Clinic Recap: Horsemanship & Barrel Racing with Ashley Schafer

When you get together with someone else in the training business and listen to their philosophies, you come away with a refreshed or even a brand new perspective. During our recent clinic with futurity trainer, Ashley Schafer, I learned so much from the way she applies horsemanship principles to her discipline of barrel racing. When you attend a clinic or ride with someone who is more advanced than you are, the goal is not to completely change your training philosophy. The goal is to give you bits and pieces that you can implement into your training program that will help you be more efficient. Everyone has a different way of doing things, and many people have success doing it their own way; but, by having an open mind, you give yourself the opportunity to pick up on one or two small adjustments that may help you get to that next level. More and more people are starting to understand the value of fundamentals in horsemanship, and I believe this is what makes the horse industry increasingly competitive. Although I am not a barrel racer, the fundamentals that I teach in my horsemanship program are what allows trainers to progress their horses’ potential to its peak. The same is true for other timed events, such as roping. Horsemanship is like building a brick house. When you look at a house’s foundation with the pile of bricks beside it, the project can look very overwhelming. Once you start building the house, you do it one brick at a time. After a few hundred bricks, this process inevitably gets boring. When you reach the point of boredom, it can be tempting to rush through the project just for the sake of getting it done. But, if the bricks you place against the house’s foundation are not laid correctly, the entire house is at risk of crumbling the further you progress through the project. The same is true with our horsemanship. If we do not establish those foundational elements with our horse and continue to reinforce them throughout our training process, we will not have any foundation to fall back on. One of the biggest foundational elements of horsemanship that we reinforced at our most recent clinic was the importance of establishing feel, timing, and balance. Your feel is undeniably valuable to a horse. Often times, we become too dependent on the bridle reins. When we keep constant tension on the reins, we never give our horses a chance to make the mistake. We micromanage them, and as a result, the horses never have an opportunity to learn right from wrong. When it comes to horses, we are not dealing with an animal that understands plain English. So, we have to provide them with cues that they understand to help them mentally and physically prepare for the responses we are about to ask for. There are four times in the barrel racing that we ask our horses to be reactive—coming down the alley and accelerating out of each barrel. Any time a horse is running as hard as they can, they are channeling their “flight” mechanism. When we ask a horse to run as hard as they can, we are asking for them to engage this reactive response. In order to make a successful turn, however, the horse has to be able to come back to the thinking side of its brain. When a horse is reacting, it is somewhat controllable—but, it is not looking for your cues. That “feel” when we sit and ask a horse to rate has to mean something. When we position our bodies in a way to prepare for a response, that positioning or “feel” has to be the mechanism that cues our horses to channel the thinking side of their brains.