not safely confined, I absolutely marvel at our good fortune. God truly protects babies and fools.
As I mentioned, Hashy was a trooper. She accepted the confines of her wire “pen” right off. She was way too smart to endanger herself. When I sold Merlin, and bought Benefactor, it was a different story. Bene (pronounced Benny) was huge – 17.2 hands of chunk. His mother was a Quarter Horse, mostly thoroughbred, who had escaped her confines one night at a local stable and managed to get herself bred by a draft horse of some sort at the ranch next door. The result was a really big bay “Baby Huey” who charged into this world genetically engineered to bust out of things.
He was a little over three when I bought him. Needless to say, I learned, quickly, that if one is looking for a nice, safe, school horse, a dim three year old isn’t it. My best school horses averaged around 16 to 20 years of age and were mellow to begin with. Well, Bene was mellow. He wasn’t terrifically spooky and he had been well “broke”. Typical of most Western trained horses I looked at or considered purchasing at the time, Bene had been trained at the age of two by a professional. And I had no complaints. The de-sensitizing practices, heavy Western saddle, and no nonsense work in the round pen and subsequent trail rides his previous owners acquainted him with did nothing but positive things to his mind. Throughout my riding school days to this day, the best horses I ever worked with were those trained by good Western trainers or those I trained myself. But, for all that, Bene did not have a lot of common sense.
Thank heavens he wasn’t spooky. At first I attributed this to a mellow personality. I soon learned he just didn’t worry about a lot of things, like gates, and fences, holes in the ground, riders’ aides, bits, crops, and yelling. Pretty much nothing fazed him, and to get a reaction from him, the stimulus had to be precise, and the goal a picture in the rider’s brain.
I learned quickly that “modeling” starts and finishes with the rider. In this respect, the years of teaching public school sixth – eighth grade students in math and science helped me no end. He gave me my first real lessons in communication between horse and rider.
I bought Bene because he was huge. I am six feet tall. I wanted a competition horse to do 3-Day Eventing and jumping. I had not taken formal dressage lessons nor had I ever actually ridden in a 3-Day Event. So, when I bought him, I had no clue, yet, of the extraordinary lessons I would learn from this horse, lessons that made me sympathetic to all the trials and challenges I was to put my riding students through time and time again. Challenges that I could guarantee they would overcome, because I had had to deal with all of them as I developed my school horses. Bene was the first in a long line. He was also a blank slate that took every tool in my rider’s tool chest to work with successfully, and made me invent others!
When I bought Bene, around 1972 or 1973, I did not immediately use him as a school horse. I had Hashy, and my other two or three students had their own horses. I was, myself, taking lessons from a local trainer with fairly impeccable credentials. I will always thank her for impressing upon me the importance of quiet, effective hands. She also taught me the value of positive feedback and encouragement, which I never, ever got from her. She didn’t like my horse (too coarse, not refined enough), nor the fact that I asked a lot of questions. She wanted me to attend clinics when a) I had no trailer to get there, and b) no way were clinics in my budget. My husband and I were eating frijoles twice a week to afford my lessons. We finally parted ways when she said she had found the perfect horse for me for $5000! I was earning about $1100 a month at the time. Teachers made decent money in the ‘70s, but that was way out of our budget and, besides, I knew Bene could be great. But I did attend some clinics. I took Bene to nearby Charles de Kunphy Dressage Clinics, and was much the better for it. For one, I learned what a 3-Day Event was.
By this time, Bene was about six, and I had been jumping him for two years, more or less. As I said, nothing much worried him, and he had brightened up a little. If I pointed him at a jump, and he figured he could make it, he would jump it. Didn’t matter what it was, up to about four and a half feet, he would go for it. Its appearance was of no consequence, and I can’t remember him refusing unless he was unclear on the landing. In the hunter classes, we routinely lost to the more refined horses, all other things being equal. In jumpers, we won year-end buckles and tons of ribbons. But I really wanted to “do” 3-Day Events!
I was getting more students by the week. I needed goals for them. I needed to, and wanted to, broaden my equestrian base. In the ‘70’s, you didn’t need some sort of degree to be a riding instructor. Quite honestly, though I never lied about my background, I also never mentioned to my first student with a horse for me to train with, and for, her, that she was my first. Her horse finally turned out well, and she and both of her brothers took lessons from me. In fact, I learned as much from MJ’s horse as I taught. Eva was really stubborn, and had all the PMS tendencies that my own school mares never had, so I learned to appreciate that such tendencies do exist even in horses, and tried to be sympathetic (somewhat) when students used that as an excuse for a funky lesson.
I brought ring/rail work, cavaletti, jump work and trail rides into my lessons. We had playdays and Christmas drills, as well as vaulting, but I wanted to get my students to shows, as well. Bene was the main reason I was able to do this.
We bought a little two horse trailer as soon as we could afford it, as well as a towing vehicle: a Dodge half-ton van. The trailer was too small for Bene. Again, I hadn’t yet subscribed to Practical Horseman and learned that trailers came in different sizes! Poor Bene got squeezed into a standard Quarter horse trailer with a solid to-the–floor divider, and we just couldn’t figure out why he scrambled when we turned corners. When he and Hashy were both in our first trailer, it was stuffed. I had, meanwhile, become a charter subscriber to Equus and read my friend’s copies of Practical Horseman and saw the error of my way. We traded in the two-horse and got a roomier four horse stock trailer. The horses and I rode more easily, and I could take students’ horses to horse shows.
Bene was never a great school horse. His size intimidated many of my students. He took a finesse seldom achieved by anyone including me to get on the bit or even collected, so he didn’t do particularly well in flat classes. He didn’t pay much attention to bits. I tried them all. In lessons, he never ran away with students, he just didn’t exactly halt when asked. His canter to trot or canter to walk or trot to halt, any slowing transition, was veeeery slow, beyond deliberate. Nor did he give in his jaw or flex much. This presented problems in classes with a horse in front of him, like in the show ring. Because he was big and had a long stride, I simply had to teach his riders at shows to suck it up and circle him when downward transitions were asked for, to avoid slamming into the horse in front of them.
At this point, one might ask why I put up with this, or what kind of instructor was I, not to be able to do a better job of training. Well, for me, Bene was what I needed. Maybe not always what I wanted, but he definitely had his good points. In the hunt field, once I put him in the most severe bit I could find so he wouldn’t bowl over the horse in front of us, he went on forever. In one memorable hunt at Chatsworth, on a spring day that could only be that hot in Southern California, every other horse in first field had overheated and their riders asked to be excused. The field master’s horse and I were the only ones left, and we stopped a few minutes to let our mounts get their breath. We then turned for home, jumping everything in our way. It was grand! Another time, at a local horse show, in 114 degree heat (I am absolutely not exaggerating), Bene and I won the highpoint that day in jumpers, because other competitors wussed out. Heat did not ever affect his performance, and that is a plus in Southern California. Further, though he was strong as an ox, I am no lightweight; at six feet, I have never been fat, but there is a lot to me, including long legs.
And my legs are what held him. They are my best part. I learned from a young age to clamp those suckers down. I never enjoyed being thrown, and to this day, my leg strength has saved me countless times. When I used my seat and legs,
