Trailer Trash

I accumulate nutters like Ari. Since opposites attract, this shows how balanced, sane and reasonable, I am. Ari had Polio as a kid and just wanted to be able to muck around with a pony. Having just broken her good leg, riding wasn't an option, and she had seen the saddlechariot on the net and liked the concept, (not such a nutter then) and asked me to build a vehicle she could drive on her own, in safety, and drive onto with an electric wheelchair.
Ari mentioned this on a forum and got the usual negative stuff and one bet of a £1000 that she couldn't find anyone to build the vehicle before the New Year. On December the 31st, she put a link to photos of herself driving Obama from the Quay in Exeter down to the Double Locks Pub. http://www.facebook.com/photo_search.php?oid=231098602725&view=user#/group.php?gid=231098602725


Two subsequent comments on the forum caught my eye.
"It looks like someone took tin shears to a golf cart. Notice there's no close up pics or specs. I'd expect to see something like this in the yard of a scary trailer park, next to the station wagon with the roof cut off."

From trailertrash

Now that is pretty perceptive, I'm living in a trailer next to a chopped up transit that I'll take an angle grinder to some day soon and get it out of my way.  To look at a vehicle and work out where the builder lives is cool. But the next comment is sick.
Ari, as I have said suffers from Polio, or to be pedantic Post Polio syndrome. She is in an electric wheelchair, and she is the OP (original poster) referred to in the next comment.
"I think the OP correctly surmises that this post should be in the "rider's with disabilities" forum. Ari, if you kindly alert your own post and ask the mods to move it so none of us has to make an "alert"?
In photos, one hopes that turnout is suitable for public presentation."

Is it just me, or is this totally sick. This is a carriage driving forum and therefore a person with disabilities is inappropriate, and the comment should be removed so normal people don't have to read about disabilities. The snotty comment about "public presentation" is the icing on the cake.

I know that the vehicles I build cause a lot of problems to the traditonal horse world, and their attacks on me have always had a scatter gun approach, ie collateral damage is OK. I have seriously contemplated giving up because I don't want to see those near or dear to me getting hurt. But short of committing suicide and putting Obama down, I'm going to be me, and I am, like it or not, a contentious figure.
I have developed a vehicle that allows the disabled to drive on their own in safety, that a number of disabled people have tested and enjoyed. Should I let prejudice and bigotry destroy something I believe is good?
I hope and pray that by making this public, those who don't like what I do, will attack me, the trailer trash, not the disabled. I'll even tell you which trailer park to find me at, it's Middle Tree, Haldon Hill, just south of Exeter between the A38 and the A380, opposite the racecourse. And my trailer is the one next to the sawn up white transit. And I'm the guy trailing around behind a moustache.

Whips. The excuses for carrying a weapon.

Yes, I know, it's an extension of your arm. So is a sword, dagger, club, spear, sling, bow and arrow, handgonne, kalashnikov, ICBM. And do you know what defines a weapon? An extension of your arm. The phrase armed and dangerous might ring a bell somewhere.

A whip is an extension of your arm which is why it can be defined as and used as a weapon. Of course a feather duster is also an extension of your arm, it helps you reach those inaccessible places, but you don't see many riders carrying feather dusters. That is because they prefer to carry a weapon, rather than a genuine extension of your arm.

In these straightened times, commercial sponsorship may be the only hope for the army and we will see the 13th/18th Fairy Liquid Lancers parading with feather dusters, mops and dishcloths, and my analogy will be stuffed, but until those happy days arrive, ("Terribly sorry prime Minister but we can't just invade Iraq, think what it would do to our corporate image in the Middle East!" Maybe its not such a bad idea afetr all.) we will just have to live with the fact that armies are armed with weapons, and so are horsemen.

Carriage drivers call themselves whips, knights win their spurs, you curb their enthusiasm, kick them into action, rein them back, the language of brutality to horses infects the english language and the english psyche. And whips hurt. Having had the benefit of a really good education, I did at least learn that bamboo canes are bloody painful. Oddly enough the one boy for whom the experience was literally bloody, a couple of strokes and the blood soaked through his pyjamas, didn't mind being beaten because, 1 he only got a couple of strokes before the master lost his nerve, and 2, he had a high pain threshold.
I have just noticed another linguistic oddity, I refer to "strokes with a cane" yet I know that stroking is something different.

Back to whips. Until 18 hundred and something only one man made creation had exceeded the speed of sound, the whip lash. The power of a weapon is a simple multiple of its speed times it's weight. The tip of a lash may not weigh much but it is travelling twice as fast as the legal maximum velocity for a .177 airgun pellet. And it's just an extension of your arm.

Look at shepherds, they control their dogs they other side of the Fell with a whistle. That's because a 3/4 mile extension of the arm just wouldn't fit into the average shepherds cottage. And they seem to cope.

I am not, oddly enough campaigning to ban whips. Partly because bans don't work. You only have to look at foxhunting to see we have preserved all the most ostentatious snobbery and elitism, and got rid of the only true skills, those of the huntsman hunting hounds after a highly intelligent quarry. So I am not interested in banning whips, I just want them to be optional.

You can't take a horse related exam in England without a whip in your hand. The British Driving Society would like to make a whip compulsory for driving horses on the road, and the Pony Club test ten year old children to see they are comfortable holding a whip in either hand.
Ask yourself one question: what has the horse or pony done to deserve this unique status? Take a whip to any other animal in public and see what happens.

Take a whip to Obama and he will kick you and I will give him a carrot as a reward before reporting you to the police. Obama is terrified of whips. 11 hands, 6 years old when I got him and terrified of whips. Why?

Ponies can be useful!

Ponies and horses can be useful.
To the vast majority of the world's population that is so mindblowingly obvious it is hardly worth saying.
In England it is a revolutionary attitude likely to destroy the very fabric of society. In England, ponies exist to allow their owners to pretend the last 100 years haven't really happened. The British attitude to equestrian activities is the longest running re enactment society around.
Attitudes that would get you arrested in any other walk of life are the norm. Take a simple example, the whip. Take your pet through the streets waving a whip at the said pet, but please don't touch it as I don't want you to get arrested.  Dog, gerbil, cat, giraffe, lion...... wave a whip at it and the authorities will be screaming "cruelty to animals" before you even touch the animal, but if you give your child a pony, you give the kid a whip, to go with the special boots for kicking it in the ribs, the gloves to protect the little darlings hands as it hauls a lump of metal round inside the pony's face.
The Pony Club test children to see they are comfortable holding a whip in either hand at 10 years old. The British Horse Society insists you bring a whip to any exam, and the British Driving Society insist you have a whip in your hand at all times. They are so whip obsessed, they even call themselves whips and are proud of it.
What has the pony done to deserve this unique status, the only animal you can whipin public and one where you are made to carry a whip at most organised equestrian events.
It might make some sort of sense if the whips, bits spurs and all the leather straps were actually necessary. They aren't
I drove Obama from Brecon to Birmingham in 2009, via Abergavenny, Monmouth, The Forest of Dean, Gloucester, Cheltenham, Evesham and on the Stratford Canal to Birmingham. I used a simple rope halter and a pair of reins, no whip, no stick, no violence and in thirteen days never felt the need of any of the stuff considered obligatory by the re enactment societies. Obama is a seven year old rescue pony who I got as a failed kids pony in January 2009 and since then he has done everything I have asked. My only training criteria when I started, was that I would NOT use a whip. Over the year I have increased the use of the carrot without ever using the whip.
While on the road I talked to a lot of people who had worked with horses, logging, mining, delivering, ploughing, etc and I asked all of them if they had used a whip. They all looked at me as if I was completely mad.
If we want ponies and horses to be useful again we are going to need to at least make the whip optional. At present it is depressingly often compulsory. A jockey will be disqualified if he races without one. Why?
So back to using horses.
Carbon neutral, eco friendly and loved by everyone, why aren't ponies everywhere?
And here we are back to the English re-enactment societies. If ponies are easy to handle, easy to train, nice safe animals to have around, who is going to be impressed with the horsemanship of the establishment. The whips, bits and spurs are what make ponies dangerous, and the danger is what makes horsemanship an elite activity.

What's the point?

This is the opening salvo in what will become "Open Horse", a variation on the computer concept of "Open Source". Open Source software is free to use and free to modify as the writers make the source code available, hence the name "Open Source". So anyone can improve any "Open Source" software but with one proviso, that they acknowledge the original source and make their modifications "Open Source" as well.
So everyone can keep improving the product without anyone getting a stranglehold. Open Horse is copying this idea, and fully acknowledging the debt, and the idea is that anyone can use the ideas I am suggesting, as long as they acknowledge where they came from, and allow anyone else to use them and hopefully improve on them.
The beneficiaries will be the ponies and horses and those who work with them.

Working this last year with Obama, who I got in early January 2009 has taught me so much about ponies and horses. I started with a concept that came from my blog "All I want for Christmas is a whip" and grew into a training philosophy. It's pretty simple really. Don't hit the pony.

But while it may sound simple to those who don't know ponies, to anyone brought up in the "British Equestrian Establishment" it is damn near impossible. You have to have a whip. You can't do a BHS exam without one in your hand. You can't even think of driving a horse without one, and the Pony Club test ten year olds to check they are comfortable holding a whip in either hand.

Somewhere I have still got the first whip I was given. A knobbly bamboo with a ring every inch and a slight curve at the end you hold. I hardly ever used as I was terrified that the pony would extract vengeance if I did use it, and as a product of the very finest English education, I did actually know what a bamboo feels like when it hits you.

So there I am with a rescue pony, and a decision that I won't hit it, which isn't much to work on. And to be honest  I haven't added much to the system. Except carrots. I was coming into Cheltenham, knackered, and so was Obama. We had been on the road for nearly 12 hours, and although we had only done 25 miles that included the centre of Gloucester and we badly needed to get to a safe haven.

Obama was being really irritating, stopping every few strides, and I was leading from his right since I wanted to protect him from Cheltenham traffic. The trouble was this stuffed my left shoulder which really wasn't liking life. We only had another mile to go to safe haven but the light was going, the traffic wasn't giving an inch and I was rapidly losing the plot. If I had had a stick ready, I would have laid into Obama to get a bit of sense into the little creep, but I didn't

Then I remembered a bag of carrots I had ready for our arrival. Why not feed them now as a bribe? It worked. Since then I have steadily upped the bribery levels to my present "Carrot Carrot system."

Basically if they do what you want you give them a carrot, and if they don't you give them a carrot. It started as a bad joke, my way of taking the mick from a clicker enthusiast. Basically I came up with the concept of reverse clicker training. I give Obama a carrot when I am in a good mood. He then spends the rest of his life trying to work out what keeps me in a good mood so I keep feeding carrots. This means that I don't have to fuss with all that timing and suchlike, I shift all that to Obama and let him do the worrying.

The dumb things is that it works. If you don't beleive me, see if there is anything I won't do with Obama. OK nothing that will hurt him, and he seems to object to loud music at Disco's. I thought it was the strobe lights, but I am pretty sure he doesn't like loud music.

I will update the photos over the next few days, and Obama is driving wheelchair users through city cnetres and across marshes, meeting 8 foot anacondas while delivering books, logging, hoeing, crossing canal aqueducts and endlessly chjarming people.

And I never used a whip, Obama never wore a bit, and I never regretted either fact.
So thats the traingsystem in a nutshell. Try being nice. Next I discuss leadership, and that is even easier.
Simon

Biting, an update.

Looking back over that August post on biting, I can't believe I ever considered biting a vice. It is the starting point of almost all Obama's communication, not that he sinks his teeth in, just waves his teeth vaguely in my direction. Watch a couple of ponies playing in the field and they snake their heads at each other, teeth bared, ears flat back  and carry on for ages without ever actually taking a chunk out of each other.
The difficult bit, if you are used to dealing with horses in England, is NOT sloshing them one, but if you can get past that, and get into the idea that any attempt at communication deserves a friendly response, you will find your life transformed. I scratch Obama under the chin, or feed him a carrot, but if he connects and I think it actually hurts, which is rare, I blow in his nose or swear at him, snaking my head at him to suggest that next time I'll bite him.
I get through a lot of carrots, or Obama does, and he talks to loads of people, and never snakes his head at them till he has got to know them. If they feed him carrots, he reckons they want to communicate and tends to say when he wants a carrot, but will settle for a scratch instead.
I am learning all the time what he likes, what he doesn't like, and the same is true for him. When I harness him up he gives me the full performance, snaking his head at me, but he knows he gets a carrot at the end, regardless of his behaviour. And before anyone starts on at me for bribery, how many of you lot would carry on going to work if you didn't get paid at the end of the week. If your boss knew he could get a pony for three or four carrots a day, I'm not sure how long you would still be employed.
Some photos of Obama will be up soon,  so keep an eye on this space, and if you have any questions I am happy to provide an opinionated, contentious response.
Simon
simon@saddlechariot.com

Simon Mulholland is back!

Please go to http://ponyaccess.com/ , my new website covering the saddlechariot/iBex and it's uses. This is where you will also find links to all my articles on training, safety, vehicle design and even the weird stuff on cooking and politics.

My new contact details are ponyaccess@gmail.com

and my phone number is +44 7510 736 518

Whether you consider this good news is another matter.
The Saddlechariot is available from Nick Sanders at www.naturaldriving.co.uk or google rowanoak and saddlechariot. The past history of the saddlechariot is my problem and I can be contacted via simon@saddlechariot.com.
For anyone interested in the philosophy of design, invention, training etc. I am probably worth talking to.

This is really to announce that I will be back in a few days blogging on 2009 and what I have learned, pictures and updates on a really radical new vehicle, a new pony training system and its relevance to carbon neutral agriculture, transport, fun etc.

I will probably annoy a whole new group of people, but we will all have to learn to live with it.

The next posts are going to be about spending a year with Obama, what I have learned, what I have thought about, and what I am going to do about it.

You have been warned.
Simon

Biting

Obama has been biting me a bit, (what an exquisite play on words), and as with so much that Obama has taught me, it has taken time for the lesson to sink in. Ponies can't talk but if they want to communicate, a nip is a perfectly valid communication.
i am still scratching the scab where Obama bit me pretty hard on the arm, and unusually, refused to let go. I punched him fairly hard on the cheekbone because punching really hard on the cheekbone is stunningly painful for the person doing it. Obama did let go, and looked mildly guilty as I swore at him, but then I started thinking. It was raining hard, I had hauled him out of a barn where Cally, his latest girlfriend, is in season, and dragged him out to the field to hook up a prototype hoe for clearing the wheeltracks of corn spurry. I was trying to drive this rig, on my own through 5,000 soggy brassicas without Obama succumbing to the temptation to eat them or wander off track. So I was in a pretty vile mood and by the end of the first row when I realised my new prototype didn't work, Obama decided to but in with his opinion, and bit me.
Whose fault was it?
Mine, and Obama was telling me, in clear and concise language (horse) what he thought of it so far. As I nursed my bruised knuckles I realised the answer and gave Obama a carrot. Now when he nips me, i check his harness, check the equipment and once I have straightened the saddle, or whatever it is that is upsetting Obama, i give him another carrot and we carry on working.
Ami I rewarding vice, or rewarding communication. I do ensure that the carrot comes a lot faster if the nip is gentle. So we learn together that what traditionally is referred to as a vice, is communication. Don't punish any attempt to communicate. I now regret swearing at Obama for kicking me.