Leslie Desmond

Speaker 1 (
00:00:12
):
You're listening to the journey on podcast with Warwick Schiller. Warwick is a horseman trainer, international clinician and author, whose mission is to help people achieve a deeper connection with their horses through his transformational training program.
Warwick (
00:00:34
):
Okay, everyone. And welcome back to the journey on podcast. I'm your host Warwick Schiller. And today I have the honor and the pleasure of chatting with Leslie Desmond. And if you, you probably know who Leslie Desmond is, but if you don't know who she is, she's a lifelong horse woman who in, she moved to California from the East coast in 1990 and started training out here and producing videos. And then she met up with bill Dorrance and spent five years, four or five years apprentice to bill. And in that time she wrote the famous book, true horsemanship through fields. So she co-authored it with, with bill. And that was released in 1999, which is it's come on, it's gone on to become a classic, you know, everybody's heard about it. And that's probably how most people have heard of Leslie. But and, and I've listened to quite a few podcasts with Leslie. And a lot of the podcasts are just about bill and the book, but we'll probably get into some of that too, but I really want to want to learn a little bit more, a little bit more about Leslie too, cause I've, I've had some chats with her on the phone and she's absolutely fascinating. So I hope you in, I hope these conversations is as good for you guys as my previous conversations with less than it has been for me. Welcome to the Journey on podcast.
Leslie (
00:02:03
):
Thanks Warwick Thanks a lot for inviting me. I've been looking forward to this.
Warwick (
00:02:08
):
Oh, me too. So you know, these are strange times we live in now, how is how's everything going for you during this whole, probably last, I don't know, eight, nine months of COVID how things are having spent for you.
Leslie (
00:02:26
):
Yeah. You ask a very relevant question. I actually, on the 5th of March contracted COVID in Chicago airport, didn't realize it and spent quite a number of weeks quite sick. And so I can say that I was finally free of it. I'd say about this third week of may. So I can say I'm intimately familiar with what that horrific really inconvenient and worrisome condition is. And it's anyway, I'm, I'm better now, as you can hear it, it's certainly to be taken seriously. And I just feel glad that I was able to slip through that narrow gate. It was definitely an opportunity to go in either direction. I will say that it was not pleasant at all, and I'm doing fine. I've been there've been a few side effects, which I don't think most people have escaped. One would be adjustment to confinement bringing my lights to 20 something years of international travel to a screeching halt.
Leslie (
00:03:32
):
I haven't been on an airplane since I came back from Colorado on the 15th of March, quite sick, and I don't look forward to going on another one. So in that sense, I've had quite a bit of adjusting to do lost a bunch of weight. Don't have my normal fit profile, which I've always been pretty fit and pretty, pretty able to pull my weight in the physical end of things that a license evolves. But I will say that I was sitting around for 10 months. It's not helped my physique or my vigor, but I'm getting back into it. We've got all kinds of time ahead of us to change things around. I I feel very fortunate. Let's just say that.
Warwick (
00:04:19
):
Well, you know, I was, I was actually asking that question to see how your, you know, your schedule had changed, but it sounds like if you had COVID and you were sick with it, your schedule was quite changed there for a while. You, did you say you have lingering effects?
Leslie (
00:04:37
):
Well well let's just say nothing. I want nothing I want to draw attention to for sure. I'm going to be fine in the end. Yeah. Yes, yes. Like many people who had it as badly as I do did. And I think that there are, I know, I know half a dozen people that had some pretty serious effects and yes, I think the best thing that I've done as a result of it is I've really focused hard on my work and on where I go from here and how I can begin to rebuild a life around confinement and the uncertainty of what's going to be possible for travel. And for people who are interested in the kind of work that I do, I will tell you that I've decided to, the hardest part for me truly has been at my dad is approaching 92 years old.
Leslie (
00:05:29
):
He's healthy. He still hasn't had COVID, but he seems to get pretty close to what one could consider the end of the road. And then just amazingly, he seems to get a new lease on life and recover and bounce back. I haven't seen him in well over a year. So I do sort of have a, I have an idea that I'm certainly not going to fly out there, but I may drive up there this spring and stop along the way to do some clinics, rain or shine and social observed social distancing and you know, no restaurants in the evening and things like that. No no closed in room group seminars or things like that. But I think that there is a need for people still seem to be interested in learning about horses from me from time to time. So I think I'm gonna do a, do a cross country trip again, coming up here and now quite soon, actually I think I'm going to do this coming up right here at the end of April. So as I get my check filed, I'm going to hit the road.
Warwick (
00:06:32
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What would this last nine months have looked like if without COVID where were you supposed to go? Cause I know you do a lot of international travel and international clinics. Where were you supposed to be going?
Leslie (
00:06:42
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Well, I would have gone back to Sweden that's for sure. I mean, I, I, I do spend as much time as possible there, but it's been very challenging for this reason.
Warwick (
00:06:53
):
And what's the what's the draw to Sweden. Like for me, for me, I go where people will listen to me. And is it is there something about Sweden that, that you particularly like, or is it just Sweden? There's a lot of people in Sweden who are very interested in what you have to say.
Leslie (
00:07:13
):
Well, I lived in Sweden for many years and I am I am a Swedish residence and I also have a place there still that I haven't visited because you can't, you can't go there. I mean, they're locked down now and I don't think it's a good idea to travel now, but I have had a place in Sweden since so well, I've been going there pretty regularly since 1996. And I've had a place there on the on the East side, Sweden right North of Stockholm since 2004. So it's pretty comfortable for me because it's I love the North. I love the woods and, and Finland and Norway are way up in the North country where you can, you can ride and kind of turf, which is called Sandy loam on. You can, you can go long, long distances on absolutely superb flooding.
Leslie (
00:08:06
):
And there are so many resources around in Scandinavia. I think most people don't understand what a tremendous supply of good riding horses come off the racetrack there because once you take these Trotters and they have national breeds, like the, have the Norwegian Trotter and the Swedish Trotter and the finished Trotter, and they're, they're really stout, big, beautiful horses. You can use them in the woods too, but they're good for pulling and they're good for riding once you get them used to the idea and they've just got stamina, you can't believe. And so I spent many years, I'd say I spent about four years doing international trips up into a place called Norland, which means just more than Sweden and, and what was so beautiful is that the, the scenery is it's, it's unparalleled in its starkness and its beauty and generosity. It's a generous landscape, even though it's got a brutal side, it gives and it gives and it gives and it gives.
Leslie (
00:09:04
):
And what I mean by that is that you have blueberries and you have loganberries and you have all kinds of berries up there and you have mushrooms of many varieties. And do you have, you know, if you've learned about the woods and you spend time there, you learn that there's nothing, there's nothing there in the forest to waste. There's just a lot to eat out there in the woods. And I, I'm not just talking about the elk or the deer or whatever, sort of you know, fish. The fishing is amazing too, but if you want to refresh your soul, there's no better place than to be in the woods and to feel as though you're well guided well mounted well-prepared, there's nothing like it. So Sweden, I have I've been going there regularly. It's it's home for me. I mean, it is home for me and I have friends all over the country and I have on the the team that helps me and supports me and the website that I put up to help to, I guess you would say to talk about and support the legacy of bill Dorrance, which matters to me a great deal.
Leslie (
00:10:22
):
I did. I coauthored a book with bill Dorrance many years ago, and I've wondered all the time, what to do about what to do about how to keep that alive. And so fortunately, a great many people who I've met over the years, I've worked 17 countries over the years there and met some really wonderful people who, who hearkened to the message of the seal and release that bill had on his mind to share with us. And it is how he really ended up working a one man ranch, but you know, pretty much, well you wouldn't work a one man ranch with another person and call it a one man ranch. What'd, you know, it is, that is how he did it was that he had to develop the skills so that when he was starting coach and his children were young and, you know, too young to be starting Colts and riding alongside him, he had basically a one-man ranch where full responsibility for all that happened.
Leslie (
00:11:17
):
There was up to him. You know, the guy he saw in the mirror every day probably didn't even have time for that. But in any case, the guy who wore his boots was the guy who started the Colts and put the fence in and the plumbing and the, every, anything that had to do with running that ranch. And these are the types of things that you come away with when you have that much responsibility for feeding a family and for maintaining what you've taken responsibility for which in those days was, you know, the threesomes and a wife and a, I should say, three sons in a hardworking was and a great ranching partner. But then again, if you're very thing, sons, and you can't see out there branding and sorting cattle either and fixing fence. So obviously ranches are a team project and what he developed over the years and in some ways, and then to some degree, he developed this with his brother too, but in a, they had different ways of doing things. So he had his own way. And this legacy of his means a lot to me and to the people who I have met along the way. So there are several Swedish people who helped me on that team and the same in many other countries, Spain and Germany, to name a few in the UK, Ireland coming along like that. So there's a tremendous amount of groundswell of support from people who understand the value of slowing down.
Warwick (
00:12:51
):
Yeah, we could, I think we could talk for hours and hours and hours on bail, and I guess we'll get to bill at some point in time, but so let me ask you this. What was your, what was your life with horses before you met bill? Like have you always been around horses? Did you have horses as a kid? What was that? You, what's your whole story?
Leslie (
00:13:12
):
Let's see. Well, I could just say yes to both questions. Always been around them, had a horse as a child. I guess the first went horseback at four years old and, and then I had the opportunity to take some riding lessons from a cavalry man who my grandmother knew. He had lived in a hotel up there in Manchester, Vermont. And he had come back from the first world war with one leg and a stitched up with a really short little, you know, the pants, Scott cutoff. And then you just had that little piece of your leg left, how they did it in those days, they didn't have prosthesis or anything like that. So he had one very shiny and maintained military riding boot, and he had a crutch to crutches, I believe. And he had a little place on the banks of the Batten kill river.
Leslie (
00:14:06
):
He was in his eighties, late eighties. When I started to work with him, I was just seven. And I had quite a, quite an interesting summer with him. He taught me, he only had some pretty stout pretty well-defined, I'll just say well-defined characters about the size of the pony. And they were very well-defined characters and he had them in Fulbright. And so he, I started my first riding lesson, Jenna, double rain, bridal, and I, and very much like my first drag, which was top speed. And my father put me on a horse. It took off, he kind of helped it along a little, I have to say. And we just taught me how to hang on to the main one. It ran. So I did that. And then several years later, I had these very fast, strong character horses or pony ship belonged to a fellow named Ivan Taylor.
Leslie (
00:14:59
):
And I've tried to do some research on him to find out a little more about him, but he was in a cavalry unit. And it was the loss of him that acquainted me with my my passion for not ever being distracted. When someone who was speaking about something I cared about was talking because it was really a rude experience when I was eight to find out that he didn't exist anymore. I hadn't lost a human being friend or relative by that time. So it was really a hard, that was a hard, hard thing to understand how that worked. I had lost a little pet rabbit launch to a dog and a turtle that went under some piece of furniture and was found months later, dehydrated looking more like a rock than anything else. But when you, when you think about your best friend and your, your men, your horse mentor just suddenly is no longer around, it was a, it was a vast concept for me to, to, to appreciate and to feel strong about.
Leslie (
00:16:05
):
And to, there were many things I wanted to ask him, you see? And it's at that point that I began to, to rely on books because there were no teachers, well, I can't say there were no teachers, this was a teacher near me, but she was quite rough. But when you're young, even if it's rough, you're just glad to have some support because the horse I got was just enormous. He was a very kind good animal. He had come over from England and a neighbor's girl was going off to Vassar college. So my father asked if he could come down and live with us. And that was the beginning of a whole, another series of very fast rides. Cause he was a thoroughbred. So we did quite a bit of running there to got on and where he went. So riding quickly was something I grew up with. I would say nobody ever worried about if I was going to fall off or nobody held the range, I did things like that. The way they do today, they just put you up and let you go. And you kind of figure it out.
Speaker 4 (
00:17:05
):
Okay. As the saying goes, they're not running away. If you're going as fast as they are.
Leslie (
00:17:10
):
Yeah. I never felt that way. Exactly. I just thought it was a pretty good way to get around. And and, and, and, and it really was a good way to get around. But I think I have to say that I've been tailored and my appreciation for his great gift of few words, few well-chosen words, I couldn't have learned from anybody better to prepare me to appreciate the gifts that bill Dorrance left for us. And that he had that bill Darren said for me, when I met him in the mid nineties and then that he left for as soon as book, because there's something about people from that era. And I would say that what distinguishes many of them is the intuitive, the intuitive regard for the need to think before you speak and to see in your own assessment, whether the person you're speaking to is going to be prepared to hear what you have to say in the way you want to say it, or do you adjust the way you say it.
Leslie (
00:18:20
):
So they understand. And that's what I learned how to do with horses. And that's what bill was most intent upon. That's what I learned from listening to Ivan is that he thought before he spoke. And so did bill, most people today kind of dumped. So I've found out that that's really an important thing to work into your, into your way of being, I guess you could say in your way of being, you take time to regard the listener, or do you just have to empty your, your bucket? Do you have to vent your spleen? Do you have to charge around and just without regard to the sensibilities or the mood or the capacity of your listener to even have any interest in what you're going to say? I don't think most people think about it.
Warwick (
00:19:15
):
Yeah. I'm a bit of a bucket emptier. I think that's something I, I probably need to be better about, you know, I didn't talk till I was two. And then mum said, once I started talking, you just couldn't shut me up.
Leslie (
00:19:29
):
Yeah. But I don't think that that's a bad thing. I don't think, I think if you can't empty the bucket, you're going to get in some trouble also. I'm not saying you shouldn't empty the buck. I don't. In fact, I would say that in my lifetime, some of the most challenging horse people I've worked with male and female, couldn't let their feelings out in words and didn't and had troubled relationships and had difficulty speaking to me to other people. And they kind of hit out in the horse world. They kept horses between them and other people. If you know what I mean, the horse knew everything. And there was a very, very tight block on the faucet between the mouth and the contents of the head and mind and heart. And I think that that's very common and I think dogs and horses occupy that place in life for many people.
Leslie (
00:20:29
):
And it's a great thing that they do, that the problem happens when you're having trouble with that animal. And you have to rely on another person to help you understand what you're missing or to piece in a little bit that could help you and your relationship with a horse I've met, I've run into a lot of people and I've had role countless times in life where, you know, you suddenly find yourself in front of someone that really doesn't like people very much. And as I've concluded that I'm part of the human race. I guess you go into that, knowing that they don't like you either, and you still have to figure out how you can help them without offending them or without threatening them or without insulting them or making them feel defensive. But, you know, th th the horse folks are, they're pretty special crew.
Leslie (
00:21:23
):
You have to say, you know, pretty sensitive, pretty sensitive group, I would say. And I include myself in that, and I'm not saying I'm on the outside of that, but I've had to I think to be an effective coach, you need to set your you need to postpone judgment and need to be able to, if you really want to help the horse, you have to help the person where they are in their ability to take on information and in their ability to tolerate being taught. Most of the time I'm finding out more than ever now is that people don't come to me for advice, unless they've exhausted just about every other Avenue. And by the time they are complaining about whatever it is, or registering a desire for an improvement or a change their capacity to take on any information that would help them resolve.
Leslie (
00:22:26
):
It has almost been twisted off because of what it took to get to the point to even dare to ask for the help that by the time we began to investigate the situation or talk to them about their horse, to try to figure it out or review video there, a lot of people get extremely concerned about how they are going to be regarded or whether this is some kind of character flaw that they didn't meet up in the end with their vision of themselves as a horse person. And so really a big part of my job is to help people understand that humility doesn't have to kill you taking on a dose of just putting a pause in there and understanding that it's not your fault that you weren't born to be the best rider in the world or the best horse analyzer. Do you understand what I'm talking about?
Warwick (
00:23:25
):
Oh yeah. Most certainly. Yeah. I think, you know, more and more these days, it's, it's I'm really starting to realize that it's, it's the people's you know, the horse problems are really the, the you know, that the self-judgment the negative self-talk and the, the way in which people view the world, you know, I really believe that you have an effect in a kind of like quantum mechanics sort of thing, that you have an effect on everything you observe based on the energy that you have when you observe it and interact with it, and, you know, your judgments and your negative self-talk and all that stuff, I think is a huge part of that. So I think that's might be what you're talking about, but I'm, I'm really starting to, with the horses, starting to understand that there's, you know, there's, there's a war way, way, way, there's a whole lot more to the whole what's going on than what the physical things you actually see. They're, they're not, they're not inconsequential, but I think they're just a S a very small part of the whole interaction.
Leslie (
00:24:40
):
You know, I spent some time around Ray hunt back in the nineties, and he had a saying that I really feel as though I learned a lot from Ray on many levels, the older I get, the more I realized I did learn from him actually. But one of the things that he used, he had some quips that he would utter, you know, little sayings and little truisms things that were just easily verified, things that were good to keep in mind, like the horse knows what you know, and he knows what you don't know. And it's easy to just say, okay, Ray said that, and that's right. And that's true. And I'm going to say it too. I'm going to believe it first. I'm going to take it on because when people speak with shortness, it's very easy to think that, that it is that way.
Leslie (
00:25:33
):
And I think that if you were giving clinics, and if you were positioning yourself to offer help to large groups of people, the responsibility is much different than if you're talking to someone, for example, now is maybe if you're going to do some online coaching, or are you going to do a demonstration with, you know, people over there at a distance, which is probably where my future is going to be, rather than helping people get on horses and things like that at close range. But if you're responsible for the type of, you know, let's just say a high volume clinic, let's say 12, 15, 20, 30 people in a, in a group, the types of things that you have to be ready to take responsibility for are so different than if you're giving a private lesson, or you're sitting on a bucket talking to five or six people who are sitting on horses that just soon not move.
Leslie (
00:26:33
):
Anyway, this was a very, very different thing. And I just have to say that one of the most, one of the things I miss the most about the way that handle horses today, and the people who are out there able to handle them, there's that the amount of risk and the amount of skill and the command of a group and the command of knowledge and the ability to the ability to get from point a to point B, with an intent that would affect whatever horse or person he had in mind or whatever group he had in mind to affect. Ray was Ray was a, I don't think of Siena. I don't think I've seen anybody who could do a better job with more pressure and less time, but more difficult courses and difficult people than Ray hunt. And in those days, I don't know if my mouth was hanging open, but as I think back on the things that he said and did, and the things I saw, I bet my mouth was hanging open because I've never seen anything like it before, since I've seen a lot of people who, who knew Ray and who worked with Ray and who are very good horseman as well, but the kinds of things that he could do innately deeply understand this is what I've got to do right now, but have been, but have been done.
Leslie (
00:28:00
):
And the whole arena at the energy has changed. The dust just settled, or it started perhaps. But what I, the reason I'm mentioning this is that when you start to say that the horse knows what you know, and he knows what you don't know, the thing that he didn't say, because he was not a bragger. I never heard him brag and I've listened to him for hours. I went to, I don't know how many clinics I attended of his, but, you know, back in those days, those clinics usually were four or five days long. And it was the odd, the strange clinic was when they started to get to be two days long, just a weekend clinic. That was just like a drop in the bucket. And people of course were lined up and glad to go. But I thought, wow, what a gyp? You know, we were used to having that information roll out over five days, but at the time you were deep into day through, you had, you kind of had a chance of understanding what he meant, because what he wasn't saying is though horses know what, you know, when they don't know what you don't know, what he's really saying too is which he never did say, but I'm going to just surmise it.
Leslie (
00:29:07
):
I know what you know, and I know what you don't know. And based on what I see, I'm going to help, you know, a little more at the end of this that you need to know. Cause you're about to hang yourself out to dry. And I saw him develop a lot of people by being extremely conservative or extremely forceful, depending on what he thought they could take, because boy, he could read somebody.
Leslie (
00:29:33
):
So I just, I don't know why I wanted to tell you that, but you know, one of the things that is amazing to me about these horses and what they can sense from you is that it seems like the more you get around people and horses and the more you observe, the more there is to see. In other words, you'd kind of think that maybe it beginning to the end of it, but as a matter of fact, and that's one of the things I used to have, my I've had a couple of apprenticeship programs. And one of the things that I asked my apprentices to do was to spend 12 hours with the same horse. Don't let it out of your sight. You looked at horse for 12 hours. Doesn't matter where you are send out for lunch, bring it with you. Of course, if you have to use the restroom or something that doesn't count, but basically you're going to spend all day with that horse. And, and then you're going to do it again three weeks later, and then you're going to do it again. So by the time you had three years as an apprentice, it kind of learned how to look at horses in a different way. And that changes things for people.
Warwick (
00:30:59
):
You know, the, you know, I've read, read a number of books. I wouldn't say just recently, but over the last few years on, on shamanism and not so much the, not so much the, you know, the, the witch doctory casting spells sort of thing, but just that, that deep connection with, with everything. And one of the things that they all do is one of the very beginning things is to go out and sit in nature and just observe and just sit still and just be aware. And it sounds like that's what you're talking about. There is something along the same lines. It's not, it's not, it's not just what you see while you're doing that. It's what changes it causes in you while you're doing that too. Would you say that's true?
Leslie (
00:32:03
):
Yes. And I think you, I think, I mean, yes, yes, I do think it's true, but I also think that you're, you might not realize it until some months later. I mean, I'm still, I'm still, I'm still, depending on the horse that's in front of me or the person that's in front of me, I'm realizing that I was prepared from the amount of time that I put in to my pursuit of refunding. And you want to refine your field, you've got to put the time in and when you're refining your feel and you're on a eight hour clock, or you have TV that occupies, you have many hours a week. I mean, that's one of the things people have asked me often, how'd you get how'd you get to know these things. And all I can say is remember a conversation that we had the other night, you and I, when you said sometimes you think that people can really only develop if they put in a thousand hours, or I don't know how many hours you were talking,
Warwick (
00:33:07
):
You know, something about Malcolm Gladwell's book, outliers, and how he has the 10,000 hour rule. Like, you know, to be world-class at something you have to put in 10,000 hours practice.
Leslie (
00:33:16
):
Yeah. So I think couldn't tell you possibly how many hours, how many hours, or how many horses or how many anything I did or didn't was I figured out how many miles I had driven, and that was so horrifying. I probably don't like to be in a car anymore after that. So I was, I should never have tabulated that, but anyway I couldn't possibly tell you how many hours, but what I can tell you is that I don't have a single student that doesn't have television. And I don't know a single horse trainer that doesn't have television. And I know that when people have it, they seem to watch it. And I know that I have never had one.
Leslie (
00:34:00
):
And I know that what I've done instead is draw horses or read them, or think about them or journal about them, or reflect on just thinking about the way there's something that merges inside somebody when they spend enough time looking and being around them so that you actually begin to know them at a level that is not conscious anymore. You're not an observer anymore. You are a sharer like watching a child walk, and you're watching your partner when you know what your partner is thinking. And you know them well enough to know what they're going to say or how they're going to respond to a certain sound or flavor or color or experience. That's when, you know, somebody takes a long, long time to get to know somebody and it takes a really long time to get to know horses well, because until you can adjust the filter through which you form your opinions and judgments, until you can take off some of the biases or prejudices or limitations to your capacity to see and feel something as it is not as you wish it were, or as you suppose it is, that's a hard thing to do.
Leslie (
00:35:25
):
You know, that's a hard thing to do. And I've said to some people at different times, you know, sometimes people will bring a horse that they don't like to me. They don't like it. And I thought, wow, what am I supposed to do? Am I going to be responsible at the end of this session? Or the end of this you know, engagement, whether it's, you know, a couple of months or 10 lessons or whatever it is, however you want to put it together with them, or they want to put it together with you. Am I going to be responsible for seeing that to get them to like their horse? Well, that's where I got the idea to put together a comprehensive questionnaire so that I could get to know the people ahead of time, a little bit better so that I wouldn't put them up on a task or expect a result that people really wouldn't be able to deliver.
Leslie (
00:36:17
):
Like, if you really don't like the source, why are you bringing it to me? Well, the easy answer is, cause I want to sell it. And we don't like each other and I can't get the root behavior that I want to be able to sell it. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. But then the other question would be, if you don't like that horse, why not? And then we really, then you start to find out what the person in the end doesn't like about life, the day lunch, and you find out that the negativity is pervasive and it's all just basically been wrapped up in a nice little package and deposit it on this horse that was supposed to be the answer to a dream. Do you follow me?
Warwick (
00:37:07
):
I follow you. I'm mesmerized. I, you know, we when I, when we do the podcast and then we, we you know, we put it out on, on the podcast platforms, you know, Spotify, the podcast app, we put it on the website, but on my Facebook group, I always usually will have a quote from something that the person said, you know, I'll advertise that we're releasing the podcast, I'll have a link to the podcast, but I'll have like a quote of something that somebody said. And right then the last two little monologues you went on, where they write down, I'm thinking out this, this would be perfect. Like if I read this bit, I would want to listen to this podcast. And that, yeah, that was, I was, I was getting, I was, I was mesmerized actually. You're hitting the nail on the head right there.
Leslie (
00:37:53
):
Well, I guess I can say, let's get back to that pandemic thing. Maybe, you know, I didn't like being sick. That was horrible. That was a couple of days there. Well, two hours there where I, I was probably on my way out for good, to be honest, but I think really, if I look back at the whole thing taken together these last 10 months, 11 months well, that's, that's an exaggeration. What would it be? It's 5th of March to the, well, just about 5th of March to the 5th of January. So it's long enough. Yeah. Wow. I needed a break. I needed a break and I didn't know I needed a break, but I have a very different feeling now about what I would expect from myself and from people, because I realized that everybody else has been through this extraordinary stretch of identity. Everybody in the world has been redefined by the effect of this experience. I can imagine that there are very few people that have not felt its effect. Don't you think?
Speaker 5 (
00:39:10
):
Oh yeah, I totally believe so. It's it's, it's not, you know, it's not localized at all.
Leslie (
00:39:17
):
I mean, of course, I guess if we're just going to talk about people under the age of maybe two or three or four, it probably didn't have much to compare it to. So, you know, you look at the legions of kids growing up with masks right now. I mean, they're going to feel naked without them, you know, at some point it's just really, I mean, this is for the, for the real young ones, this is going to, this is how it is, but for the rest of us, good Lord. You know, this is a bit of a stretch. I now I now feel knowing, knowing what it's like to get this experience handed right to you. I can tell you, I feel a lot better with a pair of glasses on and a mask around anybody where I am in public eye. And I don't know that you can't get it again.
Leslie (
00:40:05
):
I have had it twice, actually. I don't know how many times you can get it, but I know that what I have come to understand on the other side of this is that I'm going to go back and start working again. And I'm going to have to take a new look at no people, because it has reshaped everybody's ability to perceive, to speak, to listen and to do anything everybody's been affected by it. So the shift is not just in me, it's an all of us and I just can't. I can hardly wait to get out the door and go check it out. I can hardly wait. And I just it's it. And one of the things that I have done for many, many years is I filmed my work. All of it. I don't work without a camera going for many reasons, mostly because when I review it, it allows me to be able to make changes.
Leslie (
00:41:03
):
When I see that I've got that timing, I was perhaps thinking I did a good job and it maybe wasn't, or I might've been inadvertently rude to somebody cause I was out of breath and irritated, or I might've just gotten stepped on or knocked around a bit and then had to answer five questions. And I should've just said something like, let me, let me get back to you on that in a few minutes, you know, catch your breath and hope that your toenails stays on your foot and things like that. I don't get stuff done very often, but you know what I'm saying? It's very easy to feel at the Beck and call of the people who are paying you for advice and for your time. But it's also really important to, I think one of the things that if I had to, I had to really well, I, I, I'm going to re I'm going to say it again in another way.
Leslie (
00:41:53
):
Cause I don't have to do anything in this regard, but as I think about what it's going to feel like and how, what do I have to offer now? What do I have to offer people? Why would they want to learn from me? Because I know what I normally did. I know the way I normally went about things, but it's not going to be like that. It's not going to be like that at all, because I think people have spent a lot of time with their horses now and a different type of time. I don't think people are trying to shoe horse shoe horn, their horse into, you know, that 45 minutes slot or that hour and 22 minutes so that they can get home in the next eight and have that go right. And have that go. Right? And the kids come home and the Ys comes home with a man comes home and all of this stuff. I think people are really ready for another way of embracing their lack of knowledge.
Warwick (
00:42:49
):
Yeah. I early on in the coronavirus thing so one of my sponsors is we the leather and they you know, part of the sponsorship package, they say, if, if we want you to, can you do some videos for us, some short five minute videos during the year that we can put out on the social media and things and something that I get a lot from maybe like competition riders and stuff like that is I don't have time to go back and do all that stuff. I've, you know, I've got to get to a competition. And so right when we all got kind of locked down, I did some videos for Weaver leather and that the title of the videos was reconnecting with your horse during Corona virus. And I said, you know, it's, it's, there's no horse shows to go to there's no, there's no reason to be getting your horse ready to go to a horse show.
Warwick (
00:43:41
):
I said, if you, if you've always felt like you didn't have time to go back and create that, that connection in the first place now is your time. And it was, it was the, the videos are all about, you know, like the first video was just go into your pasture, sitting on it. Didn't even have to be present, just read a book, scroll through Facebook doesn't matter, but just show up and not ask something of your horse. And from there it was going out there and being out there for hours and just being present with them. And then there was a whole lot of different stuff, but it was, it was, you know, it was basically just instead of feeling the need to be under the clock to catch the host, to get on the host, to do something with the horse, it was just about just start to be around your horse without having an agenda, at least first start.
Warwick (
00:44:28
):
And yeah, are those, I wouldn't say they went viral, but there were, that was a, for me that was a starting point or the way I look at it, that was a starting point for a lot of people who are now the results they got from doing basically nothing. They now kind of hooked on, on not having that agenda. And, and, and, you know, the finding that some of the stuff though, having problems with before are no longer there and they haven't worked on those things have just kind of reconnected with the horse more so than having the horse as a, as a tool. Or it's got the horse has got to do this, but it's just taking the time to just step back and reconnect with them. And I thought it was pretty cool.
Leslie (
00:45:13
):
Yeah. Yes it is. And that's why, that's why I'm really excited about, I think that what I'm going to find is that I I'm anticipating that I'm going to find people that, that are open and reflective and less judgmental and more appreciative of the smaller things their horses can show them that they need or that they want to express, or that they can show them about what they need to learn. I'm hearing it, I'm reading it. You know, there are a few different places that I frequent on the internet from time to time. And I'm just, I'm just getting a whole new level of depth in the and willing, I should say, willingness to share debts that people are willingness to share a depth in themselves that they might not have even known was available before. COVID because you know, the clock was the almighty commander.
Leslie (
00:46:11
):
You had to answer to a wristwatch, or you had to answer to a beeper or to some kind of calendar that was pulling you around by the nose all day, seven days a week. And I, I know that there are people who still have to work that way, but I think that I just can't wait. I just can't wait. And the quality of exchanges that I'm seeing between people and the kind of politeness and the kind of generosity, people holding doors for people, just stuff that you see, just try going through a crowded area and you'll see, everybody will hold the door open wide. Maybe it's a self preservation response because they don't want to grab your next year.
Warwick (
00:46:49
):
Yeah. I actually think, I think the whole coronavirus has, has caused people to go one of two ways. There are other more compassionate or a lot less compassionate, one of the other,
Leslie (
00:46:59
):
Oh, I'm glad I've been around the first kind. Yeah, it could be about,
Warwick (
00:47:06
):
I think, I think there's a bit of both, but okay. Why don't I why don't I hit you up with some of the questions that that I'm going to hit you up with just before we get too carried away, because I can tell that you and I'll be here for two hours and I'll be like, Oh, we haven't gotten to any questions yet. You know, one of the questions that I think a lot of people have answered that I've asked is, is the one on, on books. Do you, do you have any books that you recommend people read, not necessarily your favorite book, even though it could be, but, but more things that you, you recommend to other people.
Leslie (
00:47:53
):
I actually just put a list of books out today that I photographed and this had to do with the way horses move and the way horses are constructed. And yes, but I mean, yeah, to have to really talk about the audience right now. I mean, I, I've got a, I've got a pretty intensive course that I'm doing for my team. And I give everybody a 90 minute, less than a month. And then we I also do a little pod or I do a live presentation once a month. I answer three questions a month. And then I also do a team review and I assemble a bunch of videos and I get whoever's available at it, got to 19 people, or maybe, maybe, maybe 20 people that I work with who are on this team that supports this work and helps me in different ways and they help each other and stuff.
Leslie (
00:48:47
):
So I have, you know, always a very inquiring, inquisitive, inquiring, and hungry group of people that would like to know what I recommend they could, could, could use to advance their skills and enhance their appreciation of the, of the depth and the detail that we really need to understand to help our horses and mostly to help the people who are connected to them. So I've put that list together, but that is just so dry. I'm not even gonna mention it today. Although I will say that Deb Bennett wrote some books back in the nineties called the principle. I think it's called principles of confirmation analysis. I could be wrong, but I know that that was a very, a sin three small volumes, one blue or, and red and a yellow book that was put out by hold on.
Leslie (
00:49:39
):
I want to say, I think fancy publications put that out. It might've been Equis. Might've published that back in the day, but that's a, that's a very good as a, as an introductory, as an introduction, I know that when she came out with that, she was able to in hers, in the simplicity and in the directness of her delivery, she didn't put out a huge compendium. That was three small books. You could keep in the front of your pickup. And it had a it opened a lot of minds and it opened a lot of doors for people to go through about thinking in terms of, it was kind of like a, a book that guys could understand back in the day they say, Oh, that's why that happens. Well, a lot of these people who were in the raining and this is just before the ranch horse versatility, and they weren't reining and, and just, you know, turning and burning it and just, you know, you get your slider plates on and just run them and stop them and slide them and turn them and go again and all the rest.
Leslie (
00:50:39
):
But a lot of these people didn't understand horses didn't have colored homes. They didn't understand that the whole front end of the horse wasn't set up in connection to the spine. But the only place the horse was really connected to the sponge was back behind their button. The setup, a lot of guys didn't understand that. And, and a lot of resource people didn't understand that a lot of writers don't understand that a lot of jumping horse people didn't understand that it never occurred to them that when you come off of four or five or six foot pounds and you land on the horse's front legs with a settled, it doesn't fit and you're looking down and you might have an extra 40 pounds. You wish you didn't. Nobody's thinking about what that shoulder feels like. Nobody thinks about what that sort of suspension, what kind of torque and tear that suspension has to endure to to, to, to tolerate and to endure the effects of the fact that you don't want to be fit.
Leslie (
00:51:32
):
You can go right through the whole industry with that you know, anywhere from the, the, the way that people keep themselves for all types of sports, whether it's cutting or raining or trail riding or anything else. But the fact of the matter is that the books that I recommended today were all about how's your horse built? How is your horse built and what do you, what can you read? What can you look at? I used to make my own drawings and send them to my students. Cause I liked to draw and I'd make notebooks full of drawings so that they didn't have to go out and buy a book, but I don't have time to draw like that at the moment. So so what I have done is I've recommended a list of books, which I can actually put up on Facebook, which might be helpful to people if they want to check them out, I've done that periodically, but we'll talk about another kind of book now.
Leslie (
00:52:25
):
And these are the books that I used to read when I was a child, because I spent a lot of time in the library. And I didn't understand that other people took books out of the library. This was a problem for me because we didn't have a whole lot of books at my house. Although I will say, I think I may have told you that at the age of four, I was given an entire set of insect encyclopedia Britannicas. And that was w that would have been in 1958. That was that that model of the encyclopedia Britannica barely could pick up one of those books at four, they were quite stout and no pressure, you know, here's your books read these well, if you ever seen an encyclopedia Britannica, 24 volumes and nine pounds a piece, that's a lot of reading, you know, and I remember having to pose next to these books in a, in a little Tyrolean we'll dress.
Leslie (
00:53:20
):
It was just the most incredible sense of I felt like I was just, it was like imagining you're gonna try to walk up in a homologous in your bare feet, like on, on, on demand, ready or not. Here we go. So I did try to look in these books, but boy, what a challenge I did take it seriously. And I was happy that they ended up on someone else's bookshelf and not in my room, but I did develop a love of reading. And my first author crush was Anna Sewell who wrote black beauty. And I wrote a few letters to her and eventually they were returned or the reply came. And I was informed because my parents read me the letter that she had been dead for a hundred years. So I was really quite distressed to realize that she wasn't around because to me, I thought I could just have a chat with her and I could answer, she would answer some questions.
Leslie (
00:54:25
):
Of course, I wanted to note a little, all the courses she'd written about where we're okay. And things like that. But I did write my first book. Speaking of books, I did write my first book when I was young and it was rejected by national geographic because I used their pictures and I don't know what I expected back, but they used to have magnificent pictures of horses in their, in their magazines. You see? So at that point I was left at the library for long periods of time. And I got acquainted with books by joy Adamson. She wrote a series called the Elsa books. Yeah.
Leslie (
00:55:08
):
She wrote born free living free. And I can't, there was a third one born free living free. It might've, I can't remember what the third one was, but I read those books a couple of times. And from there I got to know a good writer, several writers I met in the end, when I say I met them, they were friends of mine. And I started to write letters to them because I thought at first that they were still alive. So I wrote to joy Adamson and got a letter back from Africa when I was about seven and a half or eight, then I thought, well, I don't want to know so much about lions actually. So I want them to know more about horses. So I wrote to CW Anderson and he wrote me back a number of times, he, he was a marvelous artist who drew thoroughbreds.
Leslie (
00:56:02
):
And and then I wrote to Wesley Dennis who wrote the black stallion seas series. And apparently he was too busy to write back or his letter got put somewhere. I don't know, I never heard back from him, but I did hear from Marguerite Henry who wrote the Misty of Chincoteague. And she wrote Brighty of the grand Canyon and Misty of Chincoteague and all of the whole series of she wrote the album of forces and she just was so prolific and so beautiful and so generous in her time. She sent me a number of letters that encouraged me, and I would write to her about my horse and ask for advice. And she didn't CW Anderson wrote to me a number of times and both of them in what I now realize are very, were, were very well, they were just like a favorite aunt would write to you or a grandmother.
Leslie (
00:56:58
):
They were just encouraging and kind and talkative in their letters. They were brief letters, but they took the time to write back and put a stamp on a letter. And it got me through it really got me through the problem for me was when I realized that other people also went to the library and took out the books that I was reading. So I did something I'll admit. Now this was in the Pittsfield library in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. And I was there five days a week for about an hour and a half for two hours every day at a certain period of my life. And this was at a period where it wasn't possible to educate me because I just wasn't willing to be educated. So I took some time off. I got asked to leave a couple of schools when I was young, because I didn't put up with a type of discipline that was offered there.
Leslie (
00:57:58
):
And I had one teacher at pine cobble of pine Cabo was a school right there in Williamstown. And I spent some years in Williamstown and I don't remember what happened, but exactly, except that I had been assigned a very lofty goal of bringing up 12 little bottles of milk for the class up a very, very steep flight of backstairs on what had been a converted old barn. And, you know, in the old barns, how you get the rise over the step is greater. You get a tiny little trip, then a great big rise. So at the top I dropped all the milk, broke all the glasses and I'm sure I said what I was thinking, and I'm sure it wasn't allowed. So she grabbed my hair and pinched my face hard till my cheeks were touching in the middle of my mouth. You know what I'm saying?
Leslie (
00:58:49
):
Shaking my head, holding them by the hair and pulling it. And I bit her through the hand that seemed like the right thing to do in any way. Very soon after that, I had to, I guess that was the last day in that school, but it was appropriate because I had never been treated like that. And what that ended up giving me indirectly, of course it was a huge embarrassment to the family. You know, you've got a daughter that can't get in school. So the second school that I didn't tolerate there were a lot of other people that had an idea about teaching that had nothing to do with me. I hated it. I didn't want to be talked to that way. Didn't want to be treated that way. And so I didn't put up with it. I just didn't the list to it. There's not going to be any threat of how you have to do this or have to do that. I understood the word note and I really did understand it carefully. And I'm not in, not in a way that was fresh or rude or challenging. It's just, don't cross my line. And I will say that I'll thank both my parents for teaching me that because you know, if you don't learn that, no is okay. What value does? Yes. Have.
Warwick (
01:00:05
):
Wow. That's a line I've not heard before. If you don't. What'd you say, if you don't understand that, it's okay to say no. What value does USF? Wow.
Leslie (
01:00:19
):
So my, so I, you know, I didn't mean to bite the lady through to hand, but what in the world was she having me at five years old, come up the back stairs with 12 glass bottles of milk when she could have done it herself. And of course I was upset. Abrar dropped them, broke them, probably said something I shouldn't have. And then I'm being manhandled at the top of the stairs and getting roughed up in the face. I had never had my hair yanked out and I'd never had anything like that happened. And I just shut my piece into her, like a hamburger. And anyway, so the following year, the following year, I had all kinds of time while they were trying to figure out what sort of school I could tolerate. And I just didn't have what you'd call. I wasn't raised in a herd and I was not raised as a princess either. Don't get me wrong. It's not, it's not like I was spoiled or anything like that. I don't mean to get you that idea. I definitely was not spoiled, but I had seen enough examples of know around me well-placed well-directed and well-accepted that I knew that if yes was going to have meaning in my life, no, had to be okay because that's the way the people around me worked.
Warwick (
01:02:01
):
Okay.
Leslie (
01:02:02
):
So that led to a good year solid in the library. And I started, I had my first experience of, of being a thief actually, because I couldn't bear the idea that I would ever again, have to go in that and find out that somebody else had checked that book out. I didn't have any clue how that library worked. So with the heaviest of hearts, I took the five books I was reading at that time because I was a voracious reader. And I found a place that behind where they, you know, they still used to smoke in those libraries and all this smoke of the storm, they stack all of them, filter lists, CA filtered list, camels, all sorts of self rolled, tobaccos, big, long pipes and stuff. All the old folks there in Pittsfield on up there to read the daily paper and you speak club chairs.
Leslie (
01:02:54
):
So I found a big heating vent back in back. One of them, I could almost walk in it without ducking my head. And I put all those books in there, but four or five of them. And then I was, I couldn't sleep the whole night. So felt so guilty. And then I was worried that someone was going to take them, someone find them. Then I get in trouble. You know, I wasn't, I was certainly taught that you don't take what doesn't belong to you. Like every child should be taught anyway. And I was certainly taught that and I regarded that well, but boy, I had to take those books and squirrel them away back there because I became unmanageable in my own mind. My mind became unmanageable when those books were gone, because that was, I was living in those books. You see, I lived in there and I got to know Zane grey, Zane grey books, after I was reading about, you know, those, those westerns were just, you were on those rides, you were ducking those bullets, you were drinking from those cool streams.
Leslie (
01:04:00
):
You were, you know, well, at the age of eight, you're not in any romance, but you're sort of reading about it kind of. There's always some girl back at the ranch or some guy on a train, or I don't know how they had it all worked out, but you know, they always have to play around that way. And those books there's always something of interest, right. For somebody, it didn't, I was just waiting to find out what, what the horse was going to do. That's what was interesting to me is the way they used the horses to find out about where other people were. I learned a lot about horses because the guy who wrote that book, he, those books were written by knowledgeable people. Then you get into the smoky books, will James. And I think I probably had, I think I probably ran my eyes over every book.
Leslie (
01:04:47
):
Well, James ever wrote. And I don't think that you can probably, and you know, Frank Doby, do you know Frank Doby, the book that he wrote? Nope. There's quite a few good authors of, of old cowboy books and Western books. And they're just a lot of books out. He's happy to put a list up. I could do that. But then if you want to learn about the kinds of things that bill had his mind, you could read the book that he, he put out. I just wrote his thoughts down for him and that his book published in 99, that took about five years, but really I think have always loved books. I certainly have enough of them. What I, what I don't have is enough time to respect them properly. And, and I hope someday I do because a book is a good book is a good friend, really is.
Leslie (
01:05:42
):
I have a large collection of books that was put together in the 17 hundreds where history was written as it happened, not as it was sanitized. And you know, it was, they used to write books in a different way. Reading about Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart was always interesting to me, things like this, wasn't much of a science fiction reader to be, to be honest, I liked reading the letters of famous people, the way they would compose their thoughts and have it delivered. I liked reading books that contained letters that were carried by horseback in a pouch pony express, and then maybe a little paddle wheel boat across the Mississippi, and then maybe a train and then maybe more pony express, the idea that your thoughts would matter enough to put it on paper and have it carried for six weeks. So somebody could read what you thought. Pretty amazing,
Warwick (
01:06:43
):
Very amazing. In there, when you were talking about the lady at the top of the stairs, and you said that that's not the way you'd want to that's not what you expect to teach you to do. It made me, it reminded me of one of the other questions we're going to get to. And cause I thought you might have some thoughts on this. So one of the questions is what's the worst advice given in your profession? And these questions come from Tim Ferriss's tribe of mentors book it's it does have a caveat on it that says, you know, some of us getting interviewed for these questions might not have a normal profession because of the way things go. So I'm not sure what you would consider your profession, but what would you say the worst advice given in whatever you feel your profession is?
Leslie (
01:07:36
):
Do you mean advice that I'm aware that other trainers or my colleagues or that I've had mentors that gave me, or the worst advice that I've been given myself?
Warwick (
01:07:46
):
Just probably a common, a common thing. And let's, you're gonna, you just said with horses, so let's go with horses you know a common thing in the horse world. So people who you give clinics or horse trainers in general, but what basically what's the, what's the, what do you think that the advice that some people give that you find does not jive terribly well with you?
Leslie (
01:08:15
):
I'll, I'll tell you that that's a easy one right there. That's an easy one and there might be another part to it. But the first thing is that one size doesn't fit all forces are individuals. And when I hear people talk about I'll just say this, that there's one way to do things. I know that that's when I should listen more carefully or not listen to anything more because that's a little bit like saying there's one way to teach a child. There's one way to interpret something. And only
Speaker 6 (
01:08:58
):
One way.
Leslie (
01:09:01
):
And when you want to talk about how many horses are walking around this planet toe first, because we've always done it that way, the horse is not set up to go toe first into the ground. And then back on his heels, he's expected and set up structurally and then his alignment, his mind, his digestion and everything about they are built to land heel first. And when you put a horse into a situation, whether we're talking about shoes or not, plenty of barefoot horses are trimmed in a way that they go toe first. And I said, well, we've always done it this way, or this is the way you do it. I said, you realize you've got your horse going to first on three feet. What are you talking about? So really what I would say is that when you drive a car, for example, you get in that car and you got a flat tire.
Leslie (
01:09:58
):
You know what, immediately, you got two flat tires. You really know it. You got four flat tires and you decide you're going to go drive in any way. Well, now you're going to need not just to get either a new inner tube or a new valve STEM or a couple of patches, you're going to need to get four whole new tires. Your rooms are going to go punch in right through there, right? So by the time you've gone through a few flat tires or a few automotive or mechanical things, that's one thing you learn your lesson, you figure it out, you take the advice that you're given, or you just pick up the phone and don't even try to, don't even try to fix it yourself or hope you can get somewhere on your flat tire. Just not too much involved with that, but the difference there and the big thing there is that driving a car or motorcycle four wheel or moped, whatever you're wrong.
Leslie (
01:10:52
):
Now, the matter, and a lot of the people who have horses today had no idea, no idea of the damage they do by not understanding how the foot works and how the blood supply works and how regrown works and how diet works. The worst advice that I've heard people give is that they don't give accurate advice. It's not that they give bad advice it's that they don't bother to educate themselves enough to even give any advice that is worth listening to about health care. Because the majority of horses are in some state of dysfunction or not in the rest of their bodies or in their feet because people do not understand anymore or care how important it is to keep these feet healthy. And that means expansive rot, free disease free at the right angle with the right nutrition and the right metabolism so that they can last.
Leslie (
01:11:55
):
And a lot of people don't care whether they're in pain or not, because they don't believe it. And I had a man in Estonia told me one day, I don't understand why you're talking about feel should my horses don't feel he had it. And interpreter, I was in Finland right outside Hilson Bush. And I said, well, I said, you said, could you do that again? Yeah. Just ask the horse to lower his head or a D I was at the end of a 20 foot rope probably. And I probably just said, well, I'm just going to have this horse lower his head. He said, well, how'd you do that? And I said, I just released him to it. And I said, and I stepped back one step away from him. He was a nice enough guy. He was a racetrack guy. And he had come all the way over from Estonia. And he, so he took a boat to get there and drove and took a ferry cane. And he said, and he was what let's just say, he said, well, what do you do?
Leslie (
01:13:04
):
He did it the way they do it. The old way where it's yeah. Yeah. The temporary you're upset. You just, maybe you just lash that horse a couple of times and he'll get the point. It's not even, it's not even questioned. It's not even considered mean or cruel or anything. It's, we're not talking about somebody just losing it and going on a full-on beating. We're not talking about that, but just what you consider just old-fashioned rough treatment. I can put it that way. We're not talking about abject cruelty, but what a lot harsher than you'd see tolerated today, for example, something you wouldn't see in public today was not commonplace. Certainly there. And certainly 20 years ago all over the place. So I said, he said, what are you doing? I said, I'm just going to lower that. Now I'm going to put that head up there and I'm going to have him look at you.
Leslie (
01:13:55
):
How's he know what you're doing. He said, he feel it. He said, how do you know? I said, cause what do you, I said, cause I know I'll back them up the step now. And we'll take his head the other way. And I did, he's starting to get upset. And he, my horse doesn't have feelings, no horses I work with do where where'd this horse come from. So it's a special one where they're all kind of special. But I said, wouldn't you mean they don't have ceilings? He said, cause I've been mad enough to really let them have it. And he didn't use those words. He had some very, his, his, his English was very painstakingly, careful, and slow and accurate. And he, I couldn't possibly tell you the words he chose to use. But he basically said that he had hit courses until he was exhausted, trying to get the point across. And I said, well, what honors did they do? He said they could have done anything, but I can tell you they don't feel.
Leslie (
01:14:57
):
And I said, well, how do you know? Cause I've never heard them cry. And when I told them that they don't, he said, but when they fight with each other, they cry and they yell out. He said, horses will scream at each other when they're fighting sometimes. Or when they're angry, he said, but they don't respond to human field. I said, Oh yes they do. Oh sure. They do. I said, it's just at another level. And that man went to his truck and he was in there for quite a long while, before he would drive out of there that man had himself a good cry, tell you that much. He had to leave the conversation. And I always wish I'd gotten his card or his name or something to tell him not to take it to heart because we all have those moments. When we realized that we didn't understand the animal or child or a dog or best friend or whatever, we all realized, you know, sometimes you get to the point where you think, Oh wow.
Leslie (
01:16:10
):
I didn't know what I didn't know. And he didn't know that horses do feel so. I don't know if it helped in that day or not, but it was sure emotional. I never forgot it. Never seen a man bust out like that. Never. And it was, it was meaningful. And I would say C and how does this tie into what you asked me about? What's the worst advice that you've ever heard. And that is that show him who's boss, hunny. Right? Show him who's boss. Show him who's boss. There was another, that's another platitude, right? It doesn't matter about the feet. One size fits all. We've always done it that way. Look, this is the way we do it. If you don't like it, get a new farrier. You don't like it. Get a new trimmer. You don't like it. Do it yourself. But the thing is there are biomechanics that depend on a good foundation and the horse is born with the fee.
Leslie (
01:17:07
):
Hence because that's the way he's meant to travel the way he's meant to travel. And then more people out there that know less about feet. In fact, I'm going to tell you something, there's never been a time in history, my opinion or more people who knew less about horses own more of them and are trying to peddle, influence and information about them, including healthcare, who would probably, if they were pressed, not be able to even understand the first thing about the way I hope has put together or its function or what happens when they're out of the line or the angles are different. Certainly the horses adjust, all kinds of things are adjustable in the horse has put up with a lot. But the biggest thing that isn't thought about and isn't known and isn't discussed is the fact that people who are peddling knowledge, aren't accountable for it.
Leslie (
01:18:09
):
And that would be knowledge about salvage, bridal fit, anatomy, cost structure, courses, pain thresholds. And I'm not trying to make it sound like I've got all the answers that dome I'm a seeker, but I'll say one thing is a horse is telling you not to get on. You probably ought to pay attention. It's not just because he's had a bad horse or just cause he's poorly trained. You know, about the time you don't want to have someone adding a little bit extra to your list of things to do for the day is when you've got a migraine, right. Or an ingrown toenail, or you just hit your elbow or you got an abscess in your tooth. That's just about the time you'd like to be given a little break. So this just this kind of thing. I'm just thinking, you know, people don't really look at themselves from the horse's point of view, that's it? And that's, that's what my job is to try to help people say that without, I don't want people to feel badly, but well, you'll have a whole lot more fun with your horse partner. If you can understand his point of view. And sometimes it's just that simple. Sometimes once they know you will know, they'll try all that much harder for you.
Warwick (
01:19:37
):
I have a question for you about, so what you were talking about, that the guy from Estonia and what you were doing now, I have heard, I've been dying to ask you this forever. I've heard a bit of a legendary story about you.
Leslie (
01:19:52
):
And I
Warwick (
01:19:52
):
Want, you know, you know, if, if someone, if someone is somewhere and they see something happen, there's their version of what they saw happen. And then if they tell that to somebody else, that person might hear it than it was told. And if they were to tell someone else it might be her. Definitely what it was told. It's like Chinese whispers.
Leslie (
01:20:13
):
Oh yeah. Maybe by now. It's not even true.
Warwick (
01:20:17
):
That's what I want to know because I, so, so the story I I've got came from someone who supposedly observed you do this and, and I've repeated this story enough times. I'd probably missed, I've probably made it my own game of Chinese whispers. But cause this fact when I heard this story, this is fascinated me for a long time. So I'll, I'll, I'll tell the story, like I'm not talking to you, like I'm talking to the audience right now. Okay. So the story that I heard that was, it was at a private clinic in Sweden and they had to, they were walking down the road. So Leslie Desmond and these other people in the clinic were walking down this road to go and catch some horses or whatever. And they walk past the pasture full of horses. And in that past it was say five horses and four of them were sorrows and one was a Bay horse and they were grazing.
Warwick (
01:21:08
):
And Leslie Desmon had been talking to these people about being able to influence a horse, not with your actions, but just with your energy and your thoughts. And the story I get is Leslie Desmon looks out there. And so there's four Searles in a Bay and they're all eating and less, the Desmond says, watch this, I'll get the buy horse to come over here. And she looks out there for a bit. And after a while that Bay horse lifts its head up, like it feels something and looks around and then walks over to the fence and the other four don't even lift their heads up. So that's, that's the, that's the myth, the legend that I've got one did anything like that happen? Did that happen exactly as, as it did? And if it did, I've got more questions.
Leslie (
01:21:53
):
Well, yeah, sure. Yeah. No, no. That's, that's definitely possible. No, I, no, I, I N yeah, no, that's how it works. That's how it works. Pretty much. There's a lot of people I can think about four or five different things, kind of like that in that same neighborhood, trying to make a point
Warwick (
01:22:09
):
That actually happened.
Leslie (
01:22:12
):
Yeah.
Warwick (
01:22:16
):
I'm so excited right now. Okay, good. Tell me how does one do that?
Leslie (
01:22:21
):
Well, it's, it's just about how you use space. It's just about what your relationship to the space that you're sharing. Okay. So if we're walking down the road that those horses are going to be aware that people are walking down the road and it's no different. I'm thinking about over out Atwater, there was another thing like that in work, California, which was about 2013 and the lady brought in, I'll just give you another example here. I can't really tell you about how you do it using that example, because that was what a lot of people that day. But, you know, I was at a clinic and Atwater it's one. I remember, particularly because it was just your dangerous mayor there. She was the news, the she had been on experiment, Mer, they did nine fulls out of her and they were getting ready.
Leslie (
01:23:09
):
They lost the funding for the third round of funding on the experiment that we're doing. I don't know what it was. They had a line up, they were just going to euthanize her and teach the students how to euthanize her in the last bowl, because they'd run out of money. So that hit the internet. And boy, I'll tell you, people got in their trailers, there was a half a mile trailers up there in about 20 minutes of that thing, hitting the internet. And so anyway, they couldn't, they couldn't go ahead with that phone. They had to group all the babies away that nine of them, of course, it was easy to get rid of the 98, seven, six, five, the two year old, but the yearling and the foal was a little tougher in that mirror was impossible. So anyway, that's the story. And that mayor and her, that mayor was brought to that clinic that day out at Lisa crow's place over in Atwater.
Leslie (
01:23:56
):
And we had, I did that kind of work with her because you couldn't get near her. You had to, you had to do that work with her in a space. You had to move around with your ideas and you get in there, she'd finished it off. And in fact, there's even a video of her chasing me and the owner out of the place that the owner I had to just push her. I really had to shove her hard to get out of the way, cause Mary was going to take her out with a foot or teeth. And I just, I was probably a little more agile than I am now. That would be what, seven years ago. And I was, well, right now, I don't feel agile at all. I've been sitting still for 10 months, but that mirror got me right up and over a fence.
Leslie (
01:24:35
):
It was probably 12 foot fences scrambled right up at like a monkey and managed to kick her in the head on my way over. And there's even a video of that because she was trying to bite my legs. And so after that event I looked at the lady and I said, is this what you deal with every day? She had a couple of old rescued, retired horses that are placed. So she wants to just get this woman. She said, well, yeah, I'll she, she, she moves me around. She chases me kind of around. She's kind of scary. I said, well, I should say so.
Leslie (
01:25:22
):
And so yes. So I did this other, yeah. I worked with her after that, after lunch, I had to get my adrenaline back under control because by the time you've got to, what was she, I guess she was a per Tron. Wasn't she, by the time you have something that big, she had size four feet on her, just a honk and huge thing. She was probably I don't know, 1800 pound horse, maybe 1900 pounds. She was huge monster. And so, you know, she just didn't have any use for people. You can't blame her. She was an experimental horse. So we got her straightened out. We got her, we got, I had her, her and her daughter for enough months to get things worked out. But the real turning point came when I started to adjust her speed and her shape and her direction, that way, how can I teach her how to do that? I could show you how to do that. You'd probably have to watch it a few times and pick it up. But yeah, you can do like that. You can do like that.
Warwick (
01:26:24
):
There you go. Ladies and gentlemen know right here, I've heard that. I've told that a repeated that story I've heard for a long time. And I think a part of me believed,
Leslie (
01:26:37
):
Yeah, I can tell you how I can listen. I can tell you now what you can, you can do it with a fish in a fish bowl too. You can do it with anything that can feel. It's just how you put your energy forward. It's the same way that it's the same way a dog knows when you're coming home, they can feel it. Do you move them across the room? No, but they know where they should be. They should be at the door because that's where they should be. He could just assume, be happy to see you when he's lying in his bed. Right. But he comes to the door and he's waiting there long before your car gets in the driveway. How do you know? Because the people at the house now what course starts, the dog starts sitting at the door when you've been gone for what, two week trip, right? How does the cat no one to come home? You know, the, the, there's a story called the incredible journey. Speaking of books, you know, about that time he's cat and that dog, the incredible journey.
Leslie (
01:27:36
):
That is a book that's worth reading. That's about animal communication. And that addresses what you're asking me about right here. But yeah, I mean, sure. I don't mind saying that I do those things, but, but, but I don't want anybody to get the idea that you know, some sort of mystical person or something, you know, it's not like I have any skills that other people don't have. It's just that I didn't have TV. So I spent my time looking at the way things work. And my, my, my, the people I work with, the people that I've been working with longest, I have, I have a couple of people on the team that I started working with when they were 13, 14, they know how to do it too. They just watch me do it. Then they pick it up.
Warwick (
01:28:23
):
I do you know Gail Ivy?
Leslie (
01:28:26
):
I do. Yes. I haven't seen her in many years, but yes, I do know Gail,
Warwick (
01:28:30
):
You spent a lot of time around Ray hunt. And I had, I had a kind of come to the idea that there's people who can do this with horses and I thought gal might be one of them. And so I, I messaged her on Facebook one time and said, Hey, gal, that there's this whole idea floating around my head, that I'm getting an idea that, that some people can actually get horses to move without physically on the outside of your body doing anything like it's with your thoughts and your energy. And I said, can, is it doable? And can you do it? And she replied to me was yes and no. And I said, how do you, how do you go about explaining it to people? It was my other question. And she said, yes, I can do it. And for those of us too, which it comes easily.
Warwick (
01:29:23
):
It is sometimes hard to explain when I got that, that reply back from her was not only can she do it, but she can. It's kind of a night with her to where, you know, I'll tell you what a friend of mine's husband was a a filmmaker for national geographic. And he was in the jungle in the Congo one time. And so he does the filming and then there's another guy that does the talking, you know, like, hi, I'm, so-and-so, we're here in the Congo with this tribe or whatever. And they stayed with this tribe in the Congo. And they would, the it's dense rainforest. And they walk out of the village, into the rainforest and walk for, you know, three hours, three or four hours. And then they come back to the village from a different direction. They left in and the jungle is so thick.
Warwick (
01:30:09
):
You can't see anything and there's no tracks, there's no trails or anything like that. And the canopy so thick at the top that you cannot see the sun. You can tell the sun's up, but you don't know which direction it's in. And they would do this day in and day out. And so the, the talking guy, the guy that you know, was doing the comparing, he could speak the local dialect. And so this friend of mine's husband, the camera guy said, ask him how they find their way back to the village. So the guy asked the chief and the chief said, well, it's easy. We just ask the animals. And Giles says back to him, but I haven't seen you ask any animals. Like I haven't seen you stop at the bottom of a tree and look up at a monkey and go, woo, woo, woo. And the guy goes,
Leslie (
01:30:49
):
I know, but I, I know what he's making.
Warwick (
01:30:53
):
So the chief says, Oh, we don't talk to the animals. And like, put these hand to his mouth. He says, we don't talk to the animal. He put these hand to the top of his head and makes like a flying thing off the top of his head. And he says, we talk to the animals. And, and, and child said, can you mean to tell me, you can mentally communicate with the animals. And, and the chief said, yes, can't you. And when Joel said, no, the chief was like, children, children come over here. I've got to show you something. This guy, he can't talk to the animals. It's the Navy people like that. It's just so normal. And it's just, we've, you know, with our TV and our cell phones and our busy lives and stuff, we've just lost that ability to connect like that.
Leslie (
01:31:38
):
Well, that's true. No, that's true. That's exactly right. And that's what makes that, what makes some very hard, long days from mate when people are trying to get to explain to themselves what they see me do in a linear framework, because it is not linear. You know, it is not linear. It is experiential and it is in the moment and it is in the now. And it would be like trying to argue, have you ever been to a pub and watched someone who didn't know how to fill a proper glass of beer off the keg? Well, let's just say that if you don't spend time in pubs, but I do know, I do know what it looks like to have someone hand you a glass of beer, and it's already going over the top and you know, it's going to go all over the place and down your sleeve and you just don't even want it because they didn't fill it.
Leslie (
01:32:36
):
Right? So the beer has a life of its own. And a horse has a life of its own and the animals have a life of its own. And if you're not aware of the lights in something, whether it's the yeast that lifts up the bread or the bubbles that spill out of the beer, then you're not going to understand as well, how to manage or recognize the signs that the life you asked for is going to be asked for in a way that is delivered the way you can use it. And that's why I like to show people at a distance, how to move forces around how to do this so that they understand that by the time they're with a rope and their hall during they're marching out there, and they're just saying, okay, son of a, doesn't wait for me. Well, how did you approach him?
Leslie (
01:33:27
):
You're marching out there. Like he owes you something, you got your rope slap and against your legs. You're marching. You're going out there. Like it's a mission. And you know, you're basically just pummeling the horse with a lot of extra energy and and an approach that doesn't fit. You're marching into his face and you're marching into the face of a flight animal. And that isn't the way you approach a flood animal. You don't March to the head and then wonder why they leave. They leave because it's not a fitting approach. You know, you could, and that's all I can say is if you're going to make a delivery and you're going to make a presentation, I mean, let's say that if you mess up the use and the bread, you're at least going to get some calories. But if you fill a glass of beer wrong, you can end up with about half an inch of it in the bottom. After the whole rest of it takes off across the table. Do you see what I mean?
Leslie (
01:34:23
):
That Bureau blown out of that glass, if you don't present it right to the glass and that yeast won't work, right? Either you'll at least get left with a flat Singh of bread that you might want to choke down or not, depending on how hungry you are, but it's no different than dealing with the energy and the life that a horse or dog or person it's. How do you, how do you assess, where is how or where, what kind of calibration are you using when you're expecting somebody to cooperate with you or to defer to you or to submit to you? God forbid
Speaker 1 (
01:35:03
):
The idea that you're going to be
Leslie (
01:35:06
):
Wow. And your pressure and your expectations, and to another being without regard for how they're set up to receive it
Speaker 1 (
01:35:15
):
Is unrealistic.
Leslie (
01:35:20
):
Think you could say about it. Probably won't say the other things you could say about it, but it certainly is unrealistic. And it's why there is a multi multi-million multi-billion dollar industry around equipment that is designed to exert pressure or to hurt, or to be used to influence through pain or leverage. And then you make the horse do what you want without understanding how he works. And then you buy the boots to protect him from the fact that you're making them step on himself.
Leslie (
01:35:52
):
There's an awful lot of money been made on protective leggings for horses that are performing, because people aren't talking to each other about the importance of having them step on something other than his own skin or his own bull for his own Coronet band or his own heels, slamming a state into his own cannibals. I mean, you don't need to train that way. You can you know, you can spend and burn, burn the turns and spend a win and do all that stuff and have a great time doing it. But at what expense at whose cost and the horses are not going to say, no, they're going to keep trying, they're going to do it. And the thing that people don't understand so much, and I'm not just trying to talk about, you know, raining or any sort of timed events or judged events that are geared to the astonishment of the audience in that way, we could be talking about racing or, you know, gaited horses, or we could be talking about the hunters or jumpers or any other type of pleasure horses.
Leslie (
01:36:59
):
It's, it's just about, really about the relationship with the mind. I don't, I work with all kinds of people. I work with every single kind of, I think the only thing I don't have is any legions of people who own many. I haven't really broken into that market yet. Maybe it's in my future. I don't know. But you know, just for the, for horses and ponies and deals and working horses, you know, larger horses warmbloods and drafts, those horses all are intent upon getting along. They are, their lives are lived between curiosity and flight. What's interesting. What's too scary. What do I have to leave from? And what is pulling my interest? And because their lives are hanging in that balance between curiosity and flight, there's tremendous opportunity for transgression. You can transgress the Goodwill of the horse without even you're doing it just by being a good student.
Leslie (
01:37:58
):
You can be a really good student and ruin a whole lot of horses because you did what you saw and tried to do what you were told, and you admired your teacher and loved your teacher. And there's some really, really good students out there with a hell of a bad conscience. And those are a lot of people that I work with. And the first thing you got to get past is the sadness. And you would, you want to make sure they understand that they did a good job. If you're a good student, you try hard and you do a good job. Then you're a good student. And it means that you'll be a good student when you're trying something else also, that you got to let yourself off the hook. You don't want to sit there and feel badly because the horses know that the next horses you're with, if you've had your cry or your bad feelings, or you realize you could have done better, we all go through that. That's normal, but you want to, you want to take a fresh start, then you don't bring the sadness and the guilt with you. You know, you gotta really take a fresh start. And so this is the opportunity that I take with a lot of people to show them how sensitive the horses are. Not to make them feel worse, but to inspire them to that, that now they know how sensitive the horses are. They can really consider doing less to get more. You see what I mean?
Warwick (
01:39:16
):
Yeah. Yeah. So I totally, totally do. You know, I've been on I'm on the, at least on the beginning of the journey to, to working towards that stuff. You know, I I've shared on the podcast you probably have listened to him, so I'll tell you. But I, you know, I I've realized now that I've spent a lot of my life in a, a shutdown mode. So I basically, you know, everything was kind of switched off within me. So I had no like internal energy, not really much in the way of feelings. And so, you know, I working and it's, we're going all right, we're working on getting that stuff, that stuff working. And I really think I've got to get and, and, and part of work, trying to work with horses, energetically and with feel has kind of helped that. So I think it getting that helps with the horses or the help horses helped get some of that, but also working on things away from the horses helps me get that so that I can use it with the horses. So, yeah, I'm, I'm kind of behind the eight ball, but I'm, you know, I think everybody's at where they're supposed to be at. So I'm, I'm happy with where I'm at, but I just needed to know if that story was true. It's like, I want to have that aspiration to that.
Leslie (
01:40:32
):
Well, we'll get together sometime and I'll show you how to do it. That's not that hard. It's not that hard at all. But you see that if you just look around behind you right there, do you see that? Where that rat just went to see if you just twist around there and your chair to see where that mouse just went?
Warwick (
01:40:49
):
No, I didn't say where that mass just went, you know, just around there. Yeah. Well, there's no mass there.
Leslie (
01:40:56
):
Okay. But did you look around you just talking to me, huh?
Warwick (
01:40:59
):
Yeah, you can hit this microphone set and different. I've turned around and I'm looking and there's no mask.
Leslie (
01:41:03
):
Okay. So let me ask you something. I'm sitting over here right now in my place on the phone. Did I just get you to turn around?
Warwick (
01:41:13
):
You did.
Leslie (
01:41:15
):
Okay. And I did it in a way that didn't hurt and I kind of talked you into it. I kind of tricked you a little bit. I got you to put up with me just long enough to give it a try. Right. But the point is, if anybody were to witness that sitting in your room, right there with you, Robyn, or your son or anybody else that it, weren't a word that you're doing, just talking about a rat there and you're looking around, I mean, what are you doing now? I didn't make you do that. But I did ask, and I did suggest it and it didn't cost you anything. Right? And in that moment we got together on you doing something. That was my idea.
Warwick (
01:42:10
):
You know what, for a minute there, I thought, I thought a mouse actually did run behind me. And you mentally saw that from your end of the phone. And I was really going to get blown away.
Leslie (
01:42:22
):
Well, the thing is I did, I did,
Warwick (
01:42:27
):
Do I have, do I have a mouse?
Leslie (
01:42:31
):
No, you don't have a mouse problem, but the point is, no you don't. But the point is in order for me to give you that example, that is what I saw. I thought, well, I'll just tell him. I saw that mouse from back there now, you know, as well as I do that one a three year old has learned how to play peek-a-boo and hide and seek and do stuff around, you know, on a rainy day. When, what do you do with your three-year-old your four year old and the two year old, and you do something with them, you know? So you can do all kinds of things. You can do. You can draw and you can play games and you can play small little tricks and teach them how to tie knots and read big books, big little books, and do all sorts of little.
Leslie (
01:43:13
):
This little piggy went to market. And this little piggy did this map depending on the age. And then the other thing you can do is you can teach them how to play, hide and seek. And then the kid comes out of that. About four years old. And those little human beings are still trying to organize their perception of life around the fact that when they close their eyes, they think you can't see them, right. You go through a period. It's not quite like believing in Santa Claus. It's even deeper because by golly, when I can't see anything, you can't either. So I'm going to my eyes and count to three and you can't see me. So based on that, there's still a little piece of that in all of us where people have well, it's, it's, it's what it was just enough still in you that when I asked you to turn around and look at that mouse. Cause I did, I thought I'll just, I see a mouse running back there. I'll just ask him if he saw it, that's it. You know, I just, I, it, that came to me. So I shared it with you. Okay. And so we got to do that, right? So you, so you know, it's not a real mouse back there, but somehow there's enough.
Leslie (
01:44:31
):
There's enough possibility that it could have been there. You were willing to turn around and have a look. And it's exactly this I wasn't trying to pull you or make you feel foolish either. It wasn't about that. It was just to tell you that it took you energy to do that. It took a slight bit of belief and curiosity. So somewhere between your curiosity and your willingness to see and experiment with what I'm talking about now, if I turned around and there was a rattlesnake sitting there ready to pounce on you, you'd be mad as hell at me. Why did you tell me it was a mouse? And it turns out to be a full blown rabbit. Snake. What's the matter with you Desmond, right? It, wasn't very nice to you set you up to fail, but as it was, I just set you up to turn around in your chair.
Leslie (
01:45:13
):
But what you did was you extended to me the ability to feel the meaning. In my words, you felt my intent. You heard my request. It could said no. And you didn't. And so we shared that moment of your request for the meaning, in my words, what was the meaning? What was the meaning? What was the intention of that? And really for this purpose of this conversation, it was to show you how feel healthy and work. Okay. So when I've got like, in Atwater that day, there had to been 60, 70 people there. It was packed, it was packed. And this mayor had put on quite a show and she was scary. She was like I said, she ran his boat. I knocked the lady down and got her out of the way. And then I ran as fast as I could. My boots and up and over, I went while she was nipping at me, hard in the, in the video that we have there, her head and neck are all the way she's comes right up off her forehand.
Leslie (
01:46:15
):
And she's rares back and chases me right up out of there with her teeth, mouth open up right out, cross my ankle. And wasn't very nice. You know, it's just one of those, one of those things that fortunately doesn't happen very often. Can't say it's ever happened before since like that. But anyway, the point is I had to work with that mirror in a different way. Three-Day clinic. The next two days I didn't work or physically, it was too dangerous. The next time I did work, her physically, I had already gotten her to go around the pen, walk, trout, lope, stop around, go here, go there, go to different corners of the place. Yeah. I can tell you lady to call. If you want her name's Lisa Crow. She'll tell you. I can tell you about, I can tell you a whole bunch of people. Do you know the vet? You know, Madison, Siemens ask him. Yeah. Paul Madison. He seems, he's seen that kind of work with me a few times.
Warwick (
01:47:14
):
Okay. I got a question for you and I don't want to get too far into this because it's going to take me forever. Do you mentally picture what you want them to do?
Leslie (
01:47:26
):
No. Not like that. No. No, I don't. It, it depends on it actually depends on not usually. No, I'm just no, no. That's a lot of extra pieces. That's a lot of extra steps now. I mean it's no, I don't. I can't. I know that's a hard one. Here's here's the way I'll say it. It, it depends. It depends on the animal. It depends on what they've been through. It depends on how stuck they are.
Warwick (
01:47:59
):
Would you ever use a mental picture?
Leslie (
01:48:03
):
Yeah. There's times. Yeah.
Warwick (
01:48:04
):
My question is when you do use a mental picture, is it from their perspective or your perspective? That's my big question.
Leslie (
01:48:15
):
It's in the middle. It's the shared perspective.
Warwick (
01:48:22
):
Why didn't I figure that out?
Leslie (
01:48:24
):
Well, well, well, let me, let me say this. When I'm riding a horse, I don't feel a great deal when I'm riding a horse that I'm really riding. I don't feel any different than that horse. I feel like, I feel like he's, I just feel like he's given me his legs. I just feel like his legs are my legs. So it's shared perspective, you know, it's not like I'm on that course. It's more like being part of it, you know? Like he's I want to go there and he lent me his legs and he wants to look up. He wants me to see something. I look exactly where he tells me to look, I never jerk a horse around for, you know, you paid attention to me. No. When he looks, he wants you to see something. I always do what they say when it comes to that type of thing, because you don't know when that's going to save your life.
Warwick (
01:49:21
):
Wow. I'm getting a lesson here. Don't know. Okay. Then
Leslie (
01:49:25
):
It's just, well, I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I don't know if it's right or wrong, but I know I've sure made some big mistakes trying to correct horses because really I don't correct horses anymore. I had to, you know, I, I just, if you set them up to do what you want, there's nothing to correct. So I don't go at it. You know, this is one of the things that, one of the biggest things that happens when people start with me as that, they realize that they're really only focused on what they don't want. That's how they know what to correct. So a lot of times, a lot of times when I start with people who haven't worked with me before, and they're there at the top of their field, there's the top of the game. I've, I've worked with some pretty fancy riders and pretty fancy trainers.
Leslie (
01:50:09
):
And I still do from time to time, you know, but what makes them fancy and what makes them notable is that they've been rewarded and recognized for winning, for being successful competitors, you know, and that whatever those rewards are all about and why ever they are sought and whatever other people externally think about those achievements, you know, that those achievements were reached, that those accolades and ribbons and bronzes and platters and invitations and standing room only events and their honor and all the rest of that stuff was all because they were good correctors, right? They corrected the horse until we figured it out, right. They CA they make corrections and that's what they teach. And that's what their students teach. And there's a long line of people who are really good at correcting horses, whether it's, you know shaping a horse and for a shoulder in, or whatever, whatever you're doing, whatever you're doing, most people don't think about educating the neck and thinking about where they want the seat in what sequence at what speed and one, and that's the only thing you really need to do because of that.
Leslie (
01:51:27
):
You wouldn't need to educate the neck. If the horse had collarbones, we just deal with the feet in that case, maybe you'd want to educate the neck a little bit, but it wouldn't be so critical because one of the reasons you need to educate the neck is so that you can manage the front end since it's not connected to the spine, right? If you could just get the horse to go around and link up his feet to your intentions, without regard to the fact that he doesn't, that the only place he's really connected to the ground is in his hips to sacred in the spine. That intersection, there are a lot of people who think that the cross, the real place to manage a horse left and right is in the front end. And those are the heaviest horses you'll ever run in your life because they're being pulled around over the shoulders. Why would you pull the horse down on the front end and expect them to be light? Because you pull the weight out of the hips. We want a front end, that's light, you better be leaving that weight back there. I've never understood a lot of this stuff that they do backfires
Warwick (
01:52:32
):
Well. Oh yeah, no, no. I know exactly. I know exactly what you mean. I'm just letting it all mull around in there. You know, one, one, one of the things we had going to do was talk about the book and bill and all that stuff, but we're going to have to do, I think we're gonna have to do a separate podcast where we can, cause I want to hear all about the, the, the writing of the book and your meeting of bill and all of those things. But we have been going for quite a while he now, and we probably should pull this up here and mostly because my brain is fried.
Leslie (
01:53:14
):
Okay. Listen, I know, I completely understand. We've we've discussed some pretty, pretty far reaching things. I thank him like, Oh yeah,
Warwick (
01:53:21
):
Yeah. You've, you've said some things that I actually wrote one down here. It said,
Leslie (
01:53:28
):
What was it?
Warwick (
01:53:29
):
No, it was just when you said you had to move her around with your ideas, that the mayor and Atwater, and like just that whole moving them around with your ideas.
Leslie (
01:53:39
):
Yeah. Yeah, because listen, that horse that was like oil boy, you wanted to test fate. You could go chase a tennis ball out into traffic at 42nd street and this out of window in Manhattan and see whether you see how many of those yellow cars are going to yellow. Cab cars are going to stop for, you know, and that light changes. You just need to not be there. That's how simple it is. You don't want to see whether seven rows of cars are going to stop because you just happened to chase your ball out there. They're not stopping. Okay. You're just playing, going to have to get mowed down. Cause these people drive it's their road and just get out of the way. That's it. People get hit and Manhattan and London all the time. Don't they, they get wiped out. And that's how that horse was because after nine years of being, there was an experiment, she had no use for people, but you see that was an extreme case.
Leslie (
01:54:35
):
There's a whole lot of horses that handle it in a different way. It's called tuning out, doling out, not being available. They don't have any use for people by the time they're looking off and you can do what you want to them and talk to them and hand, feed them and walk them around and try and get some lights on them. They don't get down. They're done with, they're done with you. They just figured out how to go inside and stay there. You know, it's harder. You reach in there the farther away they get. And that's so you can, you can have, you know, in the end horses, life is lived between nowadays between the price per pound, when he's gone and what it costs to put them on the ground. So between the cost of the salmon and the cost of the meat at the end is the value of his life because that's what, that's what it's the cross to creation.
Leslie (
01:55:25
):
And the cost of disposal is going to be the value that people who are in the horse creation business and the horse disposal business. And then what you do in the meantime is about what you want to get across to a horse or get from a horse or gives to a horse or experience with one. You have to decide which of those words you're going to use. You know, the word choice. When he's talking about horses in your plans about your experiences with him, those words are pretty important. That's what I learned from bill. Probably more nice English before.
Warwick (
01:55:59
):
Okay. Well, speaking of bill, we'll have to get to bill next time. We're going to have to wrap this up here, but Leslie, thank you so much for joining me. I'm a little, I'm a little brain fried right now, but I'll have to, I'll have to go away and think about this, but I'll get I'll get back with you again sometime, cause I really want to have you back on here and talk about bill, but so for, for people who are listening, if they, if they don't know about how to get ahold of you already, how, how can people contact you, find out what you do get some help from you, all that sort of thing.
Leslie (
01:56:33
):
Well, that's a good question. I have a website with my name on it. Leslie desmond.com. That would be the best way to just go right in, just use my name and hit that com and just start clicking around and you'll get wherever it takes you. And maybe there'll be something interesting. And hopefully there will be. There's some interesting groups right now that we're talking about. We're studying Bill's book online right now and Facebook group or studying the book together. It's a really good time. We just started doing it on the 1st of December. So it's a long book. And the last study group we had went 13 years has 1300, had 1300 members. And we went from 13 years without one. And couple of people asked me to start it this last fall. And I thought, nah, can't do it. But it just kept asking and I'm soft, I'm a pushover. I said, okay. And now we had a, we got 1100 people in the first month. And so we're, we're, we're often doing it. So there's a discussion group on Bill's book now. And we've got a website that we're studying and putting some of these field-based exercises up there on video and audio that people can check it out, love to have them.
Warwick (
01:57:56
):
Awesome. Awesome, awesome stuff. Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Leslie, and you guys listening, thanks for joining us on the journey on podcast and we will look forward to joining you again on the next one.
Leslie (
01:58:09
):
Sounds great. Well thank you for having me. I hope I didn't speak too long and I'll look you up. When I get out to California in a couple months, that'd be great. I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1 (
01:58:26
):
Thanks for listening to the journey on podcast with work Schiller Warrick has over 650 full length training videos on his online video library@videos.work, schiller.com. Be sure to follow Warrick on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, to see his latest training advice and insights.