Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times best selling
author of The Horse Boy, The Long Ride Home, and The Healing Land.
Before I jump in with today's guest, I just want to say a huge
thank you to you, our audience, for helping to make this happen.
I have a request.
If you like what we do, please like, subscribe, tell a friend.
It really helps us get this work done.
As you might know from my books, I'm an autism dad.
And over the last 20 years, we've developed several
equine assisted, neuroscience backed certification programs.
If you'd like to find out more about them, go to newtrailslearning.
com.
So without further ado, let's meet today's guest.
Welcome back to Equine Assisted World.
I've got a power duo with me today.
I dunno where to go with Mark first or Chrissy first.
So I've got Mark Rashid, 'cause he's that to that side of me.
And I've got Chrissy McDonald, who they're actually in the same
house, but in separate rooms.
And they do extremely interesting things with both equine and human wellbeing
that it's handy to be aware of if you're going to be in these fields.
So they're coming to us from Estes Park in Colorado, which is just north of Boulder,
near Rocky Mountain National Park.
Lucky people.
And they, like I say, do extraordinary things, but I think they need to
tell us these extraordinary things.
So Mark and Chrissy, thank you so very much for coming on.
Would you please Yeah.
Thank you.
Introduce yourselves.
Mark Rashid: This is awesome.
Rupert Isaacson: Tell us what you do.
Chrissy, ladies first, do you wanna kick off first?
Crissi McDonald: Sure.
The short version is, is I'm a author, a photographer, and a clinician.
So I spend the majority of my time teaching helping horses and people.
Communicate more clearly.
And mark and I teach primarily about softness and softness
as a internal attribute.
Rather than thinking about soft hands or soft whatever in your body, instead
of it being external, we like to explore what does it mean to be internally soft?
So that's the majority of our work and that is something we practice,
whether we're teaching or not.
And I will let Mark talk Now.
Excuse the dog.
Rupert Isaacson: That's no waste to talk about.
Your husband
couldn't help it.
Sorry.
Mark Rashid: He wasn't talking yet, so you, you get used to it after a while.
It's okay.
Yeah.
You know, fatalism.
Yeah, I mean I've been working with horses cleaning up after 'em
for sure since I was about 10.
And I got really lucky in that the person who I started learning from at
a very early age was very focused on the wellbeing of the horse regardless
of what you were doing with it.
And so that was my kind of jumping off point from there.
And I was I was pretty shocked the first time.
I saw somebody hitting a horse, and because I had never seen that before.
And so I, I had this foundation of kindness if you will, when it came to
horses, but also being effective in your work with horses and being able to do,
being able to be kind and, and effective.
And and kindness isn't always just, you know, kinda letting the horse do whatever,
you know, there, there are boundaries that need to be set and parameters but
they can be done in such a way that what to where the horse can understand
what it is that you're, you're doing.
And so that was my, that was my jumping off point.
And as I started going out and working with horses on my own, I was I have to
backtrack just a little bit and say that Walter was the person's name who I, I
worked with when I was a kid, and his place, not just, not just the work that
he did with horses, but his place in general, when you walked onto his place,
it was basically just him and I working together and it had a certain feel to it.
He had a certain feel to him, him and and his place had a certain feel, and
it was and so when I went out on my own, there was a, I, I know now that what
I was feeling was there was a kindness and a humanity to what he was doing
and who he was and how he did things.
And, but I didn't know that then.
And when I started to work on my own, I tried to find a way to develop that
feel and the work that I was doing and the, with the horses and with
the people that I was working with.
And primarily I emulated what I saw with him initially.
And I couldn't actually develop the feel that he, that I was, that permeated his,
you know, working with him because I didn't really know what I was looking for.
So I was, I was sort of mechanically going through the motions and and I,
and I tried to when I, back in the eighties, 1980s of the last century we,
you know, there were a lot of clinicians coming out in the early to mid 1980s.
And not a lot, but, and, but some, and, and, they were saying things that, that
sounded a lot like what Walter would say.
And so I would go see these people and what they were saying sounded
like what he was saying, but what they were doing was not what he was doing.
And it was very difficult for me for a long time.
But eventually it, it led me into the world of martial
arts Aikido in particular.
And that's where I started to see and feel what I had seen and
felt with Walter back in the day.
The internal aspect of what was going on is funny because I, I found it,
I didn't find it in the horse world.
I found it in the martial arts world, and then I was able to then cross over and,
and bring it into my work with horses.
And that's, and the work
Rupert Isaacson: with horses that you were doing was the This is Western.
I'm, you know, presuming in
Mark Rashid: no, it's all, it's all where was
Rupert Isaacson: this?
Here in Colorado.
Okay.
And, but was it primarily starting young horses or was it helping
people across disciplines?
Like were you a jumping coach specifically?
What were most pe what was your work at that stage mostly predicated around?
Mark Rashid: It was all disciplines.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mark Rashid: Yeah.
I mean, from driving, i've, I've been a, a teamster for
back since I was a, a young kid.
We actually raised draft horses for, for quite a while four or five years.
We raised draft horses, started them.
My great-great grandfather actually brought the first Clydesdales
into America from Scotland.
So, yeah, so, so it's pretty much any discipline.
We work off of principles and so rather than technique, technique
is important, but we, if you work with principles, then the principles
can cross over into any discipline.
Sure.
Mark Rashid: And horses are horses, so, you know, they're,
it's not a mystery
Rupert Isaacson: and yet it's a great mystery, like people
Mark Rashid: indeed.
Right.
Rupert Isaacson: I guess, I guess the question though is, is usually depending
on people's geo geographic location and the culture that they come out of,
they tend to gravitate more to one area of the equine world than the other.
I know that Colorado stands at the crossroads, so you
kind of get everything there.
But you do have a, you know, a very strong working ranch tradition
there at the same time, up and down the front ranges of the Rockies.
You've got all of the equestrian, FEI disciplines you expect to find
and many other things as well.
And it's very interesting that you have the driving background.
I want to, to, to return to that in a minute.
When your mentor Walter was working, what was he primarily doing with horses?
What, what were people mostly coming to him for?
And then when you went out on your own, were you kind of
setting out to do the same thing?
Mark Rashid: People didn't actually come to him.
What he did was he went out and bought horses whether
from private sellers or sales.
He bought, he would buy these horses.
And then we basically worked with him.
He actually had a stock contractor buddy for rodeo.
And so early on he would put me on these horses and to see if they
would buck good and if they buck
Crissi McDonald: days before helmets and release forms
Mark Rashid: and, he, and if they buck good, then he would sell 'em to this
buddy of his who was a stock contractor.
And then if they didn't buck good, then we worked with them.
And and basically that's what it was.
It was just him and I most of the time.
And we, you know, so if, if he was talking, I figured he was talking to me.
And if I was talking, I guess he figured I was talking to him.
But but that's basically what it was.
And he would buy and sell.
You know, some folks might say these days that he was, that he rescued horses, but
I don't believe that's how he saw it.
You know, it was just a way for him to make a living.
He'd, he was an old hard scrabble rancher and, you know, making a living
with horses, and that's what he did.
Rupert Isaacson: And was he, when he was effectively rehabbing these horses
as they came in, were they going out to all disciplines or were they primarily
going out to the ranching world?
What, what were they in general, being prepared to do?
I don't
Mark Rashid: know.
Remember, I, I was, I was pretty young at the time.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Mark Rashid: So people, but it wasn't, for
Rupert Isaacson: example, having you work over poles and cavalletti
to turn them into jumping horses,
Mark Rashid: or It would be, it would be branches and down trees and, you
know, it wasn't, it wasn't anything.
Official, if you wanna call that, and you'd be using
Rupert Isaacson: Western and English tack for this, you'd be
Mark Rashid: mostly Western.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mark Rashid: In fact, all, all, it was either Western or bareback.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Yep.
But then from there, the horse could go out to any type of Yeah.
Home.
Got it.
Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: And if you would say, apart from his internal softness
and kindness, if he had a system that you could, in retrospect look
back on, could you outline it?
Mark Rashid: I don't, I couldn't tell you that there was a system.
Mm-hmm.
Because everything was different.
You know, he never, I don't recall him doing the same thing with
a whole bunch of horses ever.
He, he took the horse and whatever it was that the horse needed, that's what he did.
So there wasn't any sort of program, if you wanna call it that, or a system.
Mm-hmm.
He worked, he truly worked with the horse as an individual.
And that was one of the things that really stuck with me when I would start
seeing some of these other trainers later on in life where everything was so
regimented and if the horse didn't fit or didn't respond, then the trainer just
did more of it, or did it bigger, or I.
Harder or whatever.
And that just wasn't I, that was again, so foreign to me that mm-hmm.
That it, it kind of didn't make sense to me.
And it, to be honest, it doesn't make that much sense to me even today.
So, so there, I if you wanna say it's ay, if you wanna call it a system,
his system was to not have a system.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
Or or at least to, to recognize the individuality of each horse Exactly.
And, and follow it.
Mark Rashid: Exactly.
Rupert Isaacson: I'd like to return to this in a minute.
I just wanna go to Chrisy with a couple of questions here.
But we all know that systems also can be very useful.
So for example, if I'm wanting to play guitar, I don't play it as well as you
do mark, but you know that I can do a certain amount with self-teaching,
but I do know that it's very, very helpful to sit down with somebody
and, and have them show me scales and arpeggios because it will help me to
order and then go off on my own again.
And then they show me something else that I can order.
And so this, this interplay of this say healthy tension between systems and
individuality, autonomy and connectedness, I mean, I think is a reality.
But as you say, sometimes it's so overdone that one can dominate the
other to the detriment of the whole.
And so I'd like to go into that because I think it's important for people to have.
Maps to get around with.
They are helpful.
And at the same time, you don't want to stifle your cre creativity of
finding your own way over the mountain, you know, but it does help to know
there's a mountain there sort of thing.
Mm-hmm.
So perhaps, and martial arts obviously do have systems.
So let, if we could just go into that paradox a little bit later.
I'd, I'd love to, because I think this is a question that's in a lot of
people's minds of how does one strike that balance, if you know what I
mean?
Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: So Chrissy, can, how did you begin with all of this?
That and again, you're not just with horses.
You are, you're an artist, you're a photographer, you're an
author you're in the humanities.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
So give us how you started and what, more or less, where you're at now.
What, what, what the mission is.
Crissi McDonald: Well I was born into a family who lived in town.
No, no one in my family likes horses.
Where what
tell was that mean?
Crissi McDonald: This is in Arizona.
It's called Flagstaff.
Okay.
And they don't dislike horses, but it was like, when I was young, it
was like, well, of course she likes horses because every kid likes horses.
And so I would.
Clean stalls in exchange for lessons.
I would groom horses.
I would clean out horse trailers, I would babysit.
I did all these different things to get time with horses
because I didn't have one.
I lived in town.
And then when I was in my early twenties, I was the director of the
riding program at a Girl Scout camp.
And then shortly after that, up until that time, I'd been riding
other people's horses and basically exercising and grooming it.
It was, I wouldn't call what I was doing training so much as, oh,
just keeping the horse engaged.
And I really, I've always loved horses and I fell into, I didn't fall into, but I had
a friend who had horses and she came from the background of German martingales and
tie downs and spurs and crops and whips.
And if you tell the horse to do something, they better by God do it.
And here I come from the background of grooming horses and hopping on
bareback and riding in the cinder hills and, you know, just doing
whatever, falling off and climbing back up on a log to get on the horse.
And I rode standard breads and quarter horses and Arabs, and I just, it
didn't matter if it was a horse.
I was happy.
And so I got into this world of very, you know, it was very strict
and very hard, but I didn't know.
I thought this was what horses, I thought once you started getting serious with
horses that you had to be this way.
But I never liked it.
And so I got my own horses.
I started teaching lessons started out with kids.
So anywhere from five years to 14 years, did a lot of kid lessons
and then moved into training.
I was very dissatisfied with, with what I knew because it seemed very
mechanical and unforgiving and, you know, the horses always did
it, but I didn't like how it felt.
I didn't like how it felt to me, and I didn't like how it looked.
And so I started looking for alternative ways.
This was in the late nineties, so this is when a bunch of clinicians came out
and I ended up studying with John Lyons a little bit, which was very educational
at that time, going from the world I was in to what he was doing which is
more like conditioned response stuff.
It was revolutionary.
But even that, when I started applying some of those techniques
to my own horsemanship inside of me, I was like, that this isn't enough.
That there, there must be someone or something out there who knows
something that I don't even know.
I don't know.
And so I asked a friend of mine who, because she'd ridden with, at that
time, she'd probably ridden with 50 different clinicians, everyone
from really well known to local.
And, and she said she mentioned Mark's name and I, and she said
he has a clinic in two months.
I said, great, sign me up.
I didn't know who Mark was at that time.
He had three or four books out.
She said, here's a book.
It was considering the horse.
So I took the book home and I read it and I'm like, oh, this guy sounds pretty cool.
And so I went to do a clinic and it was a four day clinic and I didn't
have a saddle that fit my horse.
So I rode in bareback and you know, I'm a trainer at that point
and I'm thinking, oh, this'll, you know, we won't need to do much.
'cause I'm a trainer and I've trained my horse.
I think I was still in my twenties up and after four days, I remember
having the distinct feeling that I knew nothing and that wasn't a bad thing.
I was really excited by the fact that even though I didn't know what was going on,
I knew how I felt and how my voice felt doing this work that centered on softness.
I knew that that was the direction I wanted to go.
Rupert Isaacson: I could quip that.
Oh, and then he was so expensive that you figured, well,
actually I better marry him.
And then I couldn't afford to like, keep, keep the, keep the learning going, right?
Yeah.
Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
Keep cuts down on my cost.
Definitely.
Rupert Isaacson: You know, I mean, one has to be practical about these things.
Crissi McDonald: That's right.
That's right.
Rupert Isaacson: So Mark, consider the horse.
So Chrissy comes along, she's searching and she's finding
things that are effective, but yeah, it's not sitting with her.
Talk to us about Consider the Horse, what's in that book?
What motivated you to write that book?
What did you hope, what do you hope people get from that book?
Mark Rashid: the, the question is, it's a really interesting
question because I didn't, it wasn't my choice to write that book.
I was asked to write it and No,
Rupert Isaacson: by who?
Mark Rashid: By the, the guy who actually turned out to be my editor.
So I was teaching horse training at the time.
We were using Mustangs for that.
And I had a little school this is before I started doing clinics,
and I was doing a little school and we used Mustangs to teach people
how to train and work with horses.
And there was a, a woman in the class and she said, you know, my, my husband
has a horse and he's not getting along with it, and we would like to sell him,
and could you come by and just kind of tell us what this horse might be worth?
So I went over and you couldn't catch the horse.
So we worked on that for a little while.
Once you got him caught, you couldn't saddle him, you
know, you couldn't brush him.
So we worked on that for a little while.
Once you got him saddled you couldn't get on.
Once you got on, you couldn't go.
Once you got him to go, you couldn't stop.
So we worked on all of that stuff for, I don't know, maybe 45 minutes.
And by the time he was, he was, he wasn't a, a troubled horse or bad horse.
He had just been getting releases for things that they didn't want him to do.
And so it was just a complete misunderstanding and he didn't
like the way he felt and the owners didn't like the way they felt.
And it didn't take hardly any time just by showing the horse that, you know, if he.
Here's the right, here's the thing that we're looking for you to do.
And he would go, oh, okay, well then I'll just do that.
So anyway I had actually written some articles for Western Horseman Magazine
and by that time, and so the, her husband, his name was Scott, and he,
he said, have you ever thought about writing a book about what you do?
And I, and I said, no, I haven't given it any thought to, to do that.
And he said, well, if you ever want, if you ever want to write a write a
book, let me know 'cause I can help.
And I was thinking, well, you know, what do you got a typewriter or what?
You know, so, but but it turns out that he was an editor for this
publishing company, Johnson Books.
And he, a couple weeks later, he called me up and he said, have you
given any more thought to that book?
And I said, I haven't given any thought to it, you know, and so we, we sat
down and worked it out that night.
We, we were on, we were on the phone for a couple hours.
He went down the next day and pitched it to the publishing
company and they bought it.
So, I just wanted to write a book that, the idea was I wanted it to read
like a James Harriet book and I wanted it to look like a Will James book.
James was a cowboy back in the 1930s who was also a, an author and illustrator.
And so that's how I, that's how it came to be.
And it was about, basically it was just about working with troubled horses and,
which was basically what I had been doing up to that point primarily is just lots
and lots and lots of troubled horses.
So that's what the book was about.
And, and I and
Rupert Isaacson: Christy, sorry, you go ahead.
I didn't mean to interrupt you.
Mark Rashid: Oh, no, I was just gonna say that I didn't, I didn't
think it was, I didn't, I didn't think it was gonna be a big deal.
And they actually didn't want it.
The, the marketing guy after I'd started writing the book, he went and looked
at the bestselling horse books on the market and they were all how to books.
And mine wasn't that, you know, even close.
He didn't think he'd be able to sell it.
And so long story short, they, they published it and they, I think they
only did like 3000 copies and they sent it out to a few to get some reviews.
And the first review was from a big time magazine here in the States.
And it was the, the, the thing that they said in the review is that I was
a Colorado clone of James Harriet.
The book took off.
Rupert Isaacson: So you'd hit the spot there,
Mark Rashid: I guess.
And it's, right now it's sold over a million and a half copies worldwide.
Good Lord.
So, yeah.
It's, who knew.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, well done.
Hats off Chrissy.
When you read that book what, what made you think, yeah, I need to
go and learn from this person?
Crissi McDonald: Well, I was already signed up for the clinic,
so I'd already paid my money.
That
Rupert Isaacson: helped.
Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
When I read the book, it struck me because I had been reading horse
books and they were all how to books.
You know, if you want the horse to do a, you have to do B and C.
If the horse does D you do f.
You know, and they had great illustrations and it was mostly, you know, how to
get the horses to do stuff, which,
yeah,
Crissi McDonald: it, that's not, it's not a bad thing, but it was very engaging for
the part of my brain that likes systems.
So we were talking about systems earlier.
Mm-hmm.
Crissi McDonald: When I read Mark's book, it was all stories.
And so the feeling I got from those had nothing to do with my brain.
It was all, it was in my body.
I was thinking, you know, I've never thought of that.
That seems so much kinder or that seems so much more easy to understand
than A, B, C, DEFG, you know?
Rupert Isaacson: Give us a couple of examples.
Are there a couple of things that, stories that really leapt out at you?
If you could just summarize them that probably stick in
your head like that you thought?
Oh yeah.
Gosh, yes.
Crissi McDonald: One of 'em that I remember is Mark has a
story about catching a horse.
And I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna try and quote it, but it was at that time,
catching horses was basically about if the horse wants to run, you make 'em
run until they don't wanna run anymore.
And so that's what I had learned is you get in a round pen if the
horse doesn't wanna be caught, we go around and then the horse will
get tired and then you can catch up.
Rupert Isaacson: That's assuming you couldn't even get the horse into
the round pen in the first place.
Yes,
Crissi McDonald: yes, yes.
Thank, thankfully I was, I was blessed to have horses that actually
went with me into the round pen.
Or it had, there was a large corral or something, but it, when I was doing
that, it was so disconnected, you know, I would do it and I, and I could
get the job done except for a couple horses, which is why I went searching.
Yeah.
Crissi McDonald: But Mark talked about just moving instead of driving
the horse, you know, run, run, run.
Oh, if you wanna run by God, we're gonna run.
Instead of doing that is going with the horse as they move.
So that, so that you're more doing something in connection.
And that, you know, that really struck me is because up until this
time I had been immersed in kind of a dominance version of horsemanship.
Right?
I say, you do.
And that was the story that cracked open the door to, oh, this could
actually be something we do together.
That both of us end up feeling better by the end, instead of one of us is out
of breath and the other feels crummy.
You know?
Yeah.
Like, oh, I made another being do what I wanted, which it, it's not me,
you know, I'm not gonna say whether it's good or bad, it's just not me.
And so that was the first story I remember thinking, oh, there's a way
to do something with a horse, you know, and have them feel good about being in
your company as opposed to, you know?
Yes, sir.
So I think that was the first one
Rupert Isaacson: when you then began to work together.
I imagine that the volume of horses that were suddenly and people that
were suddenly coming in front of you probably accelerated a bit.
You've, you've got the success of the book now, you're a team.
You can do, more people have heard of you.
So now stuff starts to happen and you learn a lot more, right?
Because of all these different contexts, human and equine, what would you say
in those early years where you began to work together, were the
things that most leapt out at you as a, as a team, as a pair go, oh
we see this over and over again.
And then also what patterns did you begin to
evolve together that you could now look back on and say, ah, right, yes.
That was sort of the time we've actually kind of evolved this approach or this
framework in response to these things.
Just talk us through that a little bit.
'cause it's going to inform, I think, the later questions, which is about things
that are, people are facing now, you know, who are listening particularly in
the equine assisted programs and, and, and how we can open up more options.
So, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Just, just what were the patterns that you saw that people seemed to consistently
need over and over again, and what did you see were the patterns of the
responses that you guys ended up evolving?
Crissi McDonald: Got it.
If you don't mind, I'll start.
Mark's got himself muted.
So I'll just start anyway.
Rupert Isaacson: Maybe on purpose.
I dunno, he's wise.
Crissi McDonald: So when I, when I started working with Mark, I had gone
from a trainer who saw, I'm gonna say 30 to 40 horses and clients a year.
And that included cult starting riding, trailer loading it was everything from,
so from maybe 30 or 40 people a year to I'm gonna say between four and 500.
And then if we went to equine, if we went to a trade show or,
you know, like Equant or Equine Affair, that jumped into thousands.
Yeah.
And so me personally, the first year that I started working,
we started doing clinics.
We were on the road two hundred and fifty, two hundred sixty days a year.
We were doing 42 clinics a year.
Me personally, I was in overwhelm because of the amount of horses
and people we were seeing.
And my own learning curve went straight up just, just like a rocket.
So for me personally, you know, what I relied on a lot was, was teaching.
But then at the end of the day, being able to go to Mark and say,
okay, I saw this thing and it felt like this needed to happen.
So I showed them this and it mostly worked, but I feel like I'm missing
something and Mark will have already worked with that person.
What we used to do is he would work with the person, they would come to
me and they would have an extra hour to kind of solidify their learning.
We only saw eight people a day, and that was a four day clinic in the beginning.
So, you know, at first I was reliant on the fact that he had
been ing a lot longer than I had.
I, I had gone from mostly backyard horse people to you know, to all disciplines.
And I was familiar with all disciplines and like Mark said, the principles,
it doesn't matter what saddle they're working in, the principles are the same.
So yeah, for me, I would say initially it was, it was the ability to take what
I saw and run it by Mark, who had had, at that point, thousands more horses
and people under his belt than I had.
And and also just really enjoy being able to go back and forth across the
country and see so many horses and people.
It was just a crash course in how to recognize certain things, you know?
And, and if you're in long enough and you see enough.
Patterns do start to emerge, right?
And it's not that you're, it's not you're that you're designing your teaching
to the pattern, but you go, oh, okay, here's the pattern I've seen before.
Here's what worked in the past.
Let's try this.
And if it doesn't work, you try something else.
But that's, that was my impression.
So I think, you know, I, and then as we've started the clinics, especially the
10 day clinics, I think we rely on each other a lot for impressions of, you know,
how to help a horse and a person best.
It's different every time.
As you know, Rupert as well, you, you can teach the same thing every time, but
the person in the horse are different.
And it makes that teaching just a little bit different every time.
Absolutely.
So that's been very valuable, is to develop a flexibility in my own teaching
instead of just, you know, do a, B, C.
Right.
There's a part of me
Crissi McDonald: that really likes those kind of systems because then I
don't have to think, but it's, it's not creative and it's not personalized.
Rupert Isaacson: But those patterns that were showing up, were there
consistent issues, dilemmas that people, and were showing up to get them?
And what would you say the ones that just leap into your mind straight away?
Yeah.
We had a bunch of people and it was this.
Crissi McDonald: For a while we had a bunch of people with Premarin horses,
and for people who aren't familiar with Premarin horses, those are the
offspring of mares that they use.
They use mares urine to make hormone replacement therapy for women.
It's called Premarin.
I don't know how it is now.
Yeah.
So we were seeing at the time, and then there was this mo Yeah.
There was this movement to adopt the babies out.
Mm-hmm.
So,
Crissi McDonald: because the babies were just like an after
effect, they just needed the urine.
So we saw a lot of Premarin horses for a number of years, and it was really
interesting because for a while we'd see horses who had been diagnosed with EPM,
and then for a while we saw horses who had been barefoot, but maybe needed to choose.
And then we saw primer and horses, and then now we seem to be in a stretch where
we're seeing a fair amount of mustangs.
So it, things go in waves.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
But what were the, what were the dilemmas that these Premarin
horses were, were bringing?
And I'm gonna ask you about the, the, I'll let Yeah.
Crissi McDonald: Ask Mark about that too.
A lot of them were, because they don't have papers, you can't
verify, but a lot of them seem to be inbred and unable to learn.
So the most common thing was, is people saying, you know,
I show my horse this thing.
We do it for a week.
And I think I'm doing it in a way that he's learning, and then I'll go back the
next day and it's like he's never done it.
Rupert Isaacson: Almost like autism in horses.
Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
I'll let Mark pick it up from there.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, please do.
Mark.
Talk to us about this.
Mark Rashid: Well, back in the eighties I had read a book on dogs
with that had been inbred and they carried certain behaviors with them
and also physical traits as well.
And I had seen some horses with similar behaviors and physical traits, balance
issues and and a variety of things.
And so I just, I just started asking people about if the horse was registered
and if it was, we would look at the papers and sure enough we would see
either inbreeding or line breeding.
And the most common is kind of the textbook is is horses that
are unable to retain information.
So that's one of the, one of the big ones.
Interesting.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mark Rashid: From behavioral issues, you know, really horses
that seem really, really frustrated, defensive horses that are defensive.
Some horses are very aggressive.
Not to other horses necessarily, but to people.
Hmm.
So there, there's a whole list of things that, and behaviors that
we, that we that they will exhibit.
And, you know, we are working with Dr.
Steve Peters a lot here in the last seven years.
And, and I talked with him at length about this and, and there's
a ton of research on it now.
And one of the interesting things about inbred horses is that depending
on how they are managed early on, will determine whether or not
those genes get turned on or off.
And so there are, there are some inbred horses out there that are world
champion reers or jumpers or whatever.
And then there's others that you can't lead out of the pen.
You know, that literally will spook at their own shadow.
And we have an inbred horse here who's a great horse, great trail
horse, and but he's pretty quirky.
And our granddaughter rides him.
And he's a great, you know, really super nice horse, but he's a little quirky,
you know, but the way he was handled early on didn't, those genes didn't turn
on that caused all the major issues.
Now he does have some balance issues and he can't canner.
And that's, as these guys get older, those are some of the things that
start happening with, you start seeing balance issues, you start
seeing lack of wanting to go past a, a gate that they're comfortable in.
And Chrissy worked on seeing if she couldn't get him to
canner for a couple of years.
He did initially, and then eventually he just couldn't do it anymore.
So we almost like a kind of
Rupert Isaacson: dementia.
Mark Rashid: Yeah.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: So when a horse presents to you with this kind of almost
like autism-like symptoms associated with the inbreeding what do you do?
Mark Rashid: Depends on the severity,
Rupert Isaacson: no doubt.
But in general,
Mark Rashid: If, if the horse is unable to retain information, then
we usually recommend that they just become a pasture ornament.
You know, just turn 'em out and pasture if they can, or find a rescue that
can take 'em, because as long as you allow them to be a horse, they're fine.
When we start to interact with them, when humans start to ask them to
do things other than just being a horse, when you add monkey stuff,
right?
Yeah.
Mark Rashid: Yeah.
That's when they really start to struggle.
Interesting.
And as far as being a, a riding horse they can potentially be, be dangerous.
Yeah, sure.
Not because, not because they, not because they're gonna be
dangerous as, as an animal.
It is just that their behavior is gonna be unpredictable.
And so it's really important.
Rupert Isaacson: Let's say it's not that extreme though.
And someone's just, you know, the horse is clearly struggling, but
they, it seems that there's some possibilities for some potential.
How do you go about helping the horse to retain information?
Mark Rashid: If they can't retain it?
They can't retain it.
So it's not like you can fix that.
Rupert Isaacson: You, you can't build neuroplasticity in the horse.
Mm-hmm.
Mark Rashid: No, no.
So it's, it is just the way it is.
But you
Rupert Isaacson: can in people.
So, so why not in horses?
Mark Rashid: I don't know.
You'd have to ask a neurologist about that.
I,
Rupert Isaacson: I think we need to go back to Dr.
Steven Peters.
It's an interesting, that's interesting.
It's intriguing to me because, you know, I, I'm, I, can
Crissi McDonald: I throw something in real quick?
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, please do.
Crissi McDonald: So, the source that we have, his name is Banjo, and for.
I don't, I wrote him in clinics for five or six summers and when we got
him, he didn't know his lateral work.
So turn on the haunches, turn on the forehand back up.
He didn't know any of that.
I worked on that consistently for four years and every summer
I had to start at the beginning.
So when this compares to our other horses, who I've spent just as much time with,
one of them I hadn't ridden in two years.
I got on her and she had all her moves.
Turn on the forehand, turn on the haunches side, pass back up, very soft, no trouble,
but banjo every summer I had to say, okay, this means turn on the forehand.
This means turn on the haunches.
And he could retain it as long as we were doing it.
Okay.
Crissi McDonald: But it was always, there was never any graduation in skill level.
Okay.
So it was always as though it was the first time he was ever doing it.
And then the next summer would come around and I'd have to do it again.
And knowing that he's in bread, it didn't, you know, I just thought,
well, that this, we're meeting now his capacity to do this skill.
If you wanna go down a trail, he's great.
Go over a log.
He stops.
Great.
He's like a goat.
He'll go anywhere.
But if you want refined work, that's his ceiling.
So I just, I just expect that
Rupert Isaacson: do.
Yeah.
And you work within his parameters.
Yeah.
Yes.
This is interesting to me.
Do you think there's a lot of people out there working with inbred
horses who dunno that they are?
Mark Rashid: We see, yes.
I wouldn't say we see one a clinic, but we, but they, we see a bunch of 'em.
We see a bunch of them.
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If you're working without horses, you might want to look at movement
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If you know anything about our programs, you know that we need a
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Takine equine integration aimed at a more adult client base
absolutely gives you this.
Do you think it's on the increase or decrease or stable?
Mark Rashid: I've, I've, that's a good question.
I, I would say that I've seen
probably more.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mark Rashid: In the last five, six years.
Rupert Isaacson: What do you attribute that to?
Mark Rashid: Backyard breeding.
Rupert Isaacson: But people have always backyard bred, so Yeah.
Why now?
Or do you think there's just more of it or about the backyard breeding?
I, you know,
Mark Rashid: I don't know.
I just don't know.
I mean, it could be a lot of pasture breeding.
We've seen a lot of rescue horses that were brought in and they, you know,
they were turned out, you know, early on with, you know, brothers and sisters
and mothers and and sons and so you get a lot of that kind of thing, right.
Because there's no new
Rupert Isaacson: stallion coming in and.
Mark Rashid: Right.
And we're seeing a lot of it Right.
In the in the Mustang world as well.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, that was gonna be my next question.
Okay.
This is intriguing to me, and I've actually got a horse that
I'm working with right now who I'm being suspecting this of.
I'm working actually at a distance.
But the horse seems
impossibly spooky.
Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Given
all the good training and conditioning he gets, and I know he does.
I don't actually train him on hands on myself.
It's just a long distance thing I'm doing.
But I, I know the person and I know everything that they're doing is great,
and the horse spooks and bolts out of the blue consistently, and then you can
recondition him, say, okay, oh, it's this thing that you were afraid of.
Let's go and look at this.
And then he, oh, yeah, that's great.
Okay.
And then three, four months go by and he'll do it again as if he
hadn't ever seen that thing.
And in a way that is so sort of genuine that you know it,
he's not just messing with you.
Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: And I was, you know, in my mind I was going, mm.
And then I, I found out that he's from a very particular herd which
has a, a very particular gene pool.
But then I was thinking, but could it be in breeding?
Because you've, you've still always got some stallions gonna
wander over the hill, right.
And, you know, introduce something new.
So it doesn't take, do you think this shows up in stallions given
that in, in, in Mustangs, given that they have access to outside genetics?
Mark Rashid: Oh, that's the way they're gathered.
Ah, go on.
Yeah, so what ends up happening is they pull in all of these families and
then they pull out the, what you might call the most desirable, and then they
kick the rest out and they, you, they may be turning brothers and sisters
out, they fathers and daughters out.
And but we, in fact, we just worked with one last summer that, here
here's a really good example.
So this horse they got this Mustang when he was when he was I think a
year old, a year and a half old.
They got him and the woman started him herself.
And they actually, she didn't, she had never started a horse
before and they worked together.
She brought him when he was three, I believe, to, to one of our clinics.
And they were struggling with some basic stuff, but it wasn't anything major.
We kind of got things lined out.
She started riding him and doing some pretty cool stuff with
him, going out, camping with him and doing that kind of thing.
And then she all of a sudden outta the blue last year I think, or the year
before he started bolting, when she would get on and or she'd be riding
along and he would start to go a little faster on the trail and pretty soon
he would bolt just out of the blue.
No, no rhyme or reason to it.
Rupert Isaacson: This pretty much describes the horse Yeah.
That I'm, yeah.
Talking about.
Yeah.
Mark Rashid: So then what happened was she brought the horse to
one of our instructors and, and they started working together.
And it took a long time, a year to get him to where he wasn't bolting
anymore off the mounting block.
And, and he was still pretty quirky and, you know, just handling him and,
you know, he would bite at people and just out of the blue, just interesting.
Which, you know, his, his owners said they, he had never done that
before, but all of a sudden now he's exhibiting that kind of behavior and
anyway, so it, it looked like they had the mounting thing taken care of.
And last summer, the, the owners came.
And they were gonna work with him.
And the, her, the husband got on this horse and he walked around.
He was pretty okay.
The very next day he went to put his foot in a stir up and the horse bolted.
And I had pretty much suspected before that, that this was an inbred situation.
And so I, you know, that was, and there were some other things,
some other indicators as well.
But the interesting thing was they had their dentist came in and did
some work with on his teeth, and she said this is independently that
that his mouth was indicative of a horse that was inbred because of
the way the, the jaw was formed.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Mark Rashid: So what was the signs
Rupert Isaacson: out of interest?
What did, did, do you remember what she pointed out?
That
Mark Rashid: narrow, a narrow jaw and deformation of some of the molars and
some of the other teeth that aren't at the, at the correct angle, you
know, that you really have to work to get them at a, at the correct angle.
But it's how the, how the teeth are growing, not that somebody
did, did bad dental work.
Mm-hmm.
Mark Rashid: So
Rupert Isaacson: this is really revealing.
And I guess this, this is why.
You know, going back to my question about what, why can't
we get some neuroplasticity?
But I think you sort of answered that one, Chrissy, by saying,
well, some of them actually yes.
Within certain parameters.
Like, okay, I might always have to start from scratch when it's the lateral
work, but as a trail horse, okay.
Or a more extreme version as you are describing, and this horse that
I have been dealing with lately where it's now just dangerous.
And if there's neuroplasticity, it seems to be fleeting, and then mm-hmm.
It might be good for a while, but you can never tell when it might reappear.
The question that comes up in my mind, I had no idea the podcast is gonna go this
way, but I think anyone who's running equine programs really needs to be
aware of this, particularly in the USA because the horses come in from exactly
these kinds of donation points, right?
People often find horses that they can't quite work with or whatever.
Or it was the, you know, horses from the urine thing that were
often coming on the market.
And I had a few of those when I was in the States, and some of them were
grand, some of them were fantastic.
Mm-hmm.
Mark Rashid: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Made great horses and, you know, but I guess they, it
was a, a bit of a crapshoot.
But I, I was just thinking in my mind, well, in England we don't have that
problem and we have a lot of Mustangs.
People always forget that.
What are the English Mustangs?
Every wild pony breed in the uk, and there's mm-hmm.
12 or or more of them has a wild population that lives completely
wild on the hill, including there's a certain amount of winter kill that,
you know, the Welsh ponies, the foul ponies, the ex mos, the Dartmore, the
Highlands, the Dales, the, you name it, there's a wild population to these,
the new forests, and they do roundups.
Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: And of course they select what they want and send the rest back.
But the way they muster them, you're right, is very different.
They tend to pre-select more or less what they'd like to muster.
And then they're not gonna be turned out or held in pens where
those family groups are gonna end up somehow mating with each other.
It's
only a certain amount of them are brought in from the open hill that
have been to some degree preselected.
And it's an ancient practice.
It goes back, you know.
Mm-hmm.
Well over, over 2000 years or whatever.
So people have certain commoners rights to go and do that and blah, blah, blah.
So the whole thing is quite selective.
And it sounds like what you're saying with the Mustangs is it's, and that,
and perhaps with the Mustangs, it was at a certain point like that, but
it's become somewhat industrialized.
Mark Rashid: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: And.
Mark Rashid: I don't think it's intentional.
Yeah.
Interesting.
It's not, what they're doing isn't, I don't think intentional.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
The
Mark Rashid: way, the way that that happens, I know a lot of folks in
that, that in that program and the, and the people who actually gather
and contrary to popular belief, these people are really conscientious
mm-hmm.
Mark Rashid: About trying not to hurt the horses.
Now there's people who would argue against that, but the people that I know that are,
that are involved in that program really do have the horse's best interest in mind.
It just, the way that the program is set up, especially now it's
just so indiscriminate that that's kind of what happens.
Rupert Isaacson: Do you, have you noticed the pro the, this problem coming
from any particular mustang herds?
Do any spring to mind
Mark Rashid: it?
No, it really is, it's pretty hit and miss.
It really is.
Okay.
We've seen them from all over the west that
Yeah.
Mark Rashid: You know, you get some from this herd and they're great
and, and then, you know, the next year you get some from the same herd
and it's, it's such a crapshoot.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Yeah.
You know, one of my best horses was a Mustang, but he, he started
life exactly as you'd had described Uncatchable and this on that, but then.
Turn out fantastic.
Mark Rashid: You know, pretty quick when they start making connections
about what it is that we're asking and how they can do the thing.
Whether or not you're gonna have a long term problem or you're
gonna have a long term horse yes.
That you can, that you can do some really nice work with.
Rupert Isaacson: The work that I do, obviously with neuroplasticity
in humans, with horses started with autism, but now it, you know mm-hmm.
It's more ubiquitous.
I'm very much with you on this idea that you must follow the individual.
So every, every program we have, we have three main programs.
It's predicated on follow the child and so therefore follow the horse in
the preparation of that has to happen.
However, at the same time, we do need to be able to produce horses that
have enough muscle on the top line to take an adult with a child together.
If the child is young, that can collect because with collection, the hip rocking
for the human on top produces oxytocin.
Oxytocin is communication.
Mm.
Communication is what we're after.
And that was how my son, you know, became verbal on the horse.
And then we realized that was going on.
So, oh gosh, okay.
We could replicate that.
And then the neuroplasticity came on top of that, the BDNF, the
brain derived neurotrophic factor.
So we do have to actually work to a system.
We work to an, a very, very old, old masters classical system of in hand work
to get the horse to really understand before you ever get on his back, how
to place those hind legs underneath.
So it's just easy for them so that by the time you do get up there,
the horse kind of already knows.
And then you have a person on the ground and a person on top.
So the person on the ground does the thing the horse already knows, and then the
person on top does the new thing, the, the rider's aid and the horse kinda goes,
oh, these two things mean the same thing.
Okay, that's cool.
I accept, and you get this smoother learning curve.
So we absolutely use a, a system that's very old and at the same
time, we are not ever going to not tweak that system depending on the
individual horse in front of us.
Similarly, with the way we are working with kids, we're going to set up the
right environment with no hopefully bad sensory triggers, hopefully.
An asshole free environment, so the kid isn't feeling threatened by humans.
So we're not triggering the amygdala if possible, you know, and then from their
work on the sensory issues, and then from that to the back riding for the oxytocin.
And then from there we just follow them wherever it goes.
So we are always treading this line between SOS system and anarchy.
And that what we've realized is you absolutely need both.
What I see a lot of in both the horse training and in the
therapy world is extremism.
So either rigidity in a system, whether it's with horses or humans, like
behavioralism with humans, could come under that as well, which involves
quite a lot of coercion and fear, frankly, and nothing at all, which in
some cases could work, but also won't with in many cases because people, the
brains like the brain like structure.
And the same with, with, with, with horse people that sometimes it's, you know,
as you said, Chrissy, you know, very, very rigid, somewhat fear based, you
know, training things that kind of get results, but not in a way that brings joy.
And people then say, well, I'm gonna throw all of that out the window.
And then you get a horse that's kind of bored, unemployed.
And one of the things that I found is, is often the biggest problem with
horses that come to me when I'm wearing my horse training hat, or kids when
I'm wearing my kid hat, is boredom.
Often there's this kind of chronic, just lack of purpose.
And then you go see a good cow horse who absolutely knows what they're
doing and they're like, they're happy.
Or a good hunting horse that really knows what it's in, they're kind of
happy or a very good therapy horse that really knows what it's in.
They're kind of happy.
But the ones that are kind of, why, why am I here?
What am I doing?
You know?
And of course, within herds there are structures.
They're fluid, they're not rigid, but there are structures within human herds.
There are structures.
I've been lucky enough to live with hunters and gatherers.
So how do you, but they're fluid.
Talk to us about this.
'cause it's so easy in these conversations to sound like one is coming down in
one extreme or the other extreme as if one is reacting to negative things.
Does that make sense?
Rather than looking for the center, the eye of that paradox, how do you
guys find the eye of that paradox between structure and anarchy?
Do you wanna lead with that one, Chrissy, and then we'll go to Mark?
Crissi McDonald: Sure.
The first thing that comes to mind is we see a lot of horses and a lot of people
who are carrying, carrying muscle tension.
So when we're taught to ride, especially if we're taught to ride
traditionally, it's shoulders back.
Heels down, open your chest, you know, stiffen your spine.
Right.
That I had equitation lessons for years.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Equitation.
And we do this, we'll do that funny bump thing with your butt.
Yeah, yeah,
Crissi McDonald: yeah, yeah.
Stick out your butt, stick out your chest, right?
Yeah.
All these things.
Right.
Well, what, what we're doing is we're asking the person to be stiff.
Mm-hmm.
And
Crissi McDonald: then if you add in a little fear, now you have
internal tension, external tension.
Same thing with the horse in our search to maybe create some structure for the
horse, we actually build in tension.
So inadvertently we're telling the horse, in order to do this skill, let's say
lower the head or go in collection, we have interpreted that, not in all cases,
because I know people such as yourself are looking at something different.
But in some cases, whether it's Western or English or whatever we say, when
you put your head down, I want you to tense all the muscles in your neck.
Yeah.
Okay.
Crissi McDonald: We inadvertently say that we don't mean to make the horse tense.
So when, so I would say out of 10 people who come to a clinic, probably
eight of them, them and their horses are carrying too much tension,
muscle tension, and internal tension.
Okay.
So there's a pattern
Rupert Isaacson: tension.
Yeah.
And you can't separate two, right?
Yeah, it's true.
Crissi McDonald: Right.
So there's, okay.
I've seen that pattern before.
So with one person.
Horse, we might talk a lot about breathing because neither of them are breathing.
Mm.
Crissi McDonald: With another person in horse, we might have to
say, all right, let's just show you guys how to let go of tension.
Which means one of us will take the reins and hold the reins and the rider
will show us the tension they have on the reins, and then we can help the
rider by saying, that's actually a lot.
Can you cut that in half?
Okay.
Now try relaxing your shoulders.
You know, we can walk them through.
So there's the pattern, muscle tension, horse and rider,
internal tension, horse and rider.
But the way that we talk to each horse and rider is always different.
We're not always gonna say to every, well, we do say breathe to a lot of
riders, but some horses may not need to be shown how to let go of tension.
Right.
Crissi McDonald: The same way every other horse has meaning.
We put that our hands on the reins and we hold pressure until they give.
Right?
That's the watered down super simple version.
It may be that the horse is carrying more internal tension than muscle tension.
So how do we help that horse feel safe?
Mm-hmm.
That's
Crissi McDonald: different than helping a horse understand the skill
of when I feel pressure I give to it.
It's, they're two different things, but they have the same presentation.
Is that.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
It's a,
Crissi McDonald: yeah.
Yeah.
I'll let Mark chime in.
Mark Rashid: I think a big part of what we do, and this, this also comes from
my martial arts background, is that
for me, the idea is to only use the amount of muscle you need to use in order to do
the job you're asking your body to do.
Same thing with a horse.
Can we, can we just use the muscle we need to use in order to do the
job we're asking the horse to do.
More times than not, I mean, we, going through our day, we often
are using way more muscle than we need to use to do simple things.
Picking up the, you know, the teacup off the, off the table, or putting the cup
back down on the table where you hear a kabang, you know, or closing the door.
Opening the door,
Rupert Isaacson: you know, we use, and that could be informed
by emotion as well, right?
Mark Rashid: Absolutely.
Yeah.
And because we aren't aware that that's, we're going through our life like that,
you know, we're we, and when it comes to working with horses, you know, we,
we go through our daily activities like a lumberjack, and then, and then we
wanna be soft when we get to our horse.
And it doesn't work that way, you know, we, it's about, for me, it's about how do
we help the individual become aware of.
Maybe any physical or emotional tension that they're carrying,
and then take that into their day.
Take that softness or internal softness or internal awareness, take it into
their day where they could be practicing at 24 or 23 hours of the day, and
then they can take it to their horse.
You know?
Then then riding with softness is easy when you, when you're practicing it all
day long and everything that you do.
We had a, a, an instructor, one of our instructors actually was at Chrissy's
Dojo and he was retiring and I think he was, I, I think he was, he had
been training for 40 years and he was gonna retire as a, as an instructor.
And we were at his last class and he said, you know, been training for 40 years.
I spent the, the first 10 years learning all the technique I needed
that I would need to know in order to do this, be an instructor.
And I spent the last 30 years trying to figure out how not to use it.
And that really stuck with me.
And that's, which is one of the reasons we focus so much on, on principles,
technique is really important.
You gotta have it, you know, but at some point.
The goal, at least for me, is how can I transcend that technique and do it
in a more thoughtful feel-based way to get the job done, whether it's with a
person or whether it's with a horse.
Rupert Isaacson: Let's bring it to people.
So when I'm let's say we're doing horse boy method session, right?
And a person shows up, kid shows up, can be an adult, and we think we're gonna
work this way, perhaps with a horse.
And the person very quickly shows they're not interested in the horse at all.
So we immediately would then switch from horse point method
to what we call movement method.
No problem.
We've just got a bazillion other things to do.
So we have to be really, really obsessive about our horse preparation and willing
to abandon the horse in two seconds if that's not where the person's at.
And therefore I need to know what that person's actually interested in.
So I can prepare a little bit.
It's Mark Rashid coming.
I know he likes Akido.
I know, don't know from Akido.
So I've got to get on Wikipedia and, and to have accommodation about Akido
and then be talking the language to some degree of Martin Rashid
when he comes in so that we could then maybe go somewhere from that.
But what I'm really after is communication and neuroplasticity,
whether it's coming with a horse or not.
You guys are also working with many other things.
So you are working with martial arts in particular, particularly Aikido.
And it was intriguing to me back earlier in the podcast you said, mark
to find that softness you had to go to the world, world of martial arts.
So I haven't been in the world of martial arts site.
You've been in the worship world of martial arts, but I've been a bit in
the world of martial arts myself and I didn't always encounter softness there.
So
Mark Rashid: not all, not all martial arts are soft.
Rupert Isaacson: Right, exactly.
And
Mark Rashid: aikido doesn't have to be soft.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, exactly.
Not all Aikido people I've met have been soft.
Right.
So, although more than others, I would say.
But how was it that you, a thought to go to martial arts to look for softness?
That's interesting.
Perhaps counterintuitive.
And then b, how did you find that?
Softness Being able to be translated across to the horse thing because
when you do, people are doing the horse thing, as you were saying,
Chrissy, people are a bit scared.
You know, you're up there, you're often being judged too 'cause
you're, you know, in a clinic or you are in a training situation.
So there's a bit of fear in that, let alone the fear of
falling off and getting killed.
So, you know, how did you, why did you think to go to the world of martial arts.
For softness.
And then once having found that softness, how did you feel confident that you
could bring that softness across to this slightly fearful situation with horses?
Mark Rashid: I didn't actually think about going to martial arts.
One of my students suggested it.
Rupert Isaacson: Ah, okay.
He and why, why did they suggest it?
Mark Rashid: Well, I was working with a guy, so we get mostly women in our
clinics, and I was working, I was doing a clinic in Tennessee, and we had one
guy there who, he was writing a, a Pasadena or Peruvian, one or the other,
and he was just having a heck of a time.
He just, this horse was trying as hard as he could to get along with, with
what this guy was asking him to do.
But there was so much conflict going on between the two of 'em.
And finally I just stopped him and I said, listen, everything that you want is here.
It's right here.
You've got all the energy, everything that you need, everything
that you want is in this horse.
All you have to do is blend with the energy and then give it some direction.
And I said, I, I know it sounds like Zen horseback riding, but it's not, you
know, it's just, it's just about getting together with him so that the two of you
are doing the same thing at the same time.
Right now your horse is doing one thing and you're doing something else.
How can we bring those two things together?
Well, he, he was looking at me like, you know, like I was an
idiot or something, you know?
And because we don't get you both look at me that
Rupert Isaacson: way.
Yeah, I
Mark Rashid: know.
I, I, I'm used to it.
And that's how I, that's how I noticed it to begin with.
Right.
So, but I, because we don't get, and very many men, I thought,
man, I got, I'm losing this guy.
Mm-hmm.
Mark Rashid: So I just kept talking, you know, and finally I just said everything
I thought to say and I said, do you, do you understand what I'm saying?
And he said, yeah, I understand perfectly what you're saying.
And he went out and did it.
I mean, it was like somebody flipped a switch and the two
of 'em were on the same page.
And after the ride he came up to me and he said do you, do you train in I keto?
And I said, no, I don't, I don't, I didn't really even know what it was.
And he said, well, I'm an I keto instructor, and what you're teaching
in your horsemanship is I keto.
And it just so happens that one of the top Aikido masters in the world
lives about 45 minutes away from us.
And he kept saying, you need to go see him.
You need to go work with him.
And anyway, that's how and it turns out that here in town, we, we live
in a town of about 7,000 people.
There was a really good, and still is, in fact, I just trained
with him last Thursday night.
Amazing Aikido instructor.
And so I went to him and I've been training with him ever since.
And so, and then how we bridged that gap was I, I could see the, I could see the,
the implications from the internal aspects of the art and the softness part of it.
I mean, it just crossed over perfectly into horsemanship.
And so I started showing people during clinics some of those concepts and
people got more and more interested.
And finally about 16 years ago, we developed ito, which is basically
Aikido for horsemen, so that you don't have to have any, any
martial arts experience at all.
And you can come in and, and experience what we're talking about.
Rupert Isaacson: How do I spell that?
Ito
Mark Rashid: A-I-B-A-D-O-E-A.
B-O-A-A-I.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Mark Rashid: BA,
Rupert Isaacson: BA.
Yeah.
Mark Rashid: DOI.
Rupert Isaacson: Babe, I iaba.
Mark Rashid: I
Rupert Isaacson: do.
The D ibo.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Okay.
And the what, what's the B and the A standing for,
Mark Rashid: IBO is basically what it, what it means depending
on the kanji that you use.
It either means a way of being with horses Okay.
Or for the love of the horse.
Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
Mark Rashid: And so the kgi that we use is for the love of the horse.
Rupert Isaacson: Why do you think despite that man's background in Aikido, that
he, it hadn't occurred to him to blend with the horse's energy in that way
Mark Rashid: because he had been taught something else
when it came to horsemanship.
Okay.
He had been following some instructors, some big name instructors, who were
basically saying that, you know, that this is how you do it when it comes to horses.
And so he just, he never made the connection between the two.
Okay.
Because he had been taught that, you know, it's kinda like with what Chrissy was
saying earlier, where the work that she was doing, you know, it didn't feel right
and it, and it didn't feel right to this guy, but he's not, he doesn't know as much
about horses as these other people did.
So he was.
He didn't rely on his instincts, he just went the other direction.
Rupert Isaacson: It's so interesting, the human brain, isn't it?
Isn't it?
Yeah.
I mean we've, we've all done this, but it's always intriguing, you know, how
people find their, navigate these things.
You know, Chrissy, you, you, you do a lot with photography and how do you use that?
It's, it's an intriguing thing to me at the moment because I use it sometimes
with tracking with getting people to notice stuff about nature, right?
Just literally take a picture and let's look at how many species
are on there or what's it of, or what is that leaf or whatever.
I thought I was very original.
And then just was doing a podcast about a week ago with an amazing
woman called Emma Hutchinson who runs something called Horseback UK up in the
highlands of Scotland, mostly working with trauma, and they do a ton with
photography and nature photography for getting people into the present moment.
And she's taken it, of course, much, much further than I have.
But it's now, it's intriguing to me.
And I I wonder how you are using visual arts to help people with themselves.
Their horses and their horse, human
organism.
Crissi McDonald: Well, that's, that's very interesting because I had not
contemplated sharing it in a clinic situation because we're focused
on the horsemanship part of it.
And also the internal part of it for people.
But the way that, you know, I've been taking photographs since I
was, I won a camera, one of the very few lotteries I've ever won.
I won a little 35 milli camera.
This is when film was still being used.
And I, so I've been taking pictures since I was 12.
And I personally use it as a way to keep a connection with
the creative part of myself.
So I don't get into the, you know, the analytical system part of the
brain, which is also very useful, but it's, it's not the whole picture.
So I tend to be high anxiety and my photography practice is to help
me reconnect with my creativity in order to lower the anxious response.
So as an instructor, I want to live what I'm teaching.
That's very important to me, that I don't just tell someone.
You know, I don't say to someone, well, if you did this and this, your
anxiety might be a little lower.
It's really important to me that if I have something in me that is
challenging me, that I find ways to work with it and understand it.
And so that's what photography has been for me, is, is walking my talk.
Basically.
I love the idea of connecting it to how people see the world, because when
you look through a lens, when you're, when you have an actual camera, where
you're looking through a lens, not just a phone, it's a much different
way of looking at the world, and you have to make adjustments in order to
get what you're seeing in your head to match what comes out on the picture.
And I think that's, that's really intriguing.
I'm glad people, I'm thrilled that you're doing that and other people are
doing that because visual arts are very, they're engaging in differently ways.
Perspective taking.
Right.
Rupert Isaacson: Perspective taking is brain building.
Yes.
Right.
Yeah.
Yes,
Crissi McDonald: yes.
So I use it personally.
I don't, I haven't thought about extrapolating it out.
Rupert Isaacson: I'd be intrigued to see what you did with it
if you do extrapolate it out.
I, I, mm-hmm.
If you were to take a, a test case of a clinic and just experiment,
I'd be very, with the pe, with yourself and with others.
Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: In whatever way.
It's, you know, I'd be very, very.
Interested to see what comes out of what you guys do with that.
Crissi McDonald: That might be a whole different type of clinic
format that might be like a three day clinic exploring this aspect of it.
Mm.
That's a really good idea.
Thank you.
Rupert?
Rupert Isaacson: I want 30%, I mean 50.
Sorry.
Crissi McDonald: Oh, okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
Four, well, 45.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Talk to my boss.
That's alright.
Okay.
if you're a horse nerd, and if you're on this podcast, I'm guessing you are, then
you've probably also always wondered a little bit about the old master system.
of dressage training.
If you go and check out our Helios Harmony program, we outline there step by step
exactly how to train your horse from the ground to become the dressage horse
of your dreams in a way that absolutely serves the physical, mental and emotional
well being of the horse and the rider.
Intrigued?
Like to know more?
Go to our website, Helios Harmony.
Check out the free introduction course.
Take it from there.
The, the, the other thing that I know is a really big part of your lives is music.
And again this is so interesting 'cause music, as we know, to get coherence out of
an instrument, there has to be structure.
I mean, not always, but it sure helps.
It's very difficult to shred on a guitar if you're not having got
a base, a basis to shred from.
And at the same time, you can also completely channel the
collective unconscious as well.
How do you a, find music informs better horse and human ship
in yourselves?
And how do you bring that, if you do bring that into your interactions with
the people and horses that come to you?
Do you wanna kick off with that one Mark?
Mark Rashid: Well for me everything is connected.
So, when I'm building guitars, for instance,
I will.
The finished product begins with just a slab of wood, basically, and the
way that you shape the wood and the thickness that you have, and the type of
bracing you put in the guitar, and how you shape the braces and all of that.
And you're, you're constantly checking every step of the way.
And you never know how this guitar is gonna sound until you
string it up for the first time.
But everything that you do from the beginning of, of, you know, getting
a slab of wood to stringing the guitar, everything is about what is
this gonna sound like when it's done?
And every part that you shape has to fit into another part, and it has to
fit pretty exactly in order for it to be the instrument that you want.
And so, I, I look at my horsemanship in the same way
that we're building a foundation.
And if we skip any part of this, this thing isn't gonna play very well.
Or it may not sound very good
and every step along the way, the guitar maybe doesn't look
good when you're building.
Right.
And because, you know, it hasn't been sanded yet, or, you know, we haven't
shaped this part, or we didn't get the binding on just right, and we're gonna
have to maybe take it off and do it again.
But the whole point is that in order for this guitar to play
well and sound good every step of the way, we have to be mindful.
And so by the time we actually play the guitar, and for me, I'm self-taught
and I actually had a head, head injury back in the early 1990s, and I en
and I ended up having to learn how to play the guitar all over again.
And that among other things that caused some problems for me.
But but again, it's about
when you're learning how to play.
I think the mistake that a lot of people make, and the same thing with horsemanship
is that when you're learning how to play, if you don't hit the right note
and you keep going, that wrong note is gonna still be in that, that's what
you, you just created that pathway.
You put the wrong note in the pathway.
If you get to that note and it's not the right one and you stop.
You put the right note in and then you go back and play all the way to that
note and it's the right note, and then you keep going, then that will go in.
So the whole, it's, it's exactly the same thing that we want
to do with our horsemanship.
We wanna get it as, as correct as we can.
So that that's what's going.
So when we're teaching a horse something, we don't necessarily want it to be
perfect, but we want it to be pretty close so that the horse knows that
that search that they were doing for, to get to the answer is in the right
direction and then we can build on it.
So, you know, horsemanship so often is about looking for the
bad that the horse is doing so we can fix it instead of looking for
the good so we can build on it.
And so what we are trying to do is find the good in the people and in the
horses so that we can build on it and then you can make your music right.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
It's funny, there's, there's two things that leap to mind.
The first thing what you're saying, looking for what's right someone gave
me a really great piece of advice about leadership and they said,
catch people doing something right.
Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: I was like, oh my god.
Yeah, of course.
You know, the other thing is when you're talking about leading up to that note,
I'm also self-taught on the guitar.
And so I've.
Definitely put those wrong note pathways in.
And what I find is that, as you say, but you just, you just explained it very
well, if you allow yourself to pause,
put in that note as an isolated note, regroup, come back to there.
You might have to pause again.
You might have to pause again several times.
So you will be dealing with the frustration of, I can't play the melody
as long as that is one's desire,
I can't do the exercise on the horse or whatever.
Mark Rashid: Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Rather than saying, I'm playing around with the concepts
of this exercise on the horse, and up until this point I'm fairly comfortable,
then it will help, it helps me if I can pause and I might have to pause
quite a few times, but this idea of allowing yourself and the horse to stop,
I I've realized more and more and more the absolute necessity of this, but
it wasn't what I was brought up with.
And, and it can be so difficult when you're working with instructors because
the instructor, of course, actually in good faith feels that they have to give
you your money's worth and help you get through and achieve that exercise.
So maybe it's a clunky shoulders in or a, as you say, with a lot
of tension, whatever it is, it's just got a lot of tension in it.
And so, or it breaks down completely, neither of which is
what we're actually looking for.
But the rider feels, well, I can't pause, I can't advocate
for myself to ask for this pause.
Maybe I don't even know in my mind that I need, that the horse is just going,
well, horses might be nice, but that's not an option that's ever been on my table.
And there's this idea that we must ride through it.
We must keep going.
And so talk to me a little bit about the value of stopping and regrouping
and pausing, because I do think this is something that bears a little
bit of conversation and this idea of sort of letting yourself and the
horse off the hook and perhaps the person you're working with rather
than constantly being on the hook.
But that, again, it's not a, it's not an extreme thing that being off the hook
means you abandoned the whole thing.
No, no.
But we, we realize that sometimes we have to stop and
rest on the way up the mountain.
So, Chrissy, talk, talk to us about this.
You must, you, you must encounter this a lot.
With yourself and with people you're working, particularly as you, you're
self described as you know, with anxiety.
Mm-hmm.
And as we know with anxiety, often comes a certain adrenaline and then
a desire to kind of rush through, like a horse that's intimidated by
jumping will rush the fence to kind of get it over with to some degree.
And we, we have this human response as well in us.
Mm-hmm.
So talk to me about the other slow down, the pauses, the regroup.
Crissi McDonald: As an instructor, if someone asks me a question, I say, let's
say my horse isn't backing up very well.
Okay.
So we take a look at that and everything is tight and the horse isn't backing up.
The person in their mind has a picture of the horse going backwards, right?
Until they're asked to stop, just back, back, back, back,
back, back, back, back, back.
But that's the goal.
And what I see a lot is as, as people, we are so goal oriented that we wanna
start with the goal instead of, like you were talking about, there's this
piece right here that needs to be in place before I can get to that goal.
Matter of fact, there's about 15 or 20 pieces, and the value of the pause is, is
that in teaching the backup, we can look at that worsen rider and say, okay, the
very first piece we need is relaxation.
It doesn't matter if the feet move, it doesn't matter.
But what we're seeing is the person has an idea, let's back up, and
then everything in the person tenses and then the horse tenses behind.
Okay.
So for that horse and rider, it might be, can we relax as our very first step?
The pause comes as a way to tell the horse, yes, I'm looking
for relaxation in the movement.
Right?
So that's the value of the pause when it comes to people, the value of the pause.
As, as an instructor, what I see is if we offer information and let people work
through it at their own pace, they're likely to retain it rather than forget it.
And as it is in an hour long lesson, we may only remember 20% on a good day.
Yeah.
So there's no, there's, mark has this saying, which I love he said, people
don't care how much, you know, they just want to know if you can help them.
And I, I told him, I'm always so grateful that they, that he doesn't say, they just
wanna know how much you care, because that's, it's a little too hallmark for me.
But I really like that, that, you know, it doesn't matter how much we know, how
much experience we have, what matters when people come to us for help is that
we have something that can help them.
And so this person doesn't need to know about the hours I spent studying
brain science in order to offer them the one piece of information
that will help them make a change.
I.
They don't need to know that.
They don't need to know the books I've read.
They all they need is, let's try this.
And then I shut up so they can do it.
So I'm not constantly bombarding them with information.
And when you said that as instructors, we wanna give them their money's
worth, there's absolutely that part.
And if we teach a certain way, they will naturally get what they're coming for.
You know, it's, it's, they're not paying for everything.
I know they're paying for help for their own challenge.
So I always, I always think of pause as a is, you know, it's a gift really,
because we have no pauses in our culture.
Everything is 24 7 full on fast.
We have to create the pauses ourself.
And so pausing as an instructor is a practice.
And then being able to also offer myself that is another practice.
Same principle, different, different uses
Rupert Isaacson: in all of our programs, we have a series of guidelines and one
of them is eight and one of them is time for innovation, which is really pausing.
And you, we really should call it time for myelination.
Yeah.
To pause and allow the brain to, you know, as Dr.
Peters would say, by the way, listeners, if you haven't
listened to the podcast with Dr.
Stephen Peters, get your ears asses onto that because he's
just the most fascinating man.
Neuroscientist, neurologist.
Yeah.
Neurosurgeon and horseman and autistic.
You, you cannot not listen to this man.
He's amazing.
But, you know, as he would say, those pauses give you your brain a chance,
those new neurons to myelinate to get the fatty tissue, a chance to
grow around the, the new connection to make it stable, not fragile.
And this requires, yeah.
A pause.
Yeah.
Crissi McDonald: Sorry,
Rupert Isaacson: go ahead.
The,
Crissi McDonald: the thing that also, when you said that, that I
kind of pinged off of too, is that a pause, I think subconsciously
a pause allows us to feel safe.
Mm-hmm.
Crissi McDonald: Because we're not, it's the mm-hmm.
It's not the absence of presence, but it's the absence of pressure.
So I don't have the pressure of listening to someone tell me
the next piece of information.
Right.
So our nervous system, I think with pauses, this is
what I've noticed for myself.
I have no scientific basis to, to base this on.
But what I've noticed in myself and with students and horses is that putting
a pause in allows for us all to come down, to settle, to get grounded.
Speed.
Unless you're skilled at speed, speed builds in tension and anxiety
unless you practice that way.
That's not always the case.
But a lot of times we, we go fast without knowing what we're doing.
And I think that drives up anxiety.
So if you have someone, or if you make it a practice in your life
to find the pauses, it's a, it's an internal practice as well.
It, it's not just for the brain, right?
It's also for the how we feel inside.
Right?
Rupert Isaacson: Because stress actually drains your tank.
Right?
I mean it's, it's, it's a neurotoxin with a cortisol grate, but also it takes a vast
amount of energy to be both on the gas pedal and on the brake at the same time.
And we can't not have that in life, but we probably only have a certain
amount of those moments in us.
And do you think it's perhaps true that our subconscious knows this,
maybe the horse subconscious knows this and knows that a depletion of
energy, therefore beyond a certain point means actual lack of survival?
So your point about feeling safe means I will survive Feeling unsafe
means this exercise might kill me because it's now the equation of
the energy that it's taking versus.
What it might give me back has, has, has gone upside down.
And perhaps in our site, in our subconscious, we know this
because we're hunter gatherers.
We know we can only expend a certain amount of energy on the
hunt for food before it kills us.
Similarly, horses must know this.
Deep down there's, if you are, if you are expending energy to get to
water or grazing or whatever, only a, a certain amount of energy is
going to be good in that equation.
And beyond that, not good.
And then you might be in that risk zone at the end of the winter or something, and
you, you do realize perhaps you might die.
So we don't want to tap into that.
It's very interesting.
Do, do you feel, mark, do you feel that this, this softness that you're talking
about and the the, does it and the foundation, does it really come down
to instilling a sense of safety?
Mark Rashid: Definitely.
That's, that's the whole point of all of it is you know, with, it's like,
Chrissy was talking about with, you know, the PO putting the pauses in.
One of the things that I've gotten in the habit of doing almost
unconsciously with students.
I will, I will offer some information, and then I'll let them go do it.
And if I need to offer more information, I'll ask them to
stop so that we can talk about it.
And then they can go do their thing.
And I might talk to people in the, you know, the auditors and almost
completely ignore, you know, I'm watching the writer, but I may, I'm,
they know I'm talking to the auditors.
So that takes the pressure off of them to be able to just focus on what they
want to do or how they want to do it.
And when I, if I feel like I need to offer more information,
I'll ask 'em to stop again.
And, you know, and there's, for me, I, I, I've, I don't know
that I've ever told anybody that they've done it something wrong.
And even when somebody will say, I've, I've been doing this wrong all
these years, I will say, actually what you've done has gotten you to here.
I mean, you've got a lot of skill.
This is awesome.
You know, it isn't what you wanna do right now, but what you've done has
gotten you to here to where you can take the next step and do the next thing.
So I, I, I tried really to help folks think about that, that
there, there's no judgment about.
What you've done in the past or you know, any of that stuff, none of that matters
really, you know, so the softness part of it, I think is all about safety.
It's about that, you know, if you don't feel like you're being judged, you can
feel pretty safe about what's going on.
And I think that's, I think that's really important.
We had a gal last year at one of our clinics, one of our 10 day
clinics, and super nice, super nice gal and, and, and very talented.
But she had gotten stuck in a, in a system and was kind of putting a
lot of stuff, internal stuff onto the horse that she was riding.
And for about six, six days at least, I was trying to explain to
her that, you know, I don't know that that's what we got going on here.
And I think it was maybe on the eighth day it finally dawned on
me that I needed to be quiet.
I'm not hearing what she was saying.
She, and so she couldn't hear what I was saying and I needed to stop talking.
And we sat down together and I just said, okay, can you
just tell me what's going on?
And I mean, let's start at the beginning.
So what's, what's going on?
You know, not the beginning of here when you got here, but the
beginning of your horsemanship.
You know, when you first started riding, can we just, and she told
me the whole story and I just listened to what she had to say.
And by the time we were done, she felt better and things went well
with her horse and her, and that's how the clinic ended for her.
And it had nothing to do with me expounding on things that
I knew it had to do with just listening to what she had to say.
And she explained to me that nobody has ever taken the time to do that with her.
And so she has always thought that she was just a bad student and people had
actually told her she was a bad student.
So it's that kind of thing, how you help that person or that
horse feel safe, doesn't matter.
It just matters that they feel better.
And you know, and that's really, for me, that's the most important thing.
And then, then we can do, then whatever you wanna do, then we can do it.
Rupert Isaacson: The, the, the pressure we sometimes feel that we're under, whether
we're instructors or facilitators or the person providing the service, let's say
because there's a contract to this and we all have that little voice imposter
syndrome and that little voice in our head saying, yeah, but you suck.
Really, you know?
And no matter how much you know, that actually, well, by now, actually, I sort
of do kind of know how to help people with horses with this kind of thing.
It's okay.
I don't need to feel this, but there it is.
We are human.
There's that little voice.
It's a
Mark Rashid: good thing though.
Rupert Isaacson: Go on.
Mark Rashid: It's a good thing because it keeps you honest,
Rupert Isaacson: keeps you honest, keeps you humble.
Sure.
But it can also dominate and overwhelm and
Mark Rashid: Yeah, if we let it, it's
Rupert Isaacson: heroin and things.
But yeah, it's, it's, it's treading that line, obviously.
But you, you're right, it serves a purpose for sure.
That inner critic, I guess it's just that it's often pathological.
The safety has to happen, of course, for the person who is
there to receive the thing that.
You guys have agreed to try to transmit, whether that's an equine
assisted thing, whether that's a horse training thing, whether that's a
photography thing or a writing thing, or Aikido thing or a music thing.
And then there's you, the person who is standing there with that
little inner voice as somebody who suffers from anxiety and therefore
can really empathize with that a lot.
Chrissy, what do you do to make yourself feel safe?
You go out into the judgemental environment of the equine world
and it can be a pretty judgy place.
And you can be so good.
I mean, I know people who are so good at what they do and they still get judged,
you know, it can feel very unsafe.
And in fact, I just want to add to that before you answer that was I think the
thing about the Warwick Schiller journey on summit in San Antonio that I met you
guys at, I think it was the only time I've gone into an equine environment
that was, you know, sort of a
bringing a whole bunch of people together, you know, to talk about
stuff where I did not observe the judging and the factionalism and the.
Negativity.
And I was like, fuck, you know, sorry, excuse my French.
But like, that was a first.
It's like, I was like, what's, what's different about this?
It's like, no one's being a dick.
This is in fact the opposite.
In fact, people are actually trying to see each other's points of
view and they're trying to just sort of be kind to each other.
This is like unprecedented.
And I was a bit worried 'cause I was bringing Rowan into that.
And I, you always worry a little bit when I bring my son in is, is
it a safe place for him emotionally?
And it was, and you guys were obviously a big part of that.
How do you make yourself feel safe?
Chrissy?
See,
Crissi McDonald: Put me on the spot.
I don't feel safe.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Feel safe now.
Crissi McDonald: Feel safe now.
Indeed.
Yeah, that's an ongoing process.
Rupert Isaacson: Do you have some go-to things?
Crissi McDonald: Gratitude.
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, good one is
Crissi McDonald: a is is a big one.
The other thing that I really, really keep in mind is that I think Maya Angelou said
when you know better, you'll do better.
Okay.
Crissi McDonald: And so my whole journey through horses and life
has been, as I have known more and understood more, I can.
I'm not really sure about the word better 'cause I'm not sure what
we're trying to be better than, but, but we can improve, you know?
Yeah, sure.
I like the idea of becoming a, a fully integrated self.
Right.
We have all the, all the emotions.
There's no good or bad.
We have responses and we have all this stuff coming in.
We have all this stuff coming out, but we're fully human,
meaning we make mistakes.
Mm.
We say the wrong thing.
We sometimes, despite our best intentions, we, we mess up.
And so the thing that is my lifeboat, when I have days when I have helped a horse
and a person, and then I go back and I'm like, I don't think I made a dent, is to
remember that it, and I don't mean this in a trite way, but I am doing my best.
Yeah.
I am doing what I know to do, and that's all I can do.
And, and it's, it, you have to, excuse me, that's my dog.
The other thing is, is I, you know, we really have to cut ourselves some slack.
Hmm.
I don't
Crissi McDonald: know whose standard we're trying to reach.
Hmm.
But I go, you know, I have to live with myself as we all
have to live with ourselves.
And I want the rooms in here to be pleasant.
I mean, even if there's a room where there's anger or
if there's room where there's.
Sorrow or if they're, you know, all the rooms are what they are.
And in order to do that, I have to cut myself some slack.
You know, I have to look at a horse and rider and go, I don't
have the skillset to help yet.
Maybe in five years I will, because I'm doing things now that I
couldn't have done five years ago.
So I have to trust that I will improve, and I have to really focus
on the fact that I'm doing my best.
Rupert Isaacson: I like your gratitude thing.
Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: When I remember to I'm not foolproof in this, but when
I remember to, I do thank the people that come in front of me for trusting
me and just bringing this to me.
And I'm grateful.
I am, I am grateful.
I am actually grateful.
And then sometimes we'll do a gratitude warmup together.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Before the thing where I'll just say, let's think of what, what,
what are you grateful for right now?
And then they'll say something and I'll say, okay, what I'm grateful
for, blah, blah, blah right now.
And it, it can be something related or unrelated.
And I always find that that brings me into a sense of just purely selfishly
into a sense of relaxation as you were, you were saying about relaxation Sure.
Earlier.
Sure.
And I also am high anxiety.
I, I confront very well.
Because I grew up in that particular school system in the uk, which
trains you to do it, but I'm a quivering little bunny, you know,
inside, and I'm always dying of fear in just about every situation.
I think it's part of my genetic, you know, lit back Jews, you know,
always wondering where the next pogroms gonna come from, you know?
Yeah.
Keep an eye on the exit.
Yeah.
Crissi McDonald: Yeah, I think the gratitude is, you know, if I'm
having a stretch, whether it's at work or in my life I had a wreck in
2014 and I had to use a cane and I had to kind of relearn how to walk.
And so my go-to gratitude is, is I'm so thankful I can walk.
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
No kidding.
Crissi McDonald: You know, it's, it's, I, I get, if I get wound up
on what I perceive as I'm doing or not doing, that's a story.
And stories are awesome.
Unless they keep us wounded, unless they keep us down, unless they keep us fearful.
Yeah.
I love stories, but they have a place and so, you know, it's always
about just checking what story am I telling myself right now?
Okay.
The story I'm telling myself is I'm not a good enough horse person to help
this horse and rider with this issue.
Okay, well, doesn't sound very true.
You know, how do you know that you helped or not?
They didn't tell you, they didn't look at you and say, you suck.
They, they, you're, you're, I mean, our brains are so interesting
because we are story making machines and I, I think it can both.
Yeah.
So the nature
Rupert Isaacson: of our species, we are the storytelling, eh?
Crissi McDonald: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so we can, I think it's really wonderful to employ that in a way,
finding ways that are healthy to do it.
Yeah.
Crissi McDonald: And, and gratitude seems to be a, I I bring that back
in because if I can re, if I can pause and bring in the gratitude.
Well, I was just thinking
Rupert Isaacson: that gratitude brings you the pause.
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Crissi McDonald: yeah.
Then that it, it, the story washes away because with, when you're grateful for
something, there is no story about that.
I'm grateful.
I can walk and I can walk.
Right.
I'm grateful for the blue sky today.
I'm for whatever it is.
It's a reset,
Rupert Isaacson: isn't it?
It's a constant.
Every time you, it's a reset.
Yeah.
Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And I think in all these jobs,
one has to give out a lot of energy.
One can get depleted.
I have a, a kid that comes out to me, I struggle.
I don't want him to know that, but I do.
And so I try to design the play date so that it's in a place
where I feel as good as possible.
So we always meet by a particular creek where, yeah.
I am kind of into the bird life and I'm into the sound of the water,
and, and I know he'll he will be.
He's a perfectly nice kid.
It's nothing to do with him at all.
What triggers in me, it's down to me.
Certainly not his problem.
And it's a very interesting exercise in, okay, well then what are the tools that
I can use here to make myself feel safe?
And I, I guess you're right, because what happens is with each of those gratitude
things, I get a chance to pause and have a breather in something which I find
internally, emotionally quite difficult, which doesn't just get me through.
It allows me to deliver energy, which is necessary and not have that,
oh my God, the energy's depleting.
You know, I'm gonna end up on the wrong side of that, even
if that's complete fantasy.
Your brain doesn't know the difference between fantasy and
reality, you know, as we know.
It's in, it's fascinating to me the number of tools that you guys use without
necessarily being explicit about the fact that you're using these tools to look at
you guys from the outside and see what you bring in from the martial arts, what
you bring in from the arts, what you bring in from the humanities, what you
bring in from neuroscience and so on.
One last thing because we're sort of hitting the.
Just passing the two hour mark here.
And I do want people to also know how to get in contact with you.
Your books come and study with you and all that good stuff to get to.
But you did mention story and you guys are both writers.
Do you bring story into what you do?
Do you encourage people to journal, for example, through
the courses of, of what you do?
Do you consciously bring story in, in, in certain ways?
And if so, how do you wanna kick off with that one mark?
Mark Rashid: Yeah, I mean, I'm I've been a storyteller all my life.
My, my family, you know, I grew up in amongst a, a whole bunch of storytellers,
my whole family, my aunts and my uncles, and my grandfather and my dad.
And, you know, it's, it's all, it was always about stories and which
is why when I wrote the first book, I wanted it to be a storybook.
I didn't want it to be a how to book.
And you can learn from stories and you can learn from listening to stories.
And so oftentimes in, whether it's in the dojo or whether we're in the arena
talking with somebody or we, I will often say, yeah, that happened to me.
That thing that's going on with you.
You know, I can remember I had a time when, and I'll tell them, you know, a
relatable story about something that happened to me or when I was working
with a horse, or, you know, something that just went horribly wrong when, you
know, I thought I was thinking that I had it going on and then everything went
sideways and, you know, but you recover from it and then you don't do it again.
You know?
Or you'd
Rupert Isaacson: be like me and endlessly repeat the same mistake.
Yeah.
Or
Mark Rashid: you could do that too.
I mean, I think it's whatever you're comfortable with.
Right.
But it's, but yeah, I, and I think oftentimes when you least, it's been
my experience when, when somebody can, will tell me something that
happened to them and something similar had happened to me, or vice versa.
You just don't feel quite as alone.
Yeah.
Like, I'm the only person who ever made that mistake.
Yeah.
You know, or did that thing.
And man, I just, you know, and here we are 10 years later and I still feel,
feel horrible about it, you know?
Yeah.
I did that too.
And I know just how you feel.
And so
for me, you know, especially being an instructor.
I think sometimes we as instructors, we, and you kind of, you kind
of hinted at it too, is that we inadvertently might put ourselves at
one level in a hierarchy and have the student at another, another level.
And for me it's always been, I, I don't want, I don't need the
person to know how much I know.
I just need them to know that I might know the one piece that they don't know
that will help them move past this spot.
I might have that one piece of the puzzle.
And that's all really, they need to know that.
And it goes back to what Chrissy was talking about, where for me,
it's, it's not about how much I know it's, can I help this person?
I, most of the time you just need one piece, but it needs to be the
right piece at the right time.
Hmm.
Mark Rashid: And if you're throwing out a ton of information
in everything that you know, it's gonna get lost in there, you know?
Yeah.
So, so for me, that's, that's what this is all about.
You know, how do we keep folks safe and how do we keep the horses safe and
can we develop some softness and can we feel better than we did when we came in?
Rupert Isaacson: Can we feel better than we did when we came in?
Yeah.
I love that
Chrissy's story.
Crissi McDonald: I love stories.
Yeah, I, I much the same as Mark.
You know, I have 30 years worth of stories with horses and there are some
stories that are illustrate a point, you know, you can tell a story and you're
telling it from your point of view.
So the, the beautiful thing about stories is we get to see through
the eyes of whoever we read, right?
Or whoever we're listening to.
And so if, if most people we see have experience with a handful
of horses, they have many years with a small amount of horses.
And Mark and I are very lucky because we have a lot of years and a lot of
horses, which means a lot of stories because we have a lot of experiences.
So yeah, I, I prefer to relate something to a story rather than,
rather than giving the impression that I'm here, that I know all this
stuff and you've come to me and that you know, those, again, it's not me.
It's not me to, to think that because I've had these experiences, I'm better than or.
No more, we're just farther down the trail, right?
We're all on the same trail.
It's just, I've maybe reached mile marker 20 and they're at 18.
So I can say, oh, to get from 18 to 20, you have to, you know, here's
some things that are helpful.
So when I think it comes to story, it kind of takes the, the pressure
off of here's what I know, right?
And instead says, here's what I experienced.
This is what happened.
And then the other person go, oh, I've had that happen too.
And now you have a connection.
Hmm.
Safety
Rupert Isaacson: again.
Yeah,
Crissi McDonald: safety.
Yeah.
Safety in numbers.
I mean, we're herd animals.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And if you feel we're on, on, on our own with this, that's the
highness might eat me feeling.
Yeah.
I, what I, I just really liked what you said.
You, you've said three times now experiences rather than experience,
and it's so interesting the
emotional difference between those two things.
You say, I've got 30 years of experience says it means, yeah.
30 years of stuff happening to me, if you say I have 30
years of experience, it's like.
I have 30 years of experience.
You know, it's a very different vibe, isn't it?
And
Crissi McDonald: yeah.
Thank you for pointing that out.
I didn't,
Rupert Isaacson: you did that very spontaneously connection.
It, it, I thought, oh gosh.
I need to make sure I'm putting it in those terms too, because one made me
feel safe and the other would not have.
Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
But 30 years though, I wanna know you've, that experie 30
Crissi McDonald: years.
Yeah.
I have 30 years of experience.
That's so, like, it's not connecting.
It's instant Hierarchy isnt, it's
not, yeah.
Crissi McDonald: It, it's not, yeah.
It's not connecting.
No, it's not.
It's,
Crissi McDonald: but 30 years of experiences.
Other people can just say, well, I have 30 years of experiences too.
Yeah.
You know, and that there's the connection that, thank you Rupert.
That's, that was
Rupert Isaacson: Well, thank you.
Thank you for pointing that out, for using that and bringing that to my attention
because that, that's definitely actually a tool, which I think, I don't know if
I'm using that tool well enough, but now you've brought my attention to it.
I, I, I'm certainly gonna try to.
So story heals, as you say, unless they're sort of triggering amygdala,
social media, you know, the wrong kinds of stories, but stories do heal.
They seem to be medicine.
You guys are medicine people.
I think when it.
Comes to the work you do.
I, I genuinely think you are.
If people want to come and connect with you, what do they do?
How do they find you?
What are the courses you offer?
And then please tell them about your books.
So start with how they find you and what are the courses you offer.
Either of you, just jump in, please.
Crissi McDonald: I will jump in with some of the logistics stuff
and then Mark can add on to it.
Okay?
So you can go to mark asha.com.
We have once you're there, you can sign up for a newsletter.
We have a little newsletter goes out once a month.
We have an online classroom.
You can also find out how to register by going to Mark's website.
And again, that's mark rashid.com.
Mark with a K we
Crissi McDonald: have Mark with a K.
Yes.
And then I have a website as well.
It's chrissy mcdonald.com.
And then both of us have books.
Rupert Isaacson: It's McDonald, not McDonald.
Crissi McDonald: Well, it was McDonald in 1660 and somehow
it became McDonald in 1690.
But that's Scottish history.
You probably don't wanna that, that's not the, oh, I might
Rupert Isaacson: know because my, my clan is Clan Mac first and
so Yeah, we could go to Oh yeah.
Rabbit Hole.
Oh yes.
Yeah, yeah,
Crissi McDonald: yeah.
That's a whole different rabbit hole.
Yeah.
But yes, it's Chrissy, C-R-I-S-S-I, McDonald mc D-O-N-A-L-D
Okay.
Crissi McDonald: Dot com.
Okay.
And all my books are there.
You can look at them.
And then both Mark and I's books are at whatever retailers you.
Like to buy from?
I always like to promote bookshop.org.
Okay.
Because it supports local bookstores.
Rupert Isaacson: That's cool.
Yeah, we've talked about one of Mark's titles Consider The Horse.
There are others.
Is there a particular title you would draw people's attention
to that from your books?
Chrissy?
Crissi McDonald: I have two horse books.
They're different focuses, so I'm just going to point out both of them.
The first one I wrote is called Continuing the Ride, rebuilding
Confidence from the Ground Up.
Okay.
And that has to do with what I did to get back in the saddle in a
healthy way after my wreck in 2014.
Got it.
Crissi McDonald: So, because we hear from a lot of people how
they're anxious and they don't have the confidence they used to.
Sure.
And then the other one is called Getting Along With Horses and
Evolution in Horsemanship.
And that explores some of the ideas that we've been talking about here.
Rupert Isaacson: Wonderful.
Mark, I
Crissi McDonald: think it's Mark's Turn Now
Rupert Isaacson: Books, please.
Mark Rashid: I don't know how many books I have out actually.
16.
I've got 16 books out and so, and you can find those on the website.
One thing I, I do wanna mention just because it's a thing, so the first
book is called Considering the Horse.
So it's not consider
Rupert Isaacson: considering.
Mark Rashid: It's considering, and here's why.
So when we were getting ready to put the title on the book, I wanted to call it,
considering the Horse and the publisher wanted to call it Consider the Horse.
Ah, and I felt really strongly that Consider the horse was
telling people what to do,
whereas considering is an active, it's an active thing that's, it's a
Rupert Isaacson: conversation rather than a telling.
Yeah.
Mark Rashid: And indeed.
Yeah.
So, but there is actually, again, there's a story behind why that title
is considering instead of consider.
So, I mean, we went round and round for about a month.
Yeah.
On that, the difference between consider and considering with the publisher.
And I just, I couldn't let it go.
I was, I, I just, I was fanatical about it and so that's why
it's considering the horse
Rupert Isaacson: so well done.
Holding your ground.
Mark Rashid: Yeah.
And that was my first book too, that they didn't even want to publish.
So I felt like, you know, we did okay with it.
But yeah, all the books are on the website.
Our music is on the website.
And we've got three or four CDs out which people don't buy
anymore, but, but they're there.
And yeah, all of our courses are on there.
We do five day clinics.
We do all these at Happy Dog Ranch and, and Sedalia, Colorado is south
of Denver, so, we do five day clinics.
We do a three day IBO and riding in the afternoon.
And then IBO is in the morning, riding is in the afternoon.
And then we do 10 day clinics.
There are intensives.
We do those June, August, September.
Our five days are in May and October.
And then we do some courses with Jim Masterson and Steve Peters in July.
Fantastic.
And they're all at all at the same place.
Amazing place.
Rupert Isaacson: Happy Dog Ranch.
Mark Rashid: Happy Dog Ranch.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Happy.
We need to get, we
Mark Rashid: need to get you there.
Have you ever done there?
I'd love to
Rupert Isaacson: get there.
I'd love to.
I'm often in Denver.
Yeah.
And not Colorado Springs too, so.
Mark Rashid: Well, it's right between, it's in between.
Okay.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
I, I know it, I know, I know.
At least I, I know the sign on the highway when you driving.
Yes.
Yeah.
Love to, love to, love to.
Can people come?
Do, do you have to bring your horse?
Can you come without a horse?
You can come without a horse.
Okay.
Mark Rashid: Yep.
You have to do everything on foot.
But no, we got plenty of horses there.
Rupert Isaacson: Very cool.
All right.
Well, happy Dog Ranch.
Five day and 10 day intensive.
Brilliant.
Mark rashid.com.
Chrissy McDonald, mook donald.com.
Crissi McDonald: McDonald?
Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: McDonald.
I would like to do this again.
There are some things I'd like to go further into.
Also the work you do with Masters and Method and the
things that you've alluded to.
There's, I feel we sort of barely scratched the surface.
So would you, would you come, would you guys come on again?
I'd love to.
Crissi McDonald: Absolutely.
Yeah.
I'd love to.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Rupert Isaacson: My, it's been my absolute pleasure.
I learned a lot.
I'm going to say experiences.
I'm not going to say experience.
I feel safer when I say it too.
Yeah.
Because isn't that something I, if I say experience, I'm like
putting myself, I'm making myself vulner one eyes, like mm-hmm.
What if my experiences not good, not, but my experiences?
Well, they are what they are.
Mm-hmm.
Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
You have lots of years of experiences too.
Rupert Isaacson: One or two.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Or two.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Crissi McDonald: Yeah.
That's who you are.
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed, indeed.
Alright, my friends, I'm gonna hit that dreaded button stop record.
But thank you so much and we will see you on the next one.
Thank you.
Thank you, Rupert.
Rupert Isaacson: I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did.
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