Sitting beside working arenas is one of my favourite pastimes. For a rating of most-things-happening-at-once in an arena, the New South Wales Equestrian Centre must take some world-wide award. There’s Heath Ryan up one end delivering an inspirational address to a young rider who’ll dream of nothing but gold medals tonight. Tarsha Hammond is teaching in another section. Rozzie Ryan’s working Jive Magic. Kate Chatterton is working one of Boyd Martin’s young eventers – Boyd’s away in Germany honing his dressage skills with Martina Hannöver for a while. Two of the working pupils are warming up for their lesson… And out in the centre of the arena Gordon Bishop is lunging a Salute colt. The baby seems to be coping well. At one stage he does the typical stop-turn-and-face the person in the centre. Gordon is unfussed and just keeps clucking and moving to his quarters ’til he moves off on the circle again. The whole process is very slow and controlled and the young horse is getting quite some multi-layered education. Heath had explained that Gordon was in charge of starting all the youngsters at the Centre. When Gordon was not travelling around to events, he worked with the youngsters, and when he was away they were returned to the paddock. The next stage was being ridden by the Centre resident riders. Heath is happy with the system.
I caught up with Gordon later and asked him how he had developed his method, which had to work in rather difficult situation.
"Guys like Monty Roberts and Pat Parelli have taught the public that the old fashioned way of breaking a horse’s spirit isn’t necessary in order to get a horse to try for you. Those guys are psychologists who have spent all their lives reading every little bit of body language that a horse can possibly show, and they understand body language better than anyone else. They are passing on their methods that are much kinder. In a way it is like interval training for eventing, it is just a little bit extra each time, rather than huge chunks in one session. The horse’s mind works very well with little slices of new information and lots of repetition, and you can add in new bits each and every day. Take a little step forward and just keep repeating that as often as you can possibly afford to, and it is a very kind system."
"I used to watch the station men at my grand-father’s property and see them loading polo horses on the trucks using stockwhips and pieces of corrugated iron and cattle prods. The horses invariably ended up rearing over backwards. This was a cattle property way up in the ranges behind Scone."

"Someone gave me a book – The Jeffrey Method of Horse Handling – by Maurice Wright, who was up in Armidale. Maurice Wright had studied the work of Kel Jeffery, and he was an Australian version of Pat Parelli and Monty Roberts. Jeffery used to do demonstrations, and slide over an unbroken horse’s rump and he backed them in just an hour. All that does is show that if you are really good you can get inside a horse’s confidence and do just about anything. I don’t devote as much time to it as those guys, but I still believe to educate a horse you have to work it five or six days a week. There style ‘oh you can break a horse in one day’ is a little bit unrealistic for the average horseman – and I don’t pretend to be other than average. I just use their information."
"I like to introduce the horses to the concept of going forward on a lunge rein, that is similar to dressage. I teach them to go forward in a round yard at first, with the lunge rein just clipped onto the halter. They figure it out after a couple of days. I work them both ways and usually they are good one way and bad the other. Sometimes it takes a week; sometimes it takes two weeks for the really tough cases. I’ve had horses charge me rather than lunge on the right rein. I’ve found that by not getting aggressive, I reduce their aggressiveness and I don’t get charges. I feel that it doesn’t matter if it takes me two weeks, I’m alive, and the horse might be a really really good horse and just so strong spirited that it is not about to accept a new idea really quickly. It doesn’t mean that the horse is going to be like that about every aspect of its education but some horses just need a little bit more time, and I don’t think it is fair to try and fit every horse into the same time frame."

"You might want one to trot on the right rein today. You can get him to walk for three quarters of a circle and you push it any further than that and he spins around and the rope get caught around his legs and neck, and you can’t go anywhere. That’s when you have to go back to getting three quarters of the circle at walk. It is very hard to walk away but if three quarters is all you are going to get that day, be satisfied. And surprise surprise, the next day, and the day after that, they start to ease up their resistance and come to the party – they just needed that little bit of time. And because you walked away, you lost in the short term, but surprisingly, you win in the long term. It does hurt to lose the short term battle, but before it gets to too big a battle, you say ‘that’s the best I can do, I’ve tried’ backoff, that is all you are going to get today. It hurts but they do improve."
"I don’t worry too much about where they carry their head, whether it’s up or down, or if they are chewing or using their ears backwards and forward. Parelli and Roberts know what they are talking about when they discuss those things – I go more on how they are reacting to outside noises. The tractor going by, or someone sitting on the side of the arena. You know the horse is ready for some weight on its back when it is lunged around and it is no longer spooky. It has a bit of a light sweat, its movement has loosened up, and the tempo is slowed but the horse is still happily going forward. I’ll start by introducing them to a saddle cloth and an over-girth, then an old beaten up Wintec, and finally my good stock saddle that won’t let me go no matter what the horse is doing."
"I lunge with the rein through the bit, over the head, and down to the other side of the bit. It makes it a bit complicated because it puts pressure on their poll but it doesn’t break the bridle. That’s my only reason for lunging them that way – all the pressure is on the lunge rein and the bit, so you don’t break gear. I don’t think it is cruel because they tend to understand the idea of turning left and right while they are being lunged. Some people long rein, I don’t – I just do heaps and heaps of lunging."
"I use a person on the ground lunging me in the saddle, instead of using a round yard when I get on them. The person on the ground hopefully keeps me restricted to the size of circle I want. Slightly smaller circle for a fresher or trickier horse, a bigger circle as the horse starts to relax. The horse looks to the person with the lunge rein to come and stand still – so if something goes wrong, that person becomes a focus point for the horse, they just have to move a little towards the horse and it relaxes."
"I’ll start off getting my lunging person to lead me and the horse for half a dozen steps. That’s the first time, I’m just lying across the wither, not even a foot in any stirrup, so I can get away as quickly as I like. I’m not saying I am being very brave doing it this way, but it is a way of introducing the horse to your weight. If they do start bucking and I slide off, some people would say that I am teaching the horse to buck my weight off, and that may be true, but I am actually just lowering the adrenalin levels by getting off. The horse accepted my weight for a few steps, and invariably they will accept it for a few more steps the next time, it might take me three days until I’m sitting up in the saddle, being led at the walk, and then I get my helper to trot me on the lunge. That might last a week. Then I just ride the horse around the helper after that, and they almost think they are still on the lunge."
"They do still get frights, and that is why I ride in the big stock saddle. They will take off for ten or twenty metres, and it is really nice to have Belinda (Locke) directing their energy onto the lunge circle and they don’t gallop. Because they’ve had so much lunging they very rarely go blind, but the more adrenalin they run, the blinder they get. Belinda has become very quick at nipping it in the bud before they get too much pace up and keeping their heads towards her. Once they’ve got their heads facing away, they are off. I’ve been there a couple of times but luckily it has worked out. It’s just a safety rope but it’s nice to know that it is there. Just occasionally you use it, and the horse gets more relaxed with what you are doing. I just take little steps forward each day; every day you can push it just a little bit further. But I don’t push it too fast. I don’t canter them on the circle for a week – again it depends on the horse. That just my system and it works for me. I move very slowly and I think very slowly and I get into trouble for it in a lot of other areas, but it is actually really good around young horses."
"I forget who told me this story, but every time the horse got upset and started to be a bit naughty, the guy would stop and light up a cigarette. He produced very calm well broken in horses but he also got lung cancer."