Ray Hunt Fort Worth Tribute 2010
28.02.2010
On Feb 27/28, 2010, around 650 people met at Fort Worth, Texas/USA. At the Will Rogers Equestrian Center/Watt Arena where a few years before Ray Hunt had been hosting the Fort Worth Benefit for Tom Dorrance, we all met this time to honor Ray's legacy by watching 23 of his most influenced students to start a colt during the weekend. It was a truly touching moment to enter the Watt Arena I watched numerous times on video (Tom Dorrance Benefit) and from that video I perceived this arena to be way bigger than it actually was. Also, the whole scene in the historic stockyards was an eyecatcher: original hotel, stockpens & stores since the beginning of the last century, including a Longhorn cattle drive through the historic Stockyards town center twice a day when weather permits. Luckily, our hotel was close to the historic area, but for the Will Rogers Equestrian Center, we needed a lift. Different taxicab drivers gave us a little hint on the typical Texan: very proud, very broad and sometimes not so keen to see „you northeners down here“, but always willing to show their state and its famous places like the Billy Bobs, White Elephant bar and H3 Steakhouse – great!
I shared a room with my friend Judy and we enjoyed meeting both friends and famous riders. Although I have only been in the States two times before, I met the same people and it really felt like a family reunion with friends all over the place.
The first day of the Ray Hunt Memorial Clinic started with a draw out of a hat to match each rider with his or her horse – there was only one female student of Ray, Lee Smith, participating here and it was very nice to see her working her colt.
Then the first three horse-and-handler-teams started to use the three roundpens which had been set up for parallel use. Only the three grandsons of Ray, Jaton Lord, Wade Black and Ty Van Norman, decided to share a roundpen as Ray often used to do it.
Following all the presentations was often hard because whenever I looked a one horse in detail, I consequently missed what was going on elsewhere. Most participants started by using their lariat to either drive the horse, working towards hooking on, or catching the youngster and starting to direct his movements, getting him used to a rope around his body and turning away from pressure. Of course, everybody was doing it differently, and it was absolutely amazing to see so many gifted horse gentlers to help the horse changing its idea about halter, saddle, and rider. They were all different, but Ray's influence was truly visible and perceiveable in the whole arena.
The presentation was perfectly hosted by Carolyn Hunt and underlined by good commentators like Sharon Camarillo, Bob Tallman and judges Bill Smith and Les Best who knew a lot about the work. Like someone said when a young horse set off bucking and squealing when it first experienced a saddle on his back: „Those who scream like a girl won't buck for long.“ And he was right: the horse settled pretty quickly and I did not notice him bucking again, even with a rider on his back lateron.
„Notice the slightest change, reward the slightest try.“
- Ray Hunt
Another idea that Pat Parelli, who was also commenting, brought up to the audience was like this: a horse might be wary about the placement of the saddle or the feeling of the cinch, but very seldom both issues arise at the same time. The cinchy horse is more likely to buck whereas the horse who is troubled by the placement of the saddle will mostly shy away rather than go for bucking. I checked this theory on the young horses at the event and I found it has some true core. It will stick in my mind as one of a lot ideas worth to remember. „Remember“ as Mark Schwarm wrote in my leaflet, next to his signature. „Remember Ray“, he told me – I will do so.
We all experienced a wonderful symbiosis of true horsemanship during these two days. When I was talking to my friend Doug who has been studying with both Ray Hunt and Buck Brannaman for more than ten years, I realized I only had grasped maybe five percent of the vast knowledge presented – well, to me it is not knowledge yet, but information I can use to turn some of this into knowledge, hopefully.
For example Doug asked me questions like: „Did you notice that the hug Buck was giving his colt, holding his arms around the colt's face, was purposely preparing the young horse for the bridle?“ No, sorry, I missed that. I noticed that Buck was not the first one to ride his colt on the first day, but that he was early on the second day plus already having introduced the bridle and he was working off his horse, throwing a rope and flagging other colts from horseback, having both forehand and hindquarter control whereas a lot of other clinicians only directed the hindquartes of their horses at the same time. (Thank you, Doug, for pointing out the forehand control issue to me, too ;-)
And we agreed: Buck was the most like Ray, although Charlie Hill won the audience vote and thus the Dale Harwood saddle of Ray. It was so touching when Charlie handled his rather special, very troubled colt with „his heart in his hands“, as Pat Parelli commented in perfectly right timing. In just that moment it was so visible. And Charlie got praise for wearing a hard helmet, too – he was still suffering from an injury and the commentators pointed out safety reasons and appreciated it.
The whole scene was overwhelmingly intense and everyone seemed to really admire meeting and sharing thoughts. Watching Buck, he truly was the most like Ray, at least as far as I am able to say that, as I only saw Ray on video. I will regret all of my life not having watched him personally, let along attending a clinic with him. Probably no one did more to help the horse than Ray Hunt – not to please the audience, not to write fancy books, not to earn a whole lot of money from it. All the time, he did it to help the horse and that is the way we all should be striving to become. We probably won't achieve it in a lifetime, but we shall continue to ...
… try.
Rembering Ray,
S.B.
