Paula Curtis (00:42)
Welcome. Today we're here with Don Jessup. He's the author of Leadership and Horses, a founder of mastery horsemanship, and a powerful guide for riders who want more than just training. They want transformation. With over two decades of experience and mentorship from world-renowned leaders like Pat and Linda Pirelli, Ray Hunt, Tony Robbins, and more, Don brings a unique mastery-level approach to horsemanship, blending psychology, leadership, and heart. Whether you're starting out or reaching for the top in performance,
Don's work helps riders unlock potential in both horse and human. Welcome Don. It's great to have you here today. Well, Don, well, great to have you. Thanks for joining us. Tell us about your horsemanship journey and tell us what brought you sort of to, well, first of all, how you started, how did you get into horses? Tell us a little bit about your journey and then where you are today. And we'll kind of take it from there.
Okay, so how far back? I was a kid when I got into horses, but I didn't own a horse till I was about 16. But I can tell you the most indelible memory of this connection with horses that happened when I was about six years old. My oldest brother had this huge family and he's old enough to be my dad. And he's the only one in my family that actually had horses.
think when I was about six, he would have been about 21 or two. He had these horses and they were Arabians crossed with quarter horses. Doesn't matter really, but he decided to start breeding his own. I remember at five o'clock or four o'clock in the morning, it was early, he wakes me up and he said, Don, you gotta come outside. And I walk outside where his horses, just, this one mare is foaling out having a baby. And he stands me up.
on his shoes because I'm barefoot. So I'm this little kid freezing outside and I watched this horse be born, come to life and something clicked. I think horse people are addicts and I became an addict at six. So after that it was sort of riding from time to time with him and then when I was 16 I bought my first horse because I wanted to go into the wilderness on a fishing trip 30 miles back into the Idaho wilderness from, I live in Montana but we...
We border Idaho. And that was my whole purpose. I wanted a horse that I could call my own and go do those exciting things. That's where I started. I mean, that's the emotional trigger taking me into the horse journey. I did get that horse, and I never actually took that horse. In fact, it wasn't until about 15 years after my first horse that I actually did that trip. And that's because I found a different horse. This childhood friend of mine, I was telling you, we just did this Portugal trip. He...
He and I got into riding endurance horses. So we've got these Arabians and we're trekking all over the Idaho, Utah, Montana area into Washington. And we're doing these 50 mile races and just having the time of our lives. so it kind of took me away from that childhood idea of what I wanted to do and took me in a different path. And then ultimately I found this horse. His name was Prince. In fact, I think I could show you there's his picture. It's a painting of Prince on the wall behind me. Prince was a special horse. ⁓
very, very special horse and he had qualities that I'm yet to find in many horses. But he had one particular quality that caused me to go into training. I wanted to learn more because he was that horse that said, you don't know enough. And I think most of my colleagues have had that experience. know, some horse that gets in their blood and says, look, you got to learn more. You don't know enough to be successful with a horse like me. Prince was that horse for me. So I jumped into training. I studied.
I think the first trainer I met or like learned about was a guy named Monty Roberts and he's still around and he had this program called Join Up and it was this beautiful way of connecting with a horse and having the horse follow you around and I studied him and I learned all I could from him and then I met him in Utah at a show and then I think over the next couple years I just started diving in. I found John Lyons and Pat Pirelli and went and studied with Linda and Pat Pirelli for six years.
lived in their back pocket and then continued teaching their program for quite some time until ultimately I started creating my own stuff and learning how to communicate those patterns and paths for other people. And that does make me think about horsemanship as an art form. It is an art form and we develop our own style. And so in the beginning, we're trying to mimic, it seems like we're trying to simulate or mimic or copy what we see.
Because that's what we see. That's the vision. That's what we're told. That's what we do. And so we do it. then, and then as we progress, it becomes more within us and it becomes, we progress in our journey. It's cool. Like it's to a point where all of a sudden you say, I've got my own style. I'm going to put on this. And then here you are. You're on, you're on Jess ups. Now, now let's go from there. So then you sort of started your own style and then what? Um, you know, you have.
Dozens upon dozens that turn into hundreds upon hundreds of horses that you end up touching and working with and you gain experiences and You start to delineate the things have you ever heard the expression like now? I know what that means you learned something ten years ago, and then and then finally it clicks and like that's what he was talking about That's what Monte Roberts meant. That's what Pat Pirelli meant when he said that that's what happens I think when you start doing your own thing when you become a teacher
you really actually just become a better student and you start picking up all these little things along the way. Like I was taught to present it like this, but now that I have some experience, I'm actually gonna change the way I present it so it makes more sense to people. And that's really the journey I'm on now constantly looking for. And I'll tell you one of the, maybe a sidebar, but one of the things that I hope people in my industry, in the horse industry in general learn, especially trainers,
is that there's so many roads that go to Rome. I just got back from this Portugal trip and riding all these wonderful Lusitano stallions and one of the trainers was what you'd say a common, this is a common feature in trainers against the other trainers. And that's one of the things that's always stood out to me, like I want to change that. If I could change anything, would be that trainers wouldn't be exclusive so much or competitive about the other trainer.
This one trainer in particular kept saying, those guys do it wrong, that guy's doing it wrong. And I'm thinking the whole time, like, what you have, what you're doing is great with the horse. But what they're doing over here, that's okay too. fact, maybe you could learn something from that. So I'm really careful now over the years to sort of make sure that as a trainer, I acknowledge and celebrate all of the ways we get there. That's really what drove the start of the fair.
We grew up in the area where, you know, we were doing English and Western disciplines and had your traditional training, but we also had people like Ray Hunt come in and teach our 4-H group and, and, at our fairgrounds. so was, uh, it was always this clicky sort of us versus them. And really good horsemanship is good horsemanship.
you're going to come across horses where your method is not going to work and you're going to need to be open to possibility and to pulling in some of these other things. And you might find that there's far better ways and it all depends on where we're at in our journey too. So like us as well, when we were younger, did a lot of like the John Lyons and Pirelli and those sorts of things. And then, and that was great for where we were at at that point. And then you just, you
It's always this growing evolution as we go. And, and that's the beauty in it. And like you were talking about earlier, that's where the art comes in. I mean, and if you were to think about like, there's three of us here. So if we each had like a blank canvas and there was a tree, you know, sitting off off in the background and we each had to paint that tree, each one of our pictures will look a little different, but they all might be beautiful. And without the variation in life in those three different pictures, that'd be boring.
If each one of our trees looked the same, it would be boring. And I see that kind of approach to some of the horse showing out there too, where like it should be beautiful. It shouldn't be a forced thing to make it look a certain way. anyway, but you bring up so much good stuff. We're always learning. Really. That's the secret, right? Yeah. I think the secret to mastery is to never be a master and always be a student and always be like watching for a next little
tiny nuance for the thing you're already doing. That's great. I love that. This idea of being an evergreen student is very, very useful in communication with other people. My friend who took me on this trip to Portugal is very, very good at this. He is a great writer, but you would never know it because he's wearing these grunge clothes and he's got this beard and tattoos and he's wearing tennis shoes and shorts. And you think,
This guy can't And everybody assumes that. And then when he does ride, they all celebrate how good a rider he is, because he has years and years of experience. He just has a different style now. And I show up with him at the door of these big, beautiful barns, and they can instantly tell I'm a professional. But their expectations of me change versus him. They're celebrating him, and they're criticizing my little ways.
directly but you can tell there's a difference in the way they look at us. And so over the course of the week I told my friend Joey, I you know, I'm going to start doing more like what you do. I'm just going to come out and present myself as a student. And like, I don't know what I'm doing. I mean, I have some experiences, but I want to learn from you. And the whole, last couple of days of our trip together were more rich because the trainers that would come and present the horses with us were
happier, they were celebrating these two weird Montana folks that come out from the US to ride some stallions. And I think that carries on every time I meet another professional. I think I have to do that. have to say, look, if you ask, yeah, I have some experience. I have a lot of experience, but I'm still a student. think it carries a lot of weight into every conversation that you have. Because your perceptual sieve is open, so now theirs will be open.
Because that will match, it will match. And it's, and that's very interesting, like what, what you're, what you're saying. That's. I really liked that. And I really like, you know, the idea of being a student of, of others, but also we're students of our horses, aren't we? when we show up to our horses as a student of them, our approach is so different and the horses, they feel it and their response is very similar to like what you're talking about. The other trainers that they're so much more appreciative of who we are.
because we're showing up in a way that we can be more appreciated. Yeah, I love that. So cool. I'm glad you added that in there. The horses. We are the leader, but the horse is really the teacher. Now we have to guide the safety and guide the experience in the direction we want it to go. But we're learning from them every second. Yeah, I love that. That's a really good observation. Have there been horses along the way that
are sort of those horses, those really special horses that teach us those big lessons. Do have any stories like that? Yeah, so Prince, the gelding and the painting behind me just there, he was the one that said, don't know enough. He was the first one to really say that to me. I think the other ones were screaming that as well. But when you don't know what you don't know, you just do it. frustration would come in on those early horses. And you think that
you know better and they're dumb to be blunt. But you figure out that you need to learn more and Prince was the first one to do that. He ran away with me like full speed, darting left and right around turning corners around this mountain road and I had no control. I broke one side of the bridle like I was pulling so hard that one of the reins came off and I just had the one rein. I'm trying to yank on that but I don't want to pull so hard that he runs off the road into the forest and so it was a wreck.
We made it, I survived, but it really, really taught me like, okay, you've got to figure out what happens before this so you don't get in a situation like this again. That was a big one. Next really, really big lesson horse for me was a mare named Legacy. And she was a special quarter horse mare that I watched her as a baby. my older brother owned the horse and eventually I bought the horse at the two year old.
got to know the horse really, really well, but she had that special ease of handling just naturally installed in her. She wasn't afraid of much. She was kind. She was willing. She was very, very willing. She learned very, very quickly. So it was like, she taught me that there's potential in a horse that maybe I didn't experience before. She unfortunately retired around eight years old. She had laminitis, something called ringbone, and it just, she was in too much pain to really do much more. So we retired her very, very early.
She was everybody's horse. mean, everybody needs a legacy horse. She was so special that way. And beautiful blue groan. I wish I had a photo up close I could just show you, but she was a teacher for sure. She kind of taught me like the best of what a horse could be. I've met a few horses like her, but not quite like her, if you know what I mean. I think you have a special connection with some. And then I met a horse named Frontier. And I think in my journey,
It's been like this. It's like great, easy horses, really hard horses, really easy horses, really hard horses. Frontier was a big, beautiful paint horse and he said, you don't know enough again. You need to learn more again. I got hurt really bad with Frontier. had head injuries, concussions, because it would surprise you. He would do pretty well and carry you along. And then when he decided he was upset about something, he wouldn't.
his signals were more subtle. You could feel a little bit of tension coming, but you didn't know that it would explode at this intensity. I learned from Frontier to watch for the little things, and to really be careful about the little things, like little signs of tension. The unfortunate thing about a horse like Frontier, if you get one, is you start to be a little bit on, I should say on guard is a good thing, but.
too much on guard. Like now you don't enjoy riding because any horse you're on, any little signal, your brain goes all the way to the peak of what bad thing could happen. Because it did happen with Frontier. tiniest thing would show up and he would just lose it, drop his head and twist and buck. I remember one time trotting through this open field. My friend and I were in a town called Gay Georgia, this big beautiful farm, and we're working with the cows and we're trotting through this
open field together to catch this next set of cows. And right in middle of the field, he just tucks his head down and starts exploding. And I was a pretty good writer. I thought I can write it. I got about six seconds. And I remember coming up out of the saddle and then looking down and he was gone. I didn't even know where he went. He was so sudden. He had disappeared out of my vision and I came down onto my butt.
What a talented horse, extremely talented horse, but he made me really pay attention to those subtle, subtle, subtle signs of tension and try to help people now as a trainer from lessons like that. You're working with a student, maybe an unconfident student, and you help them see those signs. So you can say, look, there's a little tension right now. Don't get on. Not yet. Maybe stand at the mounting block a little longer.
and then wait for that tension to go away. And take this early step before you just assume you can walk John Canter around. So Frontier, it was huge for me and it took a long time for me to recover from some of my injuries. I almost quit because of Frontier. I really truly had a midlife crisis. Like I don't know if I should keep doing this. This is dangerous. This is hard work. The horses don't always love it. So maybe I shouldn't do it anymore. It took a long time to get my confidence all the way back up.
that became a little bit of my program, like how do you get your confidence back up? How do you recover from fear and the pain that you have? So, that's been, he was just very, very, very special horse in all the extreme ways. And then after him, I was lucky enough to have, you know, I've had dozens of my own personal horses and I've ridden hundreds and hundreds of student horses over the years. But I've been lucky enough in my personal herd to have some really, really great.
really fantastic horses, a couple of big warm blood jumping horses that teach you the next level of English riding. Just all of the whole spectrum, feels like I've had draft horses and mules and mini horses. It's been an exciting journey, but there's been those handful that have really taught me the most. found this really a different experience for us. You've got the horses that teach you, but you also have the environment that teaches you.
And so where we grew up in Wisconsin, there's like a lot of arena riding. did, you did do some trail riding and those sorts of things, but you, didn't ride out and do things. And it wasn't until we were in our early twenties that we had a chance to take a group of training horses to a ranch in Arizona. I don't know if you know, Lee Smith, we were on her ranch and during, you know, during the week we were riding these horses on the ranch and then weekends we'd go show jump and complete and dressage and that sort of thing.
But it was so different because when you rode out, you rode out. And when you worked cattle, it wasn't like at the clinics, you know, where you were working cattle in an arena, it was a whole different deal working cattle there. And where you grew up, it sounds like you were riding out, were, I you were doing long distance rides early on. So I'd love to hear how that shaped your journey and what you learned from that.
That's a good question. because I haven't thought about it from that perspective. I grew up with the wilderness, literally the wilderness at my back door. We grew up in this little tiny community on this bench right next to the Bitterroot Mountains in Montana. We had these mountain roads that we could go just or trails that we could just go back into the canyons and or up these mountain logging roads. And anytime without opening a gate,
we could just head back in that direction without loading up into a trailer. We could head back in that direction. And we would load the horses up and come over to where I live now, which is on the other side of the valley. It's more open and rolling hills and lots of flat ground. And I always loved it more over here because I liked the views and the flatter ground. But there was never a time where I thought, you know, I'd have to go load up or take all this extra energy just to get somewhere. I could just go, could just saddle up and go. That was a special experience for sure.
It allowed you to run into problems like water crossings and other people and bicycles and hikers and bears and all kinds of wild things like I think the scariest thing ever I ran into was a moose, a big mama moose and her baby and I'm on my horse thinking I hope my horse is fast because these things are scary. It turned out fine but it was you run into some interesting things in the wilderness but the open space is pretty
It's pretty incredible. It makes you a good writer. There's two great things about open spaces. One is you get to just cover a lot of ground and so you get a lot of experiences. But the other one is you become really intelligent about how you use space. One thing I'll tell you that happened to me when I became a professional is I moved from Florida back to Montana, my home state.
And I didn't have the funds to create all the facilities like a round pan and an arena. And we just rented this house together. My wife and I, our brand new baby, we just rented this house down in the valley and we just had five acres fenced. And so we used that five acres as our training area. We'd have people send us their horses. I'm like, gosh, I gotta build that round pan. I gotta build that arena. And I didn't have the funds to do it. And owners of the property didn't really want us to do it anyway.
So we got creative and we would train in the open spaces. And what it does is it forces you to think intelligently. We would set cones in patterns like in a small round pen, just put cones around in the shape of a round pen. And we'd play games where we'd say, if we leave this area, then we have to shut everything down and come back into this area. And it made my focus, it made it better than if I just had a controlled space that
I was bouncing off the walls and not really thinking about how to use that space. So by having open spaces, I learned to ride with what I call anchors, or just ride in this one specific area next to the rock. And if I drifted too far away from that rock, I reset everything and I came back to the rock. It made me so much more focused than had I just bought the round pan and worked in the round pan and worked on gates and rhythm and all those things. It made me, taught me to stay on my track.
to stay focused, to stay, to keep the horse focused and not drift too much. And one of the things along that line that was presented over and over and over in Portugal on this last trip is that they don't like the way Americans build their arenas. It's just they're, they just give them all this space, but you need to learn to concentrate in small spaces and space. When we have a big arena or an open field,
We set up little barriers, just visuals, and we work inside those spaces. And then we move from the space over to this other space, eventually to this other space. But we don't just take advantage of the whole big open space. So I'm trying not to contradict myself, but essentially having the ability to go out and be in these open spaces, it gives you the ability to be a better writer, but then learning to take the openness and concentrate on something small.
without the help of a round pen or a corral. think it made me a much, much, much better trainer. It makes, makes me think a lot about like in Arizona, we were starting some younger horses and when we started them out in the desert, we just passenger ride them because you didn't have really direction wasn't a thing because there weren't corn fields to ride through or anything like that. So you could really passenger ride. And then, know, of course there's directing and piloting the horse and, that's the
The open spaces were nice because it might be a trail that goes down a hill into a, into a wash or something, but it was clear and defined. And so that trail helps guide your horse. So sometimes the trails, right? Sometimes the trails guiding them and we can just sit there and just harmonize harmonize. And other times we're saying, no, no, you don't go with that other horse. You think about me more and maybe we direct them to us, but that open space thing is I like how you talk about though, within the open space, it's like you've created a zone.
or an attention place or a place that they should, they could get relief or settle into. And that helps people become more confident too, because I think people are so nervous about open space. So I love hearing about those little exercises. Is there anything else that you would recommend for people that want to do trail riding? And I know a lot of people where we live, we have a lot of trail riders here and a lot of them are kind of retiring. So they're at that point in their life.
They want a trail ride. They want to do some long distance stuff. Any tips or suggestions that you would offer people that want to do that kind of thing getting into it? Yeah, absolutely many, but really one that I want to highlight and that is always ride your own trail, even if you're directly behind a horse. That means if the horse in front of you goes left around the rock, don't let your horse go left around the rock. Go right around the rock.
and you'll get more focus from your horse, more connection. And there's only three things you need from a horse. You need the horse to be connected to you. You need the horse to have alignment with your ideas. And then you need your horse to have a positive or neutral energy response to your suggestion. So I have an acronym I say, Always Eat Chocolate. It's A for alignment.
E for energy and C for connection. So always eat chocolate is that fun way of memorizing those three things we really, really need like align with me, put your head in front of your shoulders, in front of your hips and travel in that way or travel in an arc in that same fashion. And then as we advance, we start messing with the alignment on purpose. do haunches in it, shoulder in it, like, flaggly changes and things like that, where we're twisting and manipulating the alignment a little bit. But generally we want
the to be lined up with us or with the task we have for them. Energy is fun because they put it on the scale of zero to 10 and zero is dead, like the horse is gone, no longer with us. 10 is a vet or a hospital bill. We don't want that. Five is that perfect energy where when we ask for something, the horse says, yeah, you bet, no problem. And they're not sluggish to respond, but they're also not too electrical. So we're pushing the horse towards that five all the time in our training.
But the last one, C, stands for connection and we have to have that connection. I rode all these stallions in Portugal and one trainer stood out as the one who works on connection. And you can see it's so obvious. The horse looks for you when you're grooming. The horse waits for you when you're in the saddle. And you can see the ears kind of like watching. You can feel the pace of the horse is in no hurry, but it's also right there ready when you want it. This trainer has mastered the connection.
And I really appreciated that and complimented her on that. And that's what you can do when you're riding on the trail is just do those tiny little things. Your friend in front goes to the left and you think, what a fantastic moment to get my horse's attention back on me. I can hold that connection just for a moment, then I let it go and I let him be a horse for a few minutes. And then I find another opportunity where I reconnect or ask my horse to reconnect to me. That tiny thing.
Over the course of say a two hour trail ride, you've done it 20 or 30 times. Your horse is learning how to behave around you instead of just how to behave on the trail and what and how to follow another horse somewhere. And actually you're taking it to the next level because you're keeping the horse connected to you as opposed to that horse just going with the herd and following the horse in front of it. And that's what gets people in trouble is their horse just, they follow along and then obviously.
A horse spooks and they all spook generally. so, but this way you're keeping the horse connected and mindful of you. And so you're, you are, you're running in a good way, not in a dominant way, but you're running the show. You're the brains, they're the feet and the horse respects that in a leadership confidence way. But I love that is a, that's a simple tip, but that would help people like a great deal on the trail. I love that. And then the
Nuances all come out and the stories come out from my students when they hear this kind of thing and they say well what about if my horse is excited? Say well now we're dealing with energy and not connection and we need to bring that energy back to five so you've got a six or a seven you can manage a six or six and a half but most people can't manage a seven and you get and I won't manage an eight I'll get off I won't ride an eight. Eight is where the feet are coming off the ground and I'm like you know what I don't need this I want to jump down and I'm gonna walk my horse for a while but
If you've got a six or a seven, then we have tips and tricks to get that horse back focused and dropping the energy down on the, on the trail. And those situations too, it's really, it's really mostly about connection, getting the horse to respond to you and feel like responding to you as a good idea. And then the energy will usually neutralize. And then your experiences together with that horse keep building in a positive way, which is really what builds a good relationship.
with anybody or anything, any being is your experiences together. That's what builds up a relationship. And that's exactly, that's exactly what you're doing right there. That's, that's, that's cool. I love it. I love what you're, what you're saying there. Yeah. think the last thing on the trail, right. I want to add is, be brave in your communication. Brave doesn't mean you're fearless. It just means that you're courageous enough to say something.
in your communication with your peers. And most people don't trail ride anymore because they can't find someone to trail ride with that they trust. And if you're brave, you can trust anybody. You can just be like, okay, I can sense you want to gallop your horse. Give me a second to get off my horse. And then you go ahead and gallop your horse. that communication is super, super important, especially upfront. You unload your horses and you tack up and you're about to get on and you say, FYI,
This horse is pretty green and I'm pretty unconfident. So don't just like take off because you get excited and leave me and lurch here with my horse. Like let me lead this. I always say the most unconfident rider needs to lead the speed of the trail ride. You don't have to be in front, but you are the one that dictates the speed that we all go. The most unconfident rider dictates the speed of the trail ride. And that's.
boring for some people because they want to go and run and play. But if it's set up from the beginning that you're willing to get off and they can go and run and play, then you're going have a great trail ride experience. I think what really gets people stuck is they don't get off. It's like, just get off. You don't have to stay on. Get off for a minute. One of the best lessons ever for me with ⁓ Pat Pirelli is I sculpt starting.
There's 30 of us in this cult starting class and these horses were all going pretty good. My horse was going pretty good. And I get up to this gate. We're all trail riding on like the last or second to last day. And I get up to this fence with a gate and I push my horse up to the gate to open it. And it's a little bit of a struggle. And Pat's there and he says, get off your horse. And it clicks at another level in my brain. So I kind of knew that, but I wanted to teach my horse a lesson. And he says, be careful with the lessons you teach.
Says, yeah, you can work towards opening and closing a gate. You need to work towards that. But you know what else is a really, really great lesson for your horse? To get off. Get off your horse, open the gate, lead them back through the gate, get back on. That on-off thing teaches them to calm themselves, to wait for you, to be with you, to reconnect with you. And we have this bravado thing where we're like, I have to teach my horse.
to be on their back and teach them this thing. And otherwise they'll learn the wrong things. Like, no, what they'll learn if you get off is that you can rebalance them mentally, emotionally, and then hop back on. You don't have to be on their back to do that. And you know, dismounting at the right time would be great, like timing it. So not maybe waiting until a horse is getting excited, but when you dismount, when they do something good, like even halt. If they give you a good halt and you dismount, or if I get on a colt for the first time, I'll ride it back to its paddock and I'll dismount at its gate.
turn it back outside. But when you dismount would be so important and that if maybe you say, I'm on a young one. I don't know if I can cross the water or not. Maybe today I'll dismount while he's comfortable, lead him across, get back on, have a positive experience. And maybe the next day I'll just follow the horse in front of me and we'll just ride it. We'll see. But I love it too. Yeah, like people should learn to get off their horse. And the better that you can mount, the better you are at mounting, the safer you'll be dismounting under pressure.
in a scary situation like an emergency dismount. So that's another good lesson. The more you dismount, the better you'll be at dismounting. Yeah, so true. So true. I wish folks could watch my like when you're filming stuff, you tend to highlight things, but if they could watch my actual day to day experience with a young colt, like on say day five or six, when I'm actually getting on their back, you should see how many times I actually get off their back in that one session.
And that's teaching the horse like, you don't have to rush. You don't have to, you don't have to win this game at a high level right now. Just let me up there for a second and I'll jump down and maybe for five seconds and I'll jump down. And it's so simple for the horse to that, that getting off and back on might be one of the most influential messages you can send your horse. Like I'm not here to just stay until we're done. This is a partnership.
and like when you dismount and you loosen the girth or the cinch, you loosen that. That's when they really like, it's like loosening up the necktie after, you and they breathe, you know, it's when they really let down. But what's interesting, what I do, and maybe you do this too, is I work multiple pens sometimes. So I'll work multiple, say young horses, for example. So I might ride one for the first time and dismount, but then the horses and the other pens see me. So they see me dismount and then I go, I walk out and go into a different pen.
And so then it adds the dynamic of the other horses watching. And I find that super interesting, at least for me. And maybe I'm a little attention deficit and it helps me to like work that way with multiple horses, but I feel like they watch. feel like they go, he just sat on him and now he's putting the horse away. I feel like they're learning a lot watching. Yeah, I hope so. It's really makes them fun to think about it in that way. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. And I think whenever we take
ourselves off or just to take the pressure off in any situation. It gives the horse a time. Like you were talking to come back to five, to rebalance, to re calibrate, to soak on whatever we had presented just prior to that. And so now they're going to be able to actually come back to that so much more easily than like your, your Pat Pirelli gate example. You know, what, what things could you have potentially put into.
the gate scenario that if you had tried to do it in that moment, especially when you're dealing with other people maybe waiting on you and that sort of thing, all of a sudden we create a scenario where the gate equals pressure, you're going to be asking them to do something he's not so sure of, he may not know what you're even asking for, and now we're adding all these little friction points to the idea of a gate where just by dismounting and going through and hopping back on,
You've built in a lot of good little moments and, now when you come back to a gate, there's not going to be, you know, those little friction. Anytime we can reduce friction for our horse and keep them in a learning state of mind, it makes a world of difference. I want to work the gate today in such a way that helps me tomorrow. And if, if I'm in a short timeframe, that's what gets us in trouble. Is I'm in a, so now we're trying to work the gate in a hurry. That's a big difference.
If I just dismount, it'll be smooth and then it's smooth tomorrow for me. So I think that that's pretty important for people. Yeah. Yeah. got it. You got to drop the macho. Got to have to get it done. Like we all know there's this thing called end on a good note. You know, don't teach the horse the wrong thing by getting off at the wrong time. Well, we've all learned that lesson to some degree and that's ideal, but
You know what's even more ideal is to stretch hard lessons out over days instead of minutes. Just get off, get through the situation, get the energy in the right space and then come tackle it again tomorrow. You're not done. I think people think if I don't do this now, it won't ever happen. It's like, you can do this now and tomorrow and the next day and you don't have to be a master right away. You can take your time. Yep. That's such a powerful message.
You know, stretch the hard lesson out over days rather than minutes. think, I mean, that's, that's amazing. I think a lot of people need to hear that. And I think it's hard for trainers sometimes because you're on the, on the clock a little bit and, and you're feeling like you have to get X, Y, and Z done. But really in reality, once you, once you get to a certain point, you realize that you're going to be far better off and it's actually going to be a lot shorter.
if you just do what you're doing, you're saying, take your time. Yeah. I'm doing this fun thing right now with a horse named blue and you can watch him on YouTube. He's, it's all free. I'm just, just chronicling his journey. He came to us. He's got some training already, but he's really got a bad connection with people. It's not, it's like one bar of cell phone signal instead of four is he just doesn't really trust people and he doesn't really want to connect with people. He's getting there though. He's getting better. And the goal that I set with me and with blue.
is to do unedited YouTube videos, which is tricky because I don't want to do two hours of something. I want to do 20 minutes and keep it at that. So I've conditioned myself to every time I work with Blue, I have 20 minutes. That's it. It might be 19 or might be 22, but I'm not going to do this hour long thing where you have to watch Blue's experience and his process for an hour. I get 20 minutes to put a halter on him and see how far we get.
And at the end of 20 minutes, I'm like, you know, I didn't get where I thought I would, but I'm just gonna, you know, wind down now and teach this horse that every time you're with me, it's a good experience. Even though I had hoped we might get the saddle on today, we didn't get that far. So we're gonna wind back down and end here. So each time Luke sees me, he's like, great, you again. Let's have some fun. Let's work mastery horsemanship. Yeah. Yeah. So you can watch that. can watch that. Go ahead.
What's your YouTube channel just so people can find that? Okay. Mastery horsemanship. Good. That idea too of just those smaller bite-sized sessions with the horse. And then we go in with, well, the human can go in with way less, like you said, expectations. Keep it simple. Come out a winner, come out positive, positive experiences, build a huge relationship. And that's really a good leader. This is also based on experience. And so all this sort of goes together. I think that when we learned to ride,
we were all told, don't let them get away with it. you know, go left and the horse wants to go right. And you're a little kid and don't let them get away with going left. And so I think people, don't want to dismount. They don't want to change their plan because they kind of think they're letting the horse get away with it. I think that's what it's sort of built in there from our early kind of like heels down. And I have to go around and teach people.
Relax your ankles, man. Your ankles are tight. You know what I mean? And so these early, these early things that we learn are really implanted deep in our, I mean, they're hardwired in our brain. And especially to being a guy, I hate to say that, but like sometimes dismount getting into your presentations this year for the fair. Would you like to tell us a little bit about your, your, are the horsemen fair presentations? Yeah. Well, I believe it's important to work on boundaries.
And to make it fun to work on boundaries, boundaries is just a simple way of saying, look, you're bigger than me. You're more powerful than me. You have more energy than me. You're just the monster compared to me. And a horse is a thousand pounds and I'm a hundred pounds. Well, I'm not a hundred pounds, but the ratio is 10 times my size almost. And so if I'm going to lead this situation, I have to create a sense of leadership in here. And boundaries is the first port of call.
So we created a game called Clockwork Boundaries. And it's a fun way of just working your horse in a clock from 12 o'clock down to six o'clock over to three o'clock and nine o'clock and learning maybe yourself, but certainly teaching the horse to follow your suggestions, to back off and realign and face me and then shift over to three o'clock and realign and back off and face me again. Just a fun way to present leadership to the horse.
It's non-threatening. You practice it and you get better. So you can go from 12 o'clock to five o'clock instead of six or 9.30 instead of nine. And you learn to do the micro maneuvers that give your horse a sense that you've got a plan. You've got to focus. You've got to design. And when a horse has boundaries, when a horse is responsive to those micro suggestions, now you can really develop a trusting relationship. If you don't have that,
You'll always be on guard. They're too big, they can step on you and injure you in a heartbeat. They don't mean to, but they can. And now you have boundaries, you don't have to worry about that. You can get in close, you can scratch underneath their belly and groom their tail because you have boundaries, because you trust that if things go bad, you can just reset the clock. That's what we call it, resetting the clock. So if you have this foundation piece, you can then layer on all the cool things above that.
If I, for instance, start to teach my horse to handle maybe a plastic tarp, and I want to put this big noisy thing on his back, what I like to do is I'll put my horse at 12 o'clock relative to me. So that's like directly in front of my belly button. And I look around my space and I see the gate on this side and the horse trailer on this side. So I've created my little clock. He's standing at 12. Everything's set up now. I've set the clock.
And I go get my tarp and I drag it towards him and he says, no, the tarp. And he drifts out of that 12 o'clock position. Most people are gonna follow the horse until the horse stops and then reward the horse for stopping. That's a different technique. We call that flooding. It's useful, but this clockwork is more fun and more useful for particular reasons. So what I'll do is I say, no, you drifted out of your 12 o'clock position. I'll drop the tarp and I'll pick up my driving stick or flag and you have some time to do this.
You don't have to worry about like doing it so quick that he's learning the wrong thing. You've got about five or 10 seconds to pick up your tools and start resetting the clock before he learns anything bad about the tarp. So you pick up your tools and you reset him back over here to 12 o'clock. And then you drop the tools and pet him and say, thanks for getting back on your spot. And you pick up the tarp and you drag it towards him. He might drift again, but you reset the clock over and over. And then what he learns is to stand his ground.
even if he's a little bit scared. And it's one of the most useful things when training a horse. If you want a bomb-proof horse, you don't want them to be home. We do want that, but that's not our goal at first. Our goal is to get them to be paying attention to the leader instead of their instinct. And by putting them in a spot like 12 o'clock and teaching them, just hold your ground, just hold your ground. You can trust this is not going to kill you. They'll learn calmness after they learn the
clockwork because they learn to stand their ground and spook in place, so to speak. And then they finally allow the talk to reach them at that 12 o'clock position and you rub them down with it and they relax a little bit. It's so useful to layer that onto everything we do. So we start with that and it's a fun presentation to just teach you about clockwork and get you into it. And I think it's fun because you've got some different views on the present, you know, from up above and that sort of thing to give.
people some clarity. And that's the other thing that I think is really great is the clarity that this offers the person because where people get into trouble often is, you know, they know they have something they'd like to get done, like create boundaries. And, but they're not presenting it in a way that's super clear to the horse. And by you breaking it down and saying, look, here's your clock. Here's where they're going to be. Now I've got a really good mental picture of exactly where my source is supposed to be.
how I'm supposed to navigate if my horse comes off of their position. And so then when we bring the clarity in, we can now be rewarding the appropriate behaviors, our timing is going to get better, our ability to observe what's actually going on is getting better. And all of these things allow us to be much better horsemen or horsewomen, you know, and partners and leaders to our horses. So I'm looking forward to the presentations. I think people are going to really appreciate it. Now, where, where can people find you?
Well, you can just Google me, Don Jessup. Our website is masteryhorsemanship.com and that's probably easiest. mean, all of our contact details are on there. YouTube is Mastery Horsemanship. Facebook is Mastery Horsemanship. But just a search for my name. My wife does all the same stuff I do. And in fact, she's a lot better at some of the stuff at the higher level work than I am. She's extraordinary English writer, a background in eventing and dressage. She's got all the grand prix stuff.
I can do it too, but she can do it better. She's good. She's a very, very good rider and trainer. My passion has always been in the student, even more than the horse. The very first thing that, I mean, I love horses and I don't want to have a life without horses. But when I got into training and the reason I drifted toward the Pirelli program was not so much that it was better than others. It was that one of the first instructors I met, she said, in Pirelli, you learn a lot about psychology.
And I'm like, lights are going off for me. I love psychology. I want to get into psychology. And that's the direction I headed. And it turns out she was talking about horse psychology. I thought she was talking about human psychology, but I still found my path in the human psychology part of the horsemanship. I want to know what makes you tick, what makes you resist. Why do you hesitate? How can I help you loosen something so that you move in the path that you really want to go?
That's so exciting for me. So when I present, when I teach, I'm really trying to get into your experience. My wife can do that too, but her passion is in the riding. She wants to be on that horse and working to that next level. So we bring something together when we're working together that is pretty unique and pretty special. I'm very grateful for. that's super cool. Cool. Cool. Well, thanks so much for joining us today, Don.
Yeah, thanks for having me and thanks for doing your work. I love the art of the horseman. I love the work that you guys do in bringing people together and trying to diminish the who's right and who's wrong judgment that we tend to fall into as people. There's a lot of great people out there doing fantastic things and you guys help bring that to light. So thank you. you're welcome. it. Thanks, Don.
