 In this segment, you'll have more exposure to the traditions of the Garrocha, an historical cattle handling tool from Spain, and see how it benefits you and your horsemanship. Alice Trindle demonstrates how you'd get started by exposing your horse to the pole with a helper on foot, and then teaches you basic and not so basic maneuvers. The tool that we're going to employ today is the Garrocha, the 13-foot-long bullfighting pole. Used by the Domo Vecchera, the true LaGrochist in Spain. And this, in our instance, is really to take a look at how we can use that to become a great tool for us to have fun and seek those balances together and begin to teach my body those muscle memories, both for me and for the horse, so that we can follow those subtle changes in balance. On top of that, it's a great multi-tasking tool so that I can separate what's going on in my lower body from what's going on with my hand and still keeping a clear intention with clear rhythm and tempo as we accomplish our little tasks here. The first thing that we're going to take a look at is just acquainting the horse with it to be to the inside of the bend. And as we walk along, Susan's going to stay behind the Garrocha and keep it positioned a little bit over the top of her neck as we move forward. She moves along with me and off we go here. So she'll put it on the ground, the tip on the ground, and just move along with me, keeping it over the top of the head. And Susan might lift it up and bring it back into her vision. She might bring it behind my back just a little bit up and behind and let it be over the tail there. Susan will lift it up. I change my aids, my outside leg becomes my inside, and forward we go. I'm going to hand it off to me and I'll ride forward here with it balanced on my pointer finger. From on top, pointer finger going forward, balanced on the pointer finger. I'll lift it up and back and up and down. I'm going to hand the Garrocha off to Susan. She'll be right there to catch it. But I'm going to change direction away from the tip. I turn my hand over early. I change the bend on my horse. I ride forward. Susan changes to the other side and out we go. So that at any time the ground operator is still there because I might get to the end. I might get mixed up in my hands. I turn there over so it's resting on my thumb. I'm going to prepare to change direction and communicate with my ground operator. I turn my hand over, change the bend, ride forward and out we go. Things are looking pretty good that maybe Tilly will be quite comfortable with this. The last thing we're going to work on is the sound of it dragging. A lot of times that will bother the horse just a little bit. So I'll have my ground operator still there. I'm going to communicate to her that I'm going to change direction away. Turn my hand over, ride forward and right here I'm going to ride away and drag it. And she'll let me drag it. But she's right there in case my horse goes shying away. She had a bad reaction. The first thing that I want to make sure is that I do have my ground handler there so that the pole doesn't get dropped. And I would just relax and set the whole thing back up again and drag it a short distance and then give it back to my handler. And then give it back to my handler. And then I might move a little bit away, take it with me, drag it a little bit, let my handler take it. We're going to change direction because it might be just fine with her being drug on this side but not the other. I'll drag it here just a little bit, see how my horse reacts. If she goes really fast skittling sideways, I want to make sure that my balance is not towards the tip but rather to the outside, over my outside of the bend knee just a little bit. And I might close that outside leg a little bit, put a little caress in it asking her to help feel my legs and how they're sculpting the circle that we're on. I'm feeling pretty good confidence now. My handler is going to kind of come out of the picture given the garocha here to me. And off we go, riding those basic changes of direction along with working on the changes in my balance and the use of my hand. We're going forward here to the left. It's balanced on my pointer finger. My first change will be towards the tip. Lift it up, ride my horse forward. I've turned my hand over and out we go. Now my thumb, it's balanced on my thumb. Lift it up, ride my horse forward. Underneath, forward, forward, forward. Change the bend on the horse. Right out, now it's balanced on my pointer finger. Ride my horse forward lifting the garocha up. As we come out, let it balance on my thumb. Let's talk about the aids and the change of direction. Here the horse is slightly around my right leg. We're flowing to the right. My focus is on the tip of the garocha. My shoulders back, my hips back. My outside left leg is slightly back just to keep the arch of the circle sculpted. As we begin to change direction, we'll do this really slow motion. Ride that outside shoulder forward. Right here, I change my aids. My left leg comes on. My right leg goes a little bit back. I see the horse's left eye. My fingers might accompany that just a little bit on the rain to be able to feel for her eyelash as we go around here. Change of direction towards the tip. She's around my left leg. My right leg is back just slightly. Ride her forward around the left leg. Slow motion. Right here, change the bend with my leg. Keep my balance in the middle. And my left leg just relaxes back just a little bit. Ride the horse forward. Change my aids. Notice that I've gotten kind of close to the tip here. In order to bring my horse and have room for my horse to go underneath there, I'll need to leg yield away from the tip. Give myself a little bit of room. My balance is going to sit. Weight, W-A-I-T, the direction that I want to go. I'd like her to make the circle bigger out here to my right. So my balance, my sits bone, my shoulder blade weight comes slightly to the right. Let's do a turn away from the tip now. Turn my hand over, change my hand so that it's resting on my thumb going forward. Change the bend in my horse with my aids, my focus. Ride forward. And my eyes seek that tip as soon as I can. That's going to be critical for us as we start doing our canter work. Change direction away. I may turn my hand over ahead of time so that I'll be ready as I come out to be comfortable in a comfortable position. Turn my hand over early. See the picture of us riding away from the gorocha. Change my aids, my left leg comes on, my right leg goes back, and out we go. Could I combine these now into a full circle, but see them as two halves? I'm going to ride my first half towards the tip and the second half away from the tip. Ready, lift it up, here's my first half, turn my hand over, there's my second half, and out we go. Let's ride again the same way. Ride her forward, there's the first half, turn the hand over, ride her out. We need to do a full turn with two halves, one away, one towards. Here we go, turn my hand early, ride away, there's one half, here's the second half. There's one half, here's the second half. Here's one half, there's the second half. Ride out. Forward is very important as you work with your gorocha. I'm not asking her to sit down and do a spin. I need forward motion, forward motion with a nice engagement from behind. Let's see what happens now if I think about this in terms of balance to make the circle bigger. In other words, leg yield away from the point. I'm going to bring my shoulder weight balance a little bit to the right. I'll bring my seat balance a little to the right and my inside leg caresses. It's not really a push, it just keeps a nice bend. Now, could I make this circle smaller and still keep this nice zucchini shape, a nice circle shape going forward as we go around? I'll put my right leg slightly back. I'll bring my balance in the direction I'd like the horse to move towards the tip and the whole horse steps in and forward to the tip. Leg yield out, bring my balance to the right. Feel for my right little toe. Leg yield. Now let's make the circle smaller and half pass. Bring my balance to my left little toe and the horse steps into the bend. And just because it's kind of comfortable for me, I'm going to rest it on my shoulder a little bit here and see if I can practice my leg yield and half pass without my hand on the gerocha. Could I make this bigger? My balance comes away from the tip. Could I make it smaller? My balance comes towards the tip. Could I leg yield away? Bring my balance to my left sit bone and shoulder blade. Could I half pass in? Bring my balance to my right sit bone and my right shoulder blade. Now you may be saying, why are these important? Well, back to our discussion about strengthening, suppling and relaxing my horse. This is a wonderful game to be able to play. That still allows you to experiment with balances in your focus and supple and relax your horse so that you will have a partner for many, many, many a year. You have a couple of options here, particularly when the gerocha is on your right side where you can let it rest on your shoulder a little bit. You can reach up, find two hands and help to shape the horse. Help them get into that posture that you're looking for and then it just exchange reins back into one handed. Reach up, help, assist, adjust, then give it back to one rein again. On the other side, it's a little more difficult but you can still do the same thing. I'll turn over here, change the flow. Now if I needed to adjust a little so that I could ride one handed here, I could let it rest for a second on my forearm. Reach up, adjust the reins, put them back in one and then go back to work with the gerocha. Again, really notice how it helps my posture. My inside shoulder is back, my inside hip is back. I'm following the arc that I'm asking my horse to. Put it on your shoulder, ride forward and just pick it up on top of your shoulder. We did this little game where we drew the tip away forward. We did this little game where we pushed the tip towards the horse, nice. And on a straight line, we did some end-to-ends. Let's see if we can try that here way. Put the tip down, let it balance, pull it down. Put the tip down, let it balance, pull it down. We'll do a little turn here, tip down, balance, pull down, tip down, balance, pull down. It really helps to teach me to keep my seat very much in control of my picture here. To not get ahead or behind, but to find myself as if I was a centaur. Where the bottom part of me is horse and totally connected to my real horse, the top part of me is human. And I can separate those two, but they're in clear picture with a dance with one another.