By Vanessa Bee

Fourteen ponies, five foundation skills, four days and a lot of happy students both human and equine!

1) DARTMOOR PONIES - One of the twelve Native Breeds of British Native Pony: - Location: Devon, England

I was asked to train ten ponies on Dartmoor from wild to tame, in a weekend, while hosting a course for six people to learn these unique skills. The course was filled in a matter of days so spectator places were offered, which meant building a grandstand observation area so that everyone could see how things worked. On top of all this we were joined by an animal Behaviourist (a real one with an honours degree, not a weekend qualification) and an ethologist from Spain, who is also the President of the Natural Horsemanship Association of Spain. This was an ideal opportunity to have a peer review of our work. A few people have said that this two day training doesn’t work, or that it causes stress and trauma, so we threw the gauntlet down and asked our experts to be brutal in their assessment of our work.

The method I use is called The Jeffery Method which was started in the early 1900s by an Australian, Kell B. Jeffery. Kell was a 19 year old law student in Melbourne when he became very ill with a chest complaint which required him to leave the coal smoke ridden atmosphere of the city and move to his uncle’s farm, where the air was clear. He was a city boy and he found the quiet, farming life not only made him well but also made him very bored. Every morning he would watch the men ride out on their horses to work the sheep and cattle, and every morning they left behind a mare in the round pen. Kell asked why they didn’t ride her and he was told that she was wild, dangerous and unridable. Kell was left alone on the farm and when the men returned that evening, he was riding the horse. Kell B. Jeffery spent the rest of his life showing people exactly how he had achieved this incredible feat and, just as people have accused me, they gave the same reasons why the Jeffery method works: 'He drugged the horse', 'he drugged the onlookers', 'he hypnotised both' - saying anything but actually looking the method in the face and seeing that it worked...

The basic method is to get a rope onto the horse’s neck very soon after catching it up in a small pen and immediately teach it to give to pressure. This takes a great deal of practice to get right but very soon (and I mean within 5 minutes) the horses is leading around the pen. The next thing is to get a headcollar onto his head. The principles of Advance and Retreat come in here. Offering the headcollar and retreating with it before the horse retreats, slowly getting closer and closer. It is quite normal to have the headcollar onto the horse with no panic on the part of the horse within another ten minutes. Once this job is done the pony rests, being given hay and water. After this rest the trainer is able to go back into the pen and catch up the pony by clipping onto the headcollar - in most cases, about one in five ponies may need to have the neck rope put on again to enable the trainer to clip on. Then the leading starts. This is achieved by very gentle vibrations on the lead rope waiting for the pony to take a step forwards, then an instant release is offered by way of reward. This happens first in the small pen, then into a larger area, before moving into an enclosed area on safe footing about the size of an arena. By the end of day, all the ponies can be caught in the catch pen (10 feet in diameter) and lead out.

Day two addresses feet handling, tying up and trailer loading. The Five Foundation skills of Positive Horsemanship are Catching, Leading, Tying up, Feet Handling and Trailer Loading - as I believe these are the things that most people want their equines to be able to do above all else. Leading, tying up and trailer loading are really all the same skill but we separate them to make it easier for people to train the individual skills. Feet handling uses a padded stick to rub the horses legs until they stop resisting by pulling away or kicking (if they do and most do) then the hand replaces the stick and, before we know it, the ponies are picking up each foot on a vocal cue.

With the group of Dartmoors we had some slightly less experienced handlers, as it was a course, but they all managed to halter, catch, lead and pick up some, if not all the feet, in two days. Some managed to trailer load and a couple went out for a walk up the drive. We really emphasise the three minute rule, get something good and go and make a cup of tea. The stress seems to occur when the pony is constantly bothered for any length of time - we haven’t analysed that time span, but our behaviour experts believe it would make a worthwhile study. The general consensus was that it is better to get on with the job than prolong the agony, otherwise the pony is in danger of going into a learned helplessness which we have seen in other methods. A still pony is not necessarily an accepting pony and the cues that tell us that a catatonic state is on the cards are incredibly subtle. This is not the time to leave the pony alone. It is actually the time to get on with the job otherwise the trainer rewards the learned helplessness, and the more often the pony goes into this state, the easier it becomes for him. From our training of over 2000 ponies we have found that the Exmoor breed is the least likely to do this - and that’s what makes them challenging for some people.

2) EXMOOR PONIES - One of the twelve Native Breeds of British Native Pony: Location: Exmoor National Park, UK

The training session of the four six month old colts on Exmoor was a private affair with five very experienced trainers in attendance and our Spanish ethologist, so we were really able to discuss and be critical of everything we did.

Again we haltered all four ponies on the first morning and walked them out in the afternoon. A wonderful example of our work was an eighteen month colt who we had trained in 2009. When presented to the vet for castration at 6 months old it was found, after sedating, that he wasn’t ready so the vet suggested he was turned out for a year to mature and, with some luck, the colt would be ready to castrate when the vet came back to do next year’s colts. The colt had been brought into a large barn with two others so rather than split him from his friend, then catch him in a small pen, I used exactly the same body language and advance and retreat techniques as I had when training him the year before. The headcollaring and leading away in all taking about ten minutes. Bearing in mind that this colt had had two days training a year ago at 6 months old I was very pleased with this.

I then set about training him to stand while I inspected between his hindlegs! Not an easy task with any pony but within half an hour, with frequent rests, I was able to feel for the missing testacle. Unfortunately it didn’t appear to be in evidence which would mean an expensive operation for the pony owners. He was turned loose in the training area and while he ate hay I leant over his back watching the other trainers working with their colts, satisfied that these training methods not only work, they are long lasting and stress free.

I am also happy to say that ALL the ponies I have ever handled have been trained for a certain job - as a domestic pony or conservation grazer - they do not go onto the markets and an uncertain future. I make a promise to every pony that I handle that I do this work to give them a life.

We NEVER use ponies on courses just so that people can learn our methods - this would be exploitation and totally alien to our way of working.