The first demo of this tour was in Scotland. It was worth the very (very, very very) long drive up to Gleneagles to be in such beautiful countryside and amongst such pleasant people. Or at least I think they were pleasant. I am awful with accents and scottish is no exception. But they seemed pretty smiley! (Amongst the smiliest must be Jen-ette, thats Jenny and Lanette, who we met in the hotel the following morning, good luck with your trailer-ramp-phobic mare and let me know how it goes!)
At the begining of demos, there is a private audience for guests and members of Intelligent Horsemanship. In this segment Kelly and I worked with Murphy, a cob who was so slow that he had been sacked from a trekking centre. It was the strangest feeling to sit on him and feel that you were entirely invisible as he dragged himself about the arena in slow motion, seemingly oblivious to your aids to speed up or even steer. As far as he was concerned his job was to ignore the wobbly, noisy lumps on his back and just keep plodding on (and I use the term plodding generously) until they removed themsleves again.
We used the giddyup rope, and I also showed the audience how to use the legs in more of a light, tickly, energetic way. This type of horse is entirely dead to thumps, squeezes or kicks. The key lesson is timing of the giddyup rope, and freeness of the reins so that the horse can move forward. Murphy showed some signs that he expected the giddyup rope to hurt (it doesn't, try it on yourself)  - probably from whip use in the past - and this caused him to resist it with thoughts of bucking as he moved forwards. Monty showed me how to use pacifiers to block off his vision (and therefore thought) of his back end, so that he stopped worrying about being hit and started thinking about moving forward.
I spoke to his owner afterwards about using target training (ride to a point as if you are in a race then jump off and praise!) go-faster spots (no points for guessing what you do in this game) and various other ridden games and exercises and I look forward to hearing if she managers to motivate Murphy to enjoy life a bit more again.
 
The Starter was a Fresian who was really very sharp, and ticklish about his belly. He was not a particularly easy challenge, kicking the lines out of Monty's hands several times, but it was great to see Montys handling of the lines and Murphy quickly accepted them. We used fake legs (made by Aud - thanks Aud :) ) and Penelope the dummy before I got on. I hadn't expected us to get as far as riding, and I was really pleased that Murphy accepted me so easily and calmly. There was no tension in him at all as I sat up and he took his first few steps. We were over time and Monty made the call to leave it on a good note so I jumped down, it had felt quite good up there so I would have liked to ride more but thats the knack of starting babies I guess, leave it with owner, rider and horse confident and looking forward to the next day.

Monty also worked with a spooky pony called Chino, (who wore a heart rate monitor that I couldn't get working - aaarrrgggh!) rode Copy the quater horse, and both Monty and Kelly loaded non loaders. For more info on these segments, do check out Kellys discussion group at www.kellymarks.co.uk where the demos are often talked about.

The helpers were fantastic (especially thanks to Frank and Jo Heaten who helped me with horse handling to/from the yard) so we got away by midnight and stayed locally at a B&B before driving to Carlisle the next day...