A Four-day Clinic with Peter Campbell
By Debbie Wilson
It was the second day of a four-day Peter Campbell Colt Starting and Horsemanship clinic being held at Sweetwater Farm in Ann Arbor. In the arena were ten horses being either started under saddle for the first time or there for a re-start. The riders were of all disciplines and levels of ability. We were all anticipating our first ride. I had taken Cayenne, my two year old Morgan filly. It was the first “colt” I had ever started under saddle in the twenty-five or so years that I had been riding horses. The day before, we had worked diligently on our horsemanship skills. We had learned how to not let the young ‘colts’ lean on us or get pushy. We had introduced them to the saddle pad and learned that it is better to allow our colts to move than to force them to stand still. But mostly we built confidence in our colts so that they could look to us for support and direction. We were ready to saddle up. And this was going to be one of the most rewarding four days in my life with horses.
I had first heard about Peter Campbell about three years ago. Peter, a Wyoming based horseman travels North America helping riders become partners with their horses. “Willing Partners” as Peter would call it. When I heard that he was giving clinics in Ann Arbor twice a year at Katie and Bob Laeder’s Sweetwater Farm, I knew this was an opportunity I shouldn’t miss. And yet it took me a year to drop in. The thought of attending one more clinic that might possibly be another sad attempt of forcing the horse to do what the clinician or rider demanded didn’t seem appealing to me. I had been tired of attending clinics where the spectators came to visit and judge the riders, where the boarder’s seemed like an elite group only there to show off and where the clinician acted more like a judgmental dictator than a mentor. I was looking for a different package. I wanted to be in a supportive atmosphere where encouragement for the horse and rider was in abundance. I was ready to learn, but like so many of our horses, I was tired of having the same methodology beaten into me. I wanted to see a clinician who didn’t blame everything that couldn’t be solved on the horse.
“Bend your horse toward you with one hand on the lead, with the other flop the saddle pad on his back. If he doesn’t move, bump him under the belly with the pad so that he does move and then proceed to flop the pad on his back until he stops moving his feet”. We were preparing our colts to be saddled. What is this about, I wondered? Flopping them on the belly? Peter was setting us up for success. “By allowing him to move while swinging the pad on his back you are setting it up so that it will never scare him.” I was learning things about horses from my past that I never understood and just took for granted that their troubles were all part of their personality or unwillingness to work. It never crossed my mind that these issues could be built into them by man. “If you want to get to the horses mind, you have to do it by getting to his feet.” I would learn a lot about this concept in the next few days. I would learn that it could save my life. We put our saddles on and off at least fifty times or more. I was wondering why I had chosen to bring my Western saddle instead of my hunt seat. “Hold the end of your lead rope, so not to hit him in the eye, and then swing the lead over his head, back and forth, then move to the other side and do the same. Remember to hold on to the end of the lead.” Peter was now giving us instruction to prepare our horses for bridling. I marveled in the way he always looked out for the horse.