught.
Make your horse’s world neutral.
There are stimuli which will attract your horse (positives) and those which will repel them (negatives). The trainer needs to shift the horse’s energy towards where they want it to go to. As an example, Tik spoke about acclimatizing his OTTB, Remarkable, to the coliseum in preparation for their freestyle performance at the Retired Racehorse Project. The ring was full of banners, which worried the horse. So Tik led the horse towards the banner, and had an assistant feed Remarkable a small treat from the opposite side of each banner until the horse began to relax.
Trainers need to make themselves be more interesting than anything else going on. This means that the lesson being taught must be more interesting; trainers must learn when and how to be big with their actions (body, waving a flag) and when to be more subtle. Which leads really well into Big Picture Idea #5….
Stop at the top of the bell curve.
As a horse progresses through their training, they will get better with a new skill and then often start to get worse—this is a sign that they are bored, frustrated or similar. Tik reminded the audience that “repetition is the mildest form of punishment”, so a better approach is to get to the top of the exercise and then stop, even if the horse gets there quickly. Continuing to repeat the exercise once the horse has already gotten the point of it for the day will mean that they are likely to end their lesson at an energy level higher than a 3 (see Big Picture Idea # 3).
Be a problem solver. Think.
Be creative. Seek help. Think laterally. “The more you do it, the better you get,” says Tik.
“Almost everything we do with horses is about communication or motivation.”
Tik says that the best trainers learn to think like a horse, and they also are aware of how they want the horse to be responding to them. “Dressage horses think about the rider the whole time, but for jumping horses we maybe only want them focusing on the rider during the turns,” says Tik. “Then they need to focus on the jump. So the horse needs to learn how to smoothly shift their focus.”
Lee says, “There is definitely something OVER THERE.”
What are the Olympics of Everything?
Tik joked with the audience, “what if there were an Olympics for cross ties, for leading, for being caught, etc?” His point is that no matter what kind of interaction we have with the horse, we can always work to make it better. It is upon these smaller steps which big goals are achieved. “Have your end goal in mind but always stay in the present,” says Tik (seems relevant to so much in life, no?).
In listening to Tik’s presentation, as well as his responses to audience questions, I was struck by his calm demeanor. He seems humble and authentic. He did announce that he is working on a book with Trafalgar Square, scheduled for release in June 2018—I suspect that this text will be one to add to the library.
Celebrating the incurable addiction which is being an equestrian
The Academic Equestrian 