This is a clinic report that was written up by Lynne S. on UDBB. (ultimatedressage.com)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Manolo Mendez Clinic, Dec 2-4, 2005
at Mary & Ted Flood’s Wildfire Farm, Lovettsville, VA

Manolo Mendez is not a household name (or at least, he wasn’t in my household), but a recommendation to watch him work came from the UDbb’s paowync, whose acquaintance I made last September at a clinic with Danny Pevsner in New York State. She had flown in from California’s Bay Area to work with Danny and I found that she I and were “reading off the same page of the hymnal” with regard to the kind of clinicians we preferred to study with, so I took her suggestion seriously. Some months later, when she posted on the UDbb that Manolo would be teaching only 5 hours away from me, I decided to make the trek down to audit the clinic.

The weather was forecast to be in the 20s, unusual for this time of year in Virginia, so I equipped myself with my insulated boots with battery operated heated insoles, snow pants, heavy insulated jacket, vest, long johns and wool socks, ear muffs, ski cap, and insulated leather gloves with chemical hand packs. The only item I took along that I didn’t use was my polarfleece blanket; the rest kept me just barely warm enough to sit from 7:45 am to 8:45 pm, in an indoor arena where the thermometer showed 18 degrees F., even with two kerosene heaters going in the spectator area. Mary Flood went to great lengths to keep us all thawed, if not comfortable: seat cushions, the heaters, and hot homemade soup with cheese and crackers/cornbread/rolls in her own house for lunch each day, not to mention an unending supply of hot coffee or tea and ‘fat pills’ within easy reach of the spectator’s gallery.

Manolo Mendez is a Spaniard now residing in Australia, and his self-taught English was difficult to decipher at first, even for me (a trained linguist). When I finally figured out that his strong Spanish accent (dropped intermediate and final s’s and so forth) was combined with Australian vowels, I began to be able to translate “shine rine acrah thareyna” into “change rein across the arena.” “Canter” was often confused with “corner,” and “srigh” took a while to decrypt into “straight,” but the initial difficulty in making himself understood was borne by Manolo with good grace. “Unner’ten?” he would ask, laughing. It kept the tone of the clinic lighthearted despite its serious purpose.

I observed between six and eight riders over the course of two full days (a scheduling conflict forced me to skip the third day, which I still regret), and it would be impossible for me to tell you what happened with every one of them, mostly because my aging memory doesn’t hold that much (“DISK IS FULL” syndrome), but also because it was too cold to take off my gloves for note-writing. So I am just going to give my impressions, together with a few details that have stuck with me during the intervening week.

Several of the horses that were presented had, it seemed to me, been accustomed at some time in their training to go with the very round, on-the-vertical profile that seems to be winning nowadays in the dressage arena. Others were green enough to still be finding their balance and tended to go with a dropped back and high, hollow profile. Manolo rode many of the horses (particularly on the second day) and worked some of those in hand. Others he worked in hand and then the owners rode. With a couple, the owners or trainers rode the horse for all or most of the session.

I was particularly struck by Manolo’s facility with the in-hand work. He outfitted the horses with a serreta, the Iberian equivalent of a longeing cavesson, but equipped with a single ring in the center of the nose. The metal (wrapped with leather) noseband was less padded than one tends to see on European cavessons, and there was only a single throatlatch strap, but it was set on low enough on the cheekpiece to keep the serreta from twisting on the horse’s face and getting near the eyes.

Manolo had a package of a dozen slim bamboo garden stakes – yes, garden variety bamboo stakes! – about as thick at their thickest point as my little finger, and tapering slightly towards their tips. They looked to me to be about 5 ½ to six feet long – I didn’t get a chance to measure them. He used these in several ways: as a wand to touch various parts of the horses’ bodies, including their hooves and lower legs, as a riding whip, and as “front legs” to demonstrate how the angle of the horse’s body to the path of travel affects the ease or difficulty with which it can execute lateral (crossing) movements. His own legs served as the horse’s hind legs, and he spent quite a bit of time demonstrating the arc taken by a horse’s paired diagonals (one of his legs in back and a bamboo stake in front). I had not previously fully appreciated how critical this element is in helping to supple a horse laterally.

The degree of bend within the horse’s body required explanation because of a ridden exercise that Manolo used with every horse, whether he was riding it or the horse was being ridden by its owner or trainer. He didn’t give this exercise a name (or at least, if he did, I didn’t pick up on it), so I am going to give it a working title: the “Half Circle and Shoulder-In to the Wall.” It would be most helpful here to have a diagram, but I don’t have that capability on-line, so I’ll try to explain it as fully as possible, because it seemed to be extremely useful in increasing a horse’s ability, willingness, and ease in crossing its hind legs while moving sideways and forwards at the same time.

Let’s assume we are on the right rein in the arena. We have just completed first half of the long side and at the midpoint of the long side we turn onto half a circle. The circle can be 10, 12, or 15 meters, depending on the degree of the horse’s training. Now, at the point where the path of the 10m half circle is about a horse’s length before its intersection with the center line, the path of travel becomes a diagonal line that leads to the opposite long side. The other end of that line will intersect the long side somewhere in the last 1/3, depending on the degree of hind-leg crossing achieved by the horse: it will be closer to the midpoint of the long side if the horse moves sideways fairly easily, and closer to the corner if the horse is just learning to move forward and sideways at the same time. The critical element of this exercise is the angle of the horse’s body to this straight (diagonal) line of travel: the horse is positioned like a shoulder-in on four tracks.

I just sketched out a diagram to help myself clarify my own description here, and it ends up looking like a candy cane. The hook at the end represents the half circle, and the shaft is the diagonal line. I superimposed parenthesis-shapes on the shaft, to represent the bend of the horse’s body as it moves along the diagonal line, and these reinforce the impression of the stripes on the candy cane. On my sketch of this exercise done on the right rein as described above, the hook of the cane is toward the bottom right of the paper, and the shaft is placed diagonally along the page and ends at the upper left side of the paper. I mention this detail in case you are a visual learner like me, and need to make your own sketch to better understand the exercise.

Manolo used this exercise in both directions, with the half-circle beginning at various parts of the ring but always allowing the horse to return to the opposite long side before the corner.

The second thing that Manolo used repeatedly and that has left a vivid impression on me is in-hand work. It was evident that a number of the horses had had previous encounters with the bamboo stick: these lifted the hind legs or forelegs when they were tapped with the stick, performing a few steps of more elevated passage-like or piaffe-like movement. I don’t use the term “-like” to indicate that these movements were a parody of those classical movements but rather to indicate that they were beginning attempts at them, but not yet perfected.

Some horses didn’t react as enthusiastically with others and brief whispered inquiries seemed to indicate that these horses had either had no previous work in hand, or only one or two exposures to this kind of work. Even the “newbies” were not made nervous by it, however.

But I’ve gotten a bit ahead of myself. With the newbies, Manolo didn’t go directly to tapping legs; he spent 20 or 30 minutes accustoming the horses to being touched by the stick, stroking their backs, rumps, and necks with it. Once they were okay with that, he would tap them lightly on the near side and praise them when they moved away. Then he would extend the stick over their backs and tap them on the off side and praise them when the moved their haunches towards him. In the same way he ‘explained’ to them to move their near shoulders away from him, etc.

A novelty for me (I’ve not seen much in-hand work in person) was a technique in which Manolo, standing at the horse’s near shoulder, would reach back diagonally under the horse’s belly and tap the off side of the hind leg on haunch or gaskin. The horse would then move the hindquarters towards him, while keeping the shoulder relatively stationary or moving it only very slightly away from him. In this way Manolo would execute turns on the forehand and haunches, in motion, but tracing a fairly small, hoola-hoop sized circle.

He was ambidextrous in this work, moving easily and frequently from one side of the horse to the other, and eliciting quite vigorous but obedient responses from the horses with no force or upset. Even when reacting enthusiastically the horses were not being boisterous or unruly in any way. They seemed to be tuning into Manolo with great intensity, eyes soft and ears flicking constantly in response to his changing influence.

In addition to working in a fairly small space, doing these lateral-suppling exercises, Manolo would also work the horse in a larger circle and on straight lines, running lightly beside the horse at times, while plying the stick to elicit an increased response. Sometimes he would tap the croup, sometimes the hocks, sometimes the cannon bones, sometimes the hoofs, and he’d alternate front and hind legs. I do not pretend to understand precisely what was happening with the horse that prompted him to change from one spot to another but I was fascinated by the way the horses knew what he wanted!

One particularly impressive (to me) exercise on Manolo’s part was to run lightly alongside a swiftly trotting horse, tapping the front hooves or cannons with the stick, alternating left and right. It happened so quickly that I couldn’t see which part was being contacted, but I could hear the “tick, tick” of the stick. I asked Manolo later whether he was actively tapping the front legs or whether the alternating motion of the leading forelegs impacted the stick on their own; that is to say, was Manolo moving the stick from left leg to right leg, or was the stick held in the same place relative to the horse and the horse ‘kicked’ it as it trotted forward? Both, he replied. It depends on what’s happening.

Caution~Artist at Work!!

In either case, the result was that the horse’s gaits became more and more lofty, until a horse that was cramped and quick in its trot at the beginning of the session bloomed and got taller and more regal and its gait gained more and more amplitude. It was absolutely amazing to watch.

Even more telling was the fact that at the end of each in-hand session, Manolo would remove the serreta , coil the line in his hand, and tuck the stick under his arm, and every single one of the horses would follow him around the arena, at liberty, and then stand patiently and quietly at his side as he talked to the owner or trainer, expanding on what the horse needed from that point forward, and even answer a few questions from the auditors. The horses had clearly acknowledged him as their leader. I joked that they were all asking, “Do you want fries with that?” by the end of the session. Their calmness and relaxation was clearly evident. I was in awe of Manolo’s ability to engage the horses’ willing cooperation while allowing them to maintain a relaxed and attentive demeanor.

When Manolo rode, it was equally impressive. Now, coming from a background where the critical nature of a classically correct seat has been drilled into me, I must say that Manolo diverged from that in a number of ways: his heels were almost always up (perhaps because his tall and slender, whippet-like build and long thighbones made him lengthen most owner/rider’s stirrups so that his knees wouldn’t stick out in front of the flaps of the saddle?), he rode in a very light seat much of the time, with his upper body inclined forward, closing the hip angle, and he did not keep his elbows close to his sides, nor did he have a taut rein all of the time. In fact, a very critical observer might say that his contact was “inconsistent.” However, his effect on the horses was clearly beneficial.

I have already said that in many cases, the horses he was riding had come from a background of a short, tense neck and tense back/ribcage with trailing quarters. I suspect that this is why he was so soft in the rein contact: to encourage the horse not to lock on the bit, tense its jaw against the contact, or otherwise try to escape the effect of the rein.

What he did do with virtually every horse was FIRST to get its hindquarters moving: in some cases the tempo seemed to me a bit quick, but was moderated once the horse was truly in front of the leg and whip. SECOND, he would request a lower neck and head carriage if the horse’s head was so high that it would biomechanically result in a dropped, hollow back. THIRD, when the horse complied by lowering its head and neck, he would immediately push the hand forward a bit to encourage the horse to reach forward to the bit.

Let me elaborate on the SECOND and THIRD items above, as I suspect they may be susceptible to misinterpretation.

In requesting the lowering of the head and neck, Manolo used wide, low hands. Yes, he did! He appeared to be deliberately using the snaffle (all of the horses he did this with were in snaffles) to put a bit of pressure on the bars of the horse’s mouth to encourage it to respond by dropping its head and neck a little. As soon as it did this, he softened the contact, sometimes going so far as to put slack in the rein. The timing was so exquisite that the horses soon ‘caught on’ that they weren’t going to be held in that position. Simultaneously, he assured that the activity in the hind end did not diminish. He didn’t have to use his stick, nor his spurs all the time to do this, either. A little squeeze with the calves was sufficient the majority of the time. The requests to lower the head and neck were repeated as soon as the horse hollowed, but again, as soon as the horse complied, the request was discontinued and space allowed for the horse to follow the bit forward, down and out.

Manolo was adamant that it was forward, down and OUT, repeating over and over that the throatlatch must be OPEN or the gaits will suffer. With several horses the effects of this change – from closed throatlatch to open, from on or behind the vertical to distinctly in front of the vertical – were quite marked, the gaits going from ho-hum ordinary to, “Oh my goodness! Will you look at that!” or even “Wow! That horse can really move!”

I suppose one could carp and say that a horse that far in front of the vertical couldn’t win in today’s competitions, but I would respond by saying that Manolo’s task here was to start regaining the horse’s trust in a giving hand, and re-training it to go forward to the bit. I imagine that when those responses are ingrained in the horse, then a bit more roundness could easily be achieved by not allowing quite so much room to stretch – but without returning to the former cramped, cranked pseudo-round profile that stifled the horse’s natural gaits.

Another thing that sticks in my mind about this clinician’s abilities was the uncanny aptitude he showed for discerning where physical blockages within the horse’s body are interfering with its ability to perform. He did various types of massages and limb manipulations, some of which looked to my untrained eye like a kind of chiropractic adjustment (at one point an audible “snap” was heard when he was manipulating a horse’s neck). He did caution us against trying any of this on our own, with the exception of some simple massage. But in every case, the horses appeared to adore what he was doing with their bodies. The eyes were soft, the ears floppy, the lower lips drooped, and several of the geldings “dropped.” Only one horse, a young Andalusian horse recently gelded who, I was told, had been kept in a stall his first four years of life (!) showed obvious pain when Manolo kneaded some knots in his hindquarters: he moved away, but didn’t try to leave (at this point he was tackless, having just been worked in hand). He seemed to know that Manolo was trying to help him, even if it hurt a bit.

Two more tidbits stick in my mind. The first concerns the spurs: Manolo wore Ariat paddock boots and half-chaps to ride in, but had his spurs resting just above the soles of the boots, not on the furnished spur rest. His opinion is that the use of a spur rest makes the spur more harsh than is desirable, because it cannot move down when the rider lifts and turns his foot to make contact with the spur. He feels that the end of the spur should drop when it makes contact, so that the tip of it is dragged up the horse’s side as the heel is lifted. I should point out that his legs are so long that his feet hang below the horse’s belly in most cases, making it necessary to lift the heel to make contact.

The second concerns the adjustment of cavessons. Manolo (like many of us) railed against the prevailing habit or fashion of snugging up nosebands so that the horse cannot open his mouth. In every case he checked the noseband of the horses as they were presented at the beginning of each session, and in many cases loosened them substantially, so much that the noseband not only had the old-horseman’s-adage of two fingers space, but would also rotate easily on the horse’s nose, left and right an inch or so. I was so happy to see that!

I just remembered something else that struck me: Manolo examined the sweat patterns of the horses he worked that broke a considerable sweat even on that cold day. On a few, the hair was not uniformly smooth but had a circular or 'cyclone' pattern on the neck. This prompted him to massage that area. When I asked what the connection between the hair, sweat, and muscle knots was, he explained that when the underlying muscle fibers are aligned well, the hair above them lies flat and smooth, but when there is a knot, the hair above it reflects that and lies in a 'cyclone' configuration. This was a new one to me, but the horses seemed to validate it in that they initially reacted by showing some discomfort as Manolo rubbed and kneaded the area with the 'cyclone,' gradually relaxing as he worked out the knots.

There was much, much more that when on during those two days – and I didn’t even get to watch the third day! I will go back to watch Manolo whenever I can, and hope to be able to ride with him one day. The horses told me I should!