Easy does it: The gentle touch of horse trainer R.J. Sadowski
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In a small corral in Plainfield, Bob "R.J." Sadowski was giving one of his students instructions in a calm but firm voice.
"OK, you want to look up and come toward me," Sadowski told her. "Keep your pelvis back and feet forward ... keep your heels down on the stirrups."
Missy Lyon, her brow furrowed in concentration, was working hard to convey those instructions to the horse she was riding - one of Sadowski's animals, named Whisper. The movements she was trying to make were subtle: a slight pull on the reins here, a small shift of her hips there, and the horse would veer in one direction or the other.
"Ease it gently like you're holding a baby's hand," Sadowski said as he advised Lyon to work the reins to get Whisper to move to the left, then walk toward him. "Now we're getting there! Awesome."
Sadowski's instruction goes beyond just teaching riding or ways to calm an animal. His aim is to help people develop "a relationship" with their horses, a sort of meeting of the minds in which an owner fully understands the emotional and psychological makeup of a horse, and the horse in turn feels secure with its rider.
Sadowski wants an owner to think like a horse, even act like one in some respects, and to understand that not all horses are alike.
This may sound like New Age gobbledygook. After all, Sadowski, 61, calls what he teaches "horsemindship." But to him, it's a practical approach.
"It's about communication," he says. "It's about knowing your horse, not knowing something about him. Horses are absolutely adept at reading human behavior, and understanding that is the key to understanding the horse's mind ... and communicating with the horse's mind is the pathway to his heart."
Sadowski came to horses somewhat late in life - he once taught elementary school in Williamsburg - but he's made a serious commitment to it in the past two decades: traveling around the country to work with experienced horse trainers, earning a Massachusetts license as a certified horse trainer and riding instructor, and serving in a national program that works to "gentle" wild mustangs and find homes for them.
His varied experience has convinced him that building a good relationship with a horse is based on mutual respect, not control, and understanding why a horse acts in a certain way. "People talk about #breaking' horses or #reining them in' or things along those lines. It doesn't have to be that way ... I want their spirit intact, and you're not going to get that by forcing the horse to do something it doesn't want to do or doesn't understand," he says.
Missy Lyon, who lives in Pittsfield, has been riding horses off and on for 20 years. But she says it's only since she began working with Sadowski during the past year that she's begun to feel truly confident as a rider. "Bob has been a breath of fresh air," she says. "I wish I'd met him earlier. I've had other instructors, and they were good, but he's really filled in the missing parts for me."
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In early May, a week before Lyon's lesson, Sadowski had jumped in his pickup to head to Westhampton to meet with John Darman and Nicole Birkholzer, who have five horses on 52 acres of land.
When he's not working with clients at his 77-acre property, known as Peace Haven Farm, Sadowski makes such house calls. He ranges throughout the western part of the state, as far east as Worcester and sometimes to Connecticut and Vermont. He says he averages between 600 and 800 visits a year. Lessons are $60 an hour, with an additional $30 fee for the house call.
He and his life partner, Paula Harrison, also host riding and training clinics at Peace Haven Farm and other locations. It's a year-round business, Sadowski says, with winter training sessions in indoor arenas when the weather is too harsh for outdoor riding.
"Horses need to be attended to regularly," he says. "You can't just put them aside for three and four months at a time."
Standing in the driveway of Darman and Birkholzer's home, a property known as Birchwood Farm, Sadowski looked like a hardy wrangler, wearing a cowboy hat and boots, and long leather chaps. He looked like someone poised to ride hard, but as he chatted with the couple, he emphasized the importance of meeting the needs of horses, not controlling them.
"Let's just quickly review what we've worked on," said Sadowski. "What are the four rules we have for horses?"
Darman ticked them off: safety, comfort, play and food. "It's really astounding what we've learned in the past year with Bob," he said. "He's shown us what we can accomplish through empathy, observation, consistency and setting up clear lines of communication."
One way to communicate with horses, said Darman and Sadowski, is to imitate their behavior. Horses are wary of predators, Darman said, and humans can exhibit predatory behavior by, for example, walking straight toward a horse and looking it in the eye. So, Darman continued, Sadowski has demonstrated a different method: walking indirectly toward a horse, almost circling it and turning one's head aside or looking at the ground to avoid eye contact.
"It looks really funny to see, but it works," said Darman. "You basically walk like a horse."
"It's a way to get a horse to relax," added Birkholzer.
As Sadowski and the couple arrived at the farm's main pasture, their five horses, including one miniature breed, came loping down a hill. Carrying a rope that he would use as a halter, Darman went into the big enclosure and ambled in the general direction of Cutter, an 8-year-old Palomino quarter horse. Darman swiveled his head back and forth. Cutter trotted away at first, but eventually came back and stopped near Darman, who stroked his side, looped the rope around his neck and led him slowly toward the farm's indoor riding arena.
"Look at that - he's leading Cutter with a piece of string," said Sadowski. "That's all we need to ride them. We don't have to put bits in their mouths."
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Birkholzer, meantime, looped a halter rope around the neck of Shana, a 4-year-old filly she is just beginning to ride, and led the horse into the arena. She and Darman have very different backgrounds with horses. Birkholzer, 40, began riding as a child in her native Germany and has worked with the animals for the last 10 years. She started as a therapeutic riding instructor, then became the director of a therapeutic riding business. Now she is an equine-based "life coach" who guides clients to handle horses in order to build their own confidence and assess important events in their lives such as career changes.
By contrast, Darman, 60, a former executive with the Gillette Corporation in Boston who's now retired, had only occasionally ridden horses before meeting Birkholzer several years ago. The couple, who previously lived in West Bridgewater, began trail riding together. That went well until two years ago, when Cutter began galloping during a ride in Raynham. Unable to slow him, Darman was thrown and suffered torn tendons and a torn rotator cuff in his left shoulder. He was also left with a lingering fear of getting back on a horse.
Looking back, he blames himself, saying he wasn't experienced enough to control Cutter during the run and that the horse picked up on that. "Their sensing abilities are off the charts," Darman says. "I wasn't showing enough leadership, and Cutter responded to that by running hard and then bucking me off ... but there was no malice on his part."
Sadowski has had Darman and Birkholzer build their relationships and confidence with Cutter and their other horses with repeated "groundwork" - getting a horse to follow their lead and instructions without riding them. In the arena, Birkholzer walked alongside Shana, loosely holding the horse's rope halter, and the filly matched her gait, speeding up when she jogged, then stopping when Birkholzer stopped. Birkholzer then arched her shoulders slightly and stepped backward, and Shana stepped backward as well.
"Excellent," Sadowski observed. After watching Darman do similar exercises with Cutter, he had Darman ride the horse around the arena. Darman alternated Cutter's speed and then stopped and dismounted a few times, using his legs as well as arm and hip movements to instruct the horse. "Feel your feet, feel your body and feel his energy," said Sadowski as he stood watching. "See if you can get him to walk just a little slower now.
"There's a whole vocabulary of feel-based movements," Sadowski explained, noting that horses don't respond much to verbal commands, though they are sensitive to a person's tone. "They'll do whatever is in their nature to do if you present it to them in a way they can understand." After observing Darman, Sadowski traded places with him and rode Cutter himself, using subtle pressure from his legs and hips to guide the horse around the arena.
These days, Darman says, he's feeling much more confident riding Cutter, though some days are better than others. Birkholzer, for her part, says she's grateful for the additional ways Sadowski has shown her to communicate with her horses. "When you can be with a horse and have that kind of relationship," she says, "it's really a sacred moment."
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Sadowski got an early look at horses when he was growing up on a family farm in Sunderland. A neighbor, Frank Darling, had a team of them. "I was fascinated and thought that this was beautiful," he says. As a young man, he lived in Haydenville, across the street from a blacksmith, Alan Nelson, who shoed horses and also led sleigh and hay rides.
Sadowski's own path, though, took him in a different direction, including a stint in the Navy and then on to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he earned a degree in education in 1974. Afterward he taught first and fourth grade in Williamsburg for about 12 years. He was married at the time and raising two daughters. Aside from admiring his neighbor's horses, he didn't give the animals much thought.
But in 1986, the family moved to the Plainfield property - the house there, on a dirt road, dates to the 1790s - and Sadowski bought a horse for his one of daughters, Sarah, who was 11 and wanted to learn to ride. Sadowski eventually took some lessons himself.
After he left teaching he ran a number of businesses, such as buying and selling antique auto parts and leading snowmobile trips in Canada. But in his spare time he was trying to learn more about what made a horse tick, a difficult task to solve on his own: "It was like having a puzzle without the box cover that shows the completed picture - it's hard to figure out how everything goes together."
He got some of his first tips by attending a clinic hosted in the late 1980s in Easthampton by a well-known horse trainer from Colorado, John Lyons, who was doing a series of clinics in the East. Then, during the 1990s, Sadowski began traveling out of state to attend classes and workshops with other nationally known horse trainers: Clinton Anderson of Texas, Pat Parelli and Dennis Reis of California, and Craig Cameron of New Mexico. He also undertook several "home-study" courses in horse training offered on DVDs.
Sadowski says he's combined that training and his own experience to create his approach. "I want people to develop a bond with their horses so they can identify problems and solve them on their own," he says.
None of this is easy, he cautions. Horses can exhibit a range of problems: biting, kicking, bucking. They can run away when approached, be unresponsive to commands, or easily spook on a trail. And a 1,200-pound animal is not something to be trifled with, he adds.
The nine horses currently on his farm include one, Moon, that he says other trainers gave up on. He's been able to calm him enough for ground demonstrations, though not for riding. He's also been working with Cortez, a wild mustang from Nevada he obtained at an auction run by the Bureau of Land Management, a division of the U.S. Interior Department. He's been working on basic handling skills with the 5-year-old, getting him used to interaction with humans and prepping him for public rides. He eventually plans to sell him.
In a small corral near his horse barn, Sadowski crouched down next to the mustang's right foreleg and gently grasped it; Cortez responded by bending his leg, allowing Sadowski to hold the bottom half in his hands as Cortez "gave" him his hoof, a bit like a dog giving a person a front paw. "And now I'm going to give it to him to take back," said Sadowski. "We've got some good communication going here."
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Paula Harrison, the events coordinator for Peace Haven Farm - she arranges client appointments, handles correspondence and writes an electronic newsletter - first got to know Sadowski a few years ago after reading about his training methods in a horse magazine. Harrison, who lived in Hinsdale, had had some bad experiences with her horse, Ahliver Twist, falling off once and feeling the horse wasn't responding to her. "I'd been through two other trainers," she says. "My confidence was shattered."
But after just a few sessions with Sadowski, Harrison says, she noticed improvements. Ahliver Twist, a 7-year-old Haflinger gelding, began responding to her commands, and she felt safer with the horse. "I was able to help him, which made me much more confident, and it was just a lot more fun for both of us. Bob seemed like someone who could communicate with a horse on a whole different level."
Not only did things go well with Harrison's horse, but they went well with Sadowski, too: She moved to Plainfield to be with him. "Now I can really see just how good he is with horses and how patient he is with students," says Harrison.
Missy Lyon, the Pittsfield rider, agrees. "Bob is motivational, he's spiritual and he's very positive," she says. "He watches everything you do, and he doesn't miss anything - he takes you seriously."
Though it took him awhile to get to it, Sadowski is at a high point in his career. He has work he loves in a beautiful setting. He and Harrison can ride trails from their pastures right up into state forests to the northwest. And in working with horses, he says, he's continually learning new things; his respect for the animals keeps growing.
"Developing a relationship with a horse," he says, "is what it's all about."
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.
