It's Not The Spook, It's What Happens Next - Christine Beattie - S4 E31

SPEAKER_03 0:13

Hi, I'm Barbara O'Brien. I'm an animal trainer and photographer, and I'd like to welcome you to the Empathetic Trainer.

SPEAKER_04 0:26

Today I'm talking with Christine Beattie. Christine is a horsewoman, carriage driving trainer, and educated with a really interesting background. She spent over 25 years working with horses, including a lot of real-world driving and city environments. What I was really drawn to with her work is her focus on communication and relationship, especially through driving, which is something we don't hear talked about all that often. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Welcome to the Epithetic Trainer.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

unknown 0:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 0:57

Well, um, I'm in um very wet Wisconsin, uh, you know, April. It's early April. Where uh why don't you give us an idea of where you're located?

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Yeah, so I'm in Calgary, Alberta, um in western Canada. Um and we uh mid-April, we have been we have winter one day, spring the next. So it's been you know, four inches of snow and then uh nice and sunny and warm, and then another dump of snow and then sunny and warm.

SPEAKER_04 1:25

So the story of our story of our life here too in in uh northern Wisconsin. I get it. I get it. All right. Well, that's April. She's a mean girl, so thank you. Well, okay, so um driving horses, you know, that's it's uh not as near as many drivers or reinsmen as they they be called um as there are riders. And I think gosh, every horse would benefit from from driving training. So let's just start out with how did you get into driving in the first place?

SPEAKER_01 1:54

That's a great question. And I laugh because I got into driving quite by accident. Um, so I grew up riding. I grew up in the hunter jumper world. Um, and when I went to university out on the West Coast, I you know, finished my first year of university and I needed a summer job. I had chosen to stay in my college town um for the summer. And so, you know, I'm scrolling through online job postings as you do. And this would have been 2008, I guess. And I I saw a posting for uh it was actually for a ticket salesperson um for one of the local carriage tour companies. And I thought, okay, that could be cool. That would, you know, let me kind of be around horses, be outside, um, you know, certainly worse summer jobs out there. And so I applied for the position. And in my interview, the manager said, Well, do you have any horse experience? And I said, Well, yeah, I've been I've been riding for 10 years. And he says, Oh, well, would you like to be a carriage driver? I said, I've I've never driven a carriage, I don't know the first thing. He says, That's okay. Yeah. You're he's seriously, but you're a horse person, you know horses. We can teach you to drive. So I said, Okay, sure. And, you know, I had no idea at that point what I was getting myself into and where that was gonna lead. Um but I so I signed on as a carriage driver and basically got a week's crash course in how to drive a horse, how to maneuver a carriage in the city, in traffic, in you know, tourism, people, all of the activity. Um now, the interesting thing, like a week doesn't sound like a lot of time, but a week of eight-hour days is more than the average student puts in in a year in terms of actual teaching, learning time. Um, so it's a very, very different environment than you know, if you're used to kind of one lesson a week, maybe two lessons a week if you're lucky. Um it's a whole different thing when you're sitting on that seat for six, seven, eight hours a day all day, and surrounded by people doing the same thing. And so I, you know, certainly in the beginning felt like I had no idea what was going on. And I I remember, you know, not not only having to learn how to drive the horse, but also needing to learn where to go, all the different tour routes, all of the history. Because of course I have to give a guided tour and have to keep these passengers entertained at the same time. So I'm, you know, simultaneously learning the driving side of things, but also the the tour guide side of things. And I was, especially in that time, that period of my life, extremely, extremely introverted. And so the horsemanship part was honestly the least of my concerns starting out. Um, but I remember, you know, after that first week of training, the first day that I was on my own, and I was I was fortunate to have a really um a whole herd of really experienced driving horses who knew the job, knew the routes, just knew, knew what to do and really didn't need a lot from me other than, you know, which route are we doing at this particular point in time? And I remember getting to a point to getting to a T intersection and thinking, I don't even remember whether to turn right or left here. And I just said, no, so it's my horse, okay, walk on, and just looked at which way he started to turn and just went with it. Because I knew that this horse knew far more than I did at that point. And, you know, it's very much like if you grew up uh riding school horses and you have those real schoolmasters who just take care of you. And I was really fortunate to have those horses to kind of get me started. And then as that season went along, you know, you put in, like I said, six, seven, eight hours a day, that adds up really fast. And a few months in, you know, then I start to kind of feel like I know what I'm doing. And so they started to move me on to some of the horses that were not quite as maybe not quite as experienced or just needed a little bit of input from the driver. Um, and that was when I really started to learn the driving part of things. Um, because you know, on those schoolmasters, the horse just does what the horse needs to do, and you're kind of along for the ride, you know, hoping for the best in some ways. But once I move, kind of graduated into that next tier of horses, then, and there's still horses that have lots of experience in the job, they know what to do, but maybe they just have that little quirk, or there's that one thing that they don't like, or there's just, you know, there's a bit more, they just need a little bit more input from their driver, which starts to make it more of a partnership. And by that point, you know, I I had kind of enough, I had I had done the thing, done the tours, done the routes enough times that I was like, okay, I I kind of have my feet under me. I kind of have a sense of what we're going, what we're what we're doing. I can, you know, babble about the history without having to think too hard about it. And so then I got to start paying a lot more attention to my horse. And that was when I really started to learn a lot because the cool thing about driving is you can see your whole horse, right? You're sitting behind him. So you can see his ears, you can see his neck, you can see his back, you can see the movement of his pelvis that as a rider, you know, you're trying to feel, but you never get to actually see with your eyes. And when you're driving, you see his whole body or her whole body. And so, you know, having the background in horsemanship that I had, well, now I'm spending six, seven, eight hours a day observing the horse. And, you know, you start to notice the slightest little twitch or the slightest little shift of weight, or, you know, the things that as a rider you feel. As a driver, you feel them in your lines, certainly, but you also see them visually. Yeah. And so then I really started to kind of make it an experiment in some ways that, okay, what do I, what does this horse need from me? What can I do to help him to go even better? To help him, okay, I notice, you know, today maybe he's feeling a little bit stiff and just turns to the right, just ever so slightly, you know, things that three months ago I wouldn't have noticed. But I've got to know this horse and I've got to know this job, and now I'm noticing, oh, there's a slight unevenness there. Well, what can I do to help smooth that out? And, you know, I almost became like a little bit of a scientist in a way that I'm just, okay, if I do this, how does my horse respond? Oh, okay, I totally got in his way there. Okay, won't do that again. What if I do this instead? And so in that way, I really got to learn through a lot of miles and a lot of trial and error what each of these different horses needed from me. And I started to feel, you know, patterns and similarities. And oh, if I close my hands in this way instead of that way, I tend to get a softer response. And and that's when I really, I think, started to grow as a driver. And, you know, I remember moments, and then it was around that time, I guess, a couple months into my first season, that they then started to train me on teams or pairs. Um, that's a whole thing. And that's a whole other thing, exactly. And so that was kind of a crash course on its own. And then the same process, right? You start out with the easiest ones, and then you gradually progress to the horses that need a little bit more from the driver. And, you know, I can I can think kind of going into my second season where I really started to drive some of those more um in in some ways more complicated horses. I don't, I don't love the word complicated, um, but again, horses that just needed a little bit more from me. And and I remember, you know, the the route that we would take driving these teams, we were, it was, we were doing um tours for the cruise ship passengers. So it was a big cruise ship, is a big cruise ship port. And we would with with the teams, we had these big trolleys. We could see 20 passengers, we would pick them up right at the cruise ship dock, take them on an hour tour through town and back to the cruise ship. Um, really lovely way to see the city for folks just in town for the night. And part of that route came right past the carriage stand where all the single horse carriages were waiting. And so there was always kind of this moment where it's it's like you're parading past all of the other drivers. And I have some really fond memories of, especially as I started to drive the more, you know, quote unquote advanced horses, that I would drive past that carriage stand and some of the other drivers, some my colleagues, some at some of the other operators, but they would just say, Oh, Christine, your team looks great tonight. Or even fewer words, you know, looking good. Or even just a smile and a thumbs up. But that feedback from drivers who I knew had been driving for, you know, 10, 15, 20 plus years, those little moments of feedback as we came past gave me so much confidence that I was on the right track.

SPEAKER_04 11:09

Well, this amazes me listening to you because you are very young, it sounds like, you know, in perspective. I was responsible like the safety alone, you're responsible 15, 20 passengers. And you know, if you're what 19, 20, 21, you know, however old you are at that point. I mean, part of my mind goes like, wow, me at 19, would I really want to be responsible for the safety of like, you know, and what if there was like kids who fall off or, you know, any number of crazy things. I mean, I know you have a safety talk, but people are still people. Um, so, and not only the safety of the people, because I'm sure they were important to you, but I know that the safety of the horses was uppermost in your mind over anything else because people are on their own in a way, but horses are doing something because we've asked them to. And so I know just from talking to you for the five minutes, that they how they felt and what they felt about their job was like uppermost in your mind when you can. Absolutely. He's a little off. If he's feeling this, he's feeling that. I love hearing that. I mean, this is I wish everyone was that thoughtful of you know of the my question, right? You answered a lot of my questions that I already had because you're a great, great speaker. But um, did you notice in your work were the drivers as thoughtful as you, or were there some drivers more like, eh, it's a machine almost, you know, like do the thing, dah, dah, dah. Or were they all drawn to this profession because they did care about their horses so much?

SPEAKER_01 12:33

I would say largely the folks that I worked with were very, very thoughtful and uh really do put the horse first and foremost. And, you know, it was an interesting, it was an interesting dynamic. I didn't realize it at the time, but because we were a university town, almost all of the drivers were people like me, right? Horse girls who'd gone to university and then ended up in this summer job working with horses. And, you know, there was certainly a handful of what I'm gonna call career carriage drivers, folks who'd been doing this as long as I'd been alive, and then some. And you know, wonderful, wonderful horse people and wonderful mentors, um almost all of them, certainly. Um, but I would say the the the the top of mind concern for everybody was was the horses and the and how do I say it? In part of that putting the horses first is also putting the drivers first and putting the especially the new drivers, supporting the drivers to be able to support their horses. And oh, that's very good. I can remember one time. This would have been I actually I worked a little bit through the winters as well, um, especially around the Christmas season. I would pick up a bunch of shifts, um, kind of during the exam break and things like that. And I can remember one evening where I was driving a horse who I very much adored, and he was a horse who had a little bit of herd-boundness to him. Um not terrible, but you know, when we kind of got to that point of the night where everybody was packing up to head home, he wasn't about to be left behind. And at that time, there was three different companies. We all kind of worked on the same street corner. We worked very much in tandem, but it was three separate operations. And um my co-worker at my company had, I think, had headed in for the night maybe a half hour earlier. And so I was kind of packing up the last things to head in. And the other companies are doing the same. And a couple of the gals at one of the other companies recognized that I was on my own. I had this horse who was a little bit herdbound in moments, and they really went out of their way to make sure that I didn't get left behind, that I was good, that we all headed in together. It didn't matter that we were working for separate operations. We were all on the same team. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:09

Yeah, I want to explain herdbound for people in our audience that might not understand. Herdbound is when horses are um well, horses are a prey animal, so they get attacked and you know, in the wild. So in their mind, being alone is bad. And the herd means safety. And so as we train them and work with them and things like that, they have to learn that you can be safe with humans and you don't have to worry about being with the herd so much. And some horses that takes a lot longer than others, or you know, the right kind of handling. And so, in a stressful situation, you know, unless he's really confident in his handler, a horse, especially one that is much more sensitive and attuned to being wanting to be with the herd, can get out of hand. I mean, can start forgetting you're even there and can be starting to pull or rear or really um have big reactions, which in a city setting can be extremely dangerous. You know, it's one thing if they do it on your farm and they run back to the fence. It's another if they, you know, whatever you've seen videos, you know, where like the horse runs down the street. It's just, you know, it's traumatic to watch because the horse is terrified. Obviously, these people cared enough about you and cared enough about the horse to make sure that you weren't put in a situation where you're the last horse standing. Like all of a sudden he looks around and goes, wait, there's nobody here. I need to panic. Um, that's gratifying. I'm grateful, and we're all, of course, gratified to know that the horses come first. And that's how, you know, that's how we want these places to be. So people can enjoy the unique experience of a carriage ride. I mean, I can't think of anything more wonderful, you know. Of course, we want, you know, the horses to be taken care of, and it sounds like they were well that's pretty cool. I um uh you're you know how it is when you talk to an, you know, as an animal trainer, I tell people want to tell me about their dog. You know, I tell them, I gotta tell you about my driving because you know we work together, right? Um, I have Morgans, and I've always had Morgan's so compact, you know, foundation style Morgans, and quite quite a few of them are trained to drive, which is really nice. You know, a lot of them drive. And um, when I was very when I was younger and I have four sons, and they're all adults and grandchildren now, but when they were little, we lived on a different farm. I had this old retired Morgan mare that drove. Now, did I know how to drive? No. Did she know how to drive? Yes. You know, and I had a little two-wheel cart, and my farrier showed me how to hitch up the harness so that I didn't, you know, at least I could do that hopefully correctly, right? Wonderful. And I would plop my little um, I only had two sons at the time because um, and so what they would be like three and you know, four, maybe. No helmets, nothing like that. Because you know, what do I know? Plop them on that little bench seat, nothing to hold them in. And we drive to daycare, which was in a farm community, so it was two miles away. Oh delightful. I love it. Drive my little horse because she was an angel. And you know, you could always tell, like when I was driving, because there'd be these tracks that are crooked, you kissed my hand, but they'd be crooked because I, you know, she would just kind of walk and I'd be like, I don't know how to I I was a rider, I know how to ride, you know, been riding forever. I ride English, so I understand a direct rain. But you know, it's just what a forgiving. When you talked about those horses that were forgiving, you know, we never had an accident. She was, you know, I knew her until we had her until she finally passed, but what a wonderful horse, you know. And then years later, come across another Morgan horse and they said, Um, she knows how to drive. And I should know better by now because I'm, you know, 40 years old at this point. We moved to this where we live now, this farm um here. And um we have 40 acres and a long half-mile driveway. And so it comes up and makes an L shape. And I said, Well, she knows how to drive, let's hitch her up. You know, like do they give her time to adapt? And I give her, no. Do they do any ground driving to make sure? No, no, no. Hitch her up, start the cart, go down, we have a little bit of a go down the half mile all the way to the end of the driveway, which goes downhill. And that's fine. She's handling it, right? And then I go, Well, we're gonna go back up the hill, so maybe I'll ask her to trot so she can, you know, get a little momentum to make it a little bit easier to go up the hill. Because it was a mild hill, but you know, whatever. I'm in there by myself, thank goodness. And um, it's just a little bike cart. I mean, it's no weight to it at all. So I ask her to trot and the sign on the back, there's there was a sign that for slow vehicle, you know, orange sign starts to flap. That makes a very funny noise. And she, because I hadn't bothered to like practice anything or do anything with helpers, you know, just ignorance, took off at a full gallop. I mean, I've never had a horse bolt under, you know, because little teacup, the one we used to drive, she was so sweet, you know. So I thought to myself, hmm, we're heading straight up the driveway, quarter mile now, at a full gallop, and it turns a sharp 90 degrees. Right. I mean, just there's no way I'm gonna make that turn. It's just we will, we will crash. I got down lower. Like I thought, I better not be sitting up. I better get down low. And I got down as low as I could in the cart. And I'm holding the reins, and I'm thinking, I gotta land this plane, you know, because die. And uh luckily it was uh June, it was my birthday. I'm sorry, July 3rd was my birthday, and there's alfalfa field directly, you know, at the at the before we have to turn. I thought I'll just run her right into the alfalfa field because that will slow the wheels down, you know. So we go into that alfalfa field, flying all over the place. It was probably a foot and a half, you know, two feet tall. And finally, finally, she stops and she stops. She turns around and looks back at me, and she's like, What? What do you you know, why? Why? You know, and then um I never ever drove her again because I felt so bad. I scared her so, you know, what a terrible thing to do. And I actually I have not even driven since then. Okay. So um we're gonna talk about your course before we go today. But I'm like, you know, I've got six Morgan horses. Four of them are already riding, two of them are young. There is no reason, because I still have a really good harness, can probably get a better cart. There's no reason I can't do this again because it is a joy to drive, and you'll you'll get into that more. But now I finished my driving stories, enough about me. But it's like, this is why we need to learn. You can't just pick up the reins because you know how to ride and think that you know how to drive. That's what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yes, this is a really good point. And I love that you brought that up, Barbara, because I think that's a really common misconception that riders have. And I think, you know, my example, excuse me, my example of you know, learning to drive in town and these horses who are just so well educated and so happy in their work, and they make it look easy. And, you know, for drivers starting out like myself, in a lot of ways, it was easy. And I think it's easy to get lulled into the sense that driving is very simple and you just kind of pick up the reins and give a little cluck and off you go, and nothing bad can happen. And, you know, I think your experience is certainly not unique and probably not even uncommon because you know, the the amount of skill and education of the horse that it takes to make driving look easy, I think is really underestimated. In general. And, you know, I would, I think, as riders, you know, when you see that carriage horse going by, or you see that team of drafts, or you see that mini, or whatever it is, I really want you to appreciate the the time and the miles and the the training, the education that has gone into making that look so smooth and easy. Because it really is a testament to what has happened behind the scenes to get the horse and the driver to that point.

SPEAKER_04 22:34

That's a that it brings me to my next question. What changes for the horse when we're not on their back?

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Ah, that's a great question. So the biggest difference is that we don't have any direct physical contact with the horse. Right? When you're riding, your seat, your legs are directly in contact with the horse's body, right? Through a saddle, perhaps, but you have your bodies are connected, right? And you're able to move as one being. When we're driving, oftentimes I can't even reach my horse, let alone have any sort of direct contact between my horse's body and my own. So the only point of contact we have is through those reins, right? And so not only that, but I'm behind the horse. So think about how, you know, if you're leading your horse, you're just you're bringing your horse in from the pasture into the barn or to the arena or whatever it is you're doing, and you're just leading your horse in hand, and your horse is likely gonna position herself either kind of beside you or a little bit behind you, right? Most commonly, that's what we're gonna see. And when we're riding, we're we're together, right? My heart is essentially over top of her heart. But when we're driving, I'm asking this horse to step out 10, 15, 20 feet in front of me. And I need her to stay attentive to me behind her, but she needs to have the self-confidence to step out in front. And if we're driving a single horse, she's stepping out in front by herself. And that is a very vulnerable position for a prey animal to put herself in.

SPEAKER_03 24:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

And so I think this is one of the biggest pieces that we really have to educate. Now, some horses come by it more naturally than others. Of course, personality um is a part of the equation, but most horses are wired to be followers, not leaders. Yeah, right. Most horses are wired to tuck into line in the herd, follow each other. And when we drive a horse, we're really asking the opposite. We need that horse to step out in front by herself, calmly, bravely, and attentively. And so that's a piece that's very different than riding, that we really have to deliberately educate. So we have no no direct physical contact. We have that horse way out in front of us. And then the other thing that's worth considering about driving, and this really plays into your story a few minutes ago, is a driving horse tends to be exposed to a lot more things than a riding horse. Yeah. Right? Even if you're just driving down to the end of the driveway and back, you've got that sign, that that slow vehicle sign clanging on the back of your vehicle. You've got the sound of wheels on gravel. You've got most, most carriages have some sort of squeak or rattle or creak or something to them. Sure. Right. That's and all these pieces are just very, very normal in the driving horse world. And then often, you know, you described taking your kids down the road to daycare. So how often do we take that driving horse right into traffic in whatever capacity? It may not be right in downtown, but you know, there's this feeling that we can use this mode of transportation to go somewhere. I used to love in my my old neighborhood, I would go for drives down, we had a little corner store kind of in the middle of this farm community, and we would drive up to the corner store and we'd get an ice cream cone. And we'd hang out in the parking lot at the corner store and have an ice cream cone and chat to the neighbors. And it was so delightful. But, you know, we're we're really, we're out in the world in a way that the riding horse may or may not ever experience. And so there's just a certain amount of life skills and exposure to the human world that the driving horse really needs to have that a riding horse may or may not ever get.

SPEAKER_04 26:44

So true. Because a riding horse, you can grow across country, more or less. You know, if you're trial riding, you're trial riding, right? Um, if you're driving, you need some kind of surface. And usually that surface has other forms of traffic than, you know, unless you have vast amounts of land, you know. That's exactly five places. Um, you know, now we lived out in the country, so we were on gravel roads, so we weren't, you know, although we did drive down to the um place that had Friday fish fries, you know, so probably four or five miles away. Um, so but you know, that but it wasn't like in town in town. And when you're in a city, that's a whole nother I mean the smell of um so for sure. Um you're like so when what is sorry, how does ground driving help people understand their horse better? And let's explain ground driving for someone who might not even know what that is.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Absolutely. So ground driving is quite simply, it's driving a horse without a vehicle. So I'm standing behind my horse in the position where if I was on a carriage, where I would be seated, right? Put my head in essentially the same place, but we have no vehicle. So I'm just walking along behind my horse. And so I really think that ground driving is a fantastic training for all horses. And I agree. You can think of it as cross-training, right? Developing skills that you may or may not be giving a lot of attention to when you're riding. Um, and a minute ago I was talking about that horse having to be out in front of you and the confidence that that requires and the communication skills that that requires. And I find that these are skills that every horse can really benefit from. Um, whether or not you ever intend to hitch that horse to a vehicle, there's so much that can be gained um physically and mentally from ground driving. So the communication skills, the um, and you mentioned a few minutes ago the direct reining. And so when we're ground driving, we have those two reins and we have our voice, and we might choose to carry a whip. And that's that's all that we have. And so it's a really nice opportunity to educate your horse's mouth, educate your own hands. Um and then from that position behind the horse, you can also have influence over his whole body in a way that is different than, say, groundwork or lunging work. Um, you can see the length of his spine. Now, if you're driving draft horses, say, you're gonna be kind of looking at your horse's tail. You're not gonna be able to see over top of his ears, but you can really see the way he's moving his body, and you can influence the way that he's moving his body and the way that he's carrying himself in a way that's different from other types of groundwork.

unknown 29:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:33

I'm gonna explain groundwork for our audience. Groundwork with horses, usually you're leading them, you're standing next to them, or in the either they're right next to you or kind of behind you a little bit, and you may be going over obstacles or you know, turning left and right, things like that, making them back up. Lunging is when you have the horse out some distance from you on a line and you're circling them, and that's kind of a gymnastic exercise, um, building things. And you would start with ground driving. I am sorry, you would start with this groundwork and work your way into the longer lines of being behind your horse. You can't just run up your horse, throw some lines on him, stand behind him, and say, go. Uh that sounds kind of crazy. Uh so um you you know, in your course, I'm sure you talked to people how to start safely, and it's more, I imagine, in the beginning, you are next to them as you work your way moving backwards, um, things like that. So it's important. Safety is really important because uh they can't see you back there as well as when you're next to them, and that's your voice is important, your presence is important, and the communication with those reins is extremely important because that's what you have.

SPEAKER_01 30:34

That's absolutely it. So when we're teaching a horse to ground drive, again, whether or not you ever intend to hook to a vehicle, we we start from that leading position and we do our groundwork, we do our leading work, we teach all of those basic skills, and then we move into a lunging position, slowly start to send the horse out on a bit of a longer line. Um, and then we can sort of gradually morph from that lunging position. Eventually we'll we'll double lunge or long line where we add a second line, and then we can kind of slide from there into a ground driving position. So it's a very gradual progression that happens.

SPEAKER_04 31:11

I can see this as a real confidence builder for horses.

SPEAKER_01 31:15

It really is. It really, really is.

SPEAKER_04 31:17

So, what do you watch for to know horse is really with you? You know, when you're starting from the very beginning, I know when I'm working mine and they are I'm shaping a behavior and they do it, and I say, you know, like, oh, well done, you, and they feel that that you know, affirmation, they kind of go like, yes, you know, I I did it. And and it just builds on that. Um, because I like to work with a more uh happy, I like to happy them up. I know it's same thing with dogs and males I'm working with. So how do you how do you know a horse is really with you? Like when does it click? Does it something make you go like, okay, he gets it? You know, we're getting there. And I know it's every day a little bit of that, but there's kind of two main things that I'm looking for.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

The first is the ears. Um that you know, before I give my horse an aid, a command, I'm looking that that those ears are pointed towards me, right? Wherever I am, if I'm beside the horse, if I'm kind of to to the horse's hip, if I'm directly behind the horse, those ears are coming back to me. If I don't have the ears, I don't have the horse. Um and then the second piece I'm looking for is in the response. So when I give the aid, when I give the command to walk on or whatever it is, do I get a smooth response easily? Right. So in my groundwork early on, I'm looking for a feeling that I can give the aid, and then my horse and I can respond together. So rather than like a follow-the-leader type where I go and the horse follows, I'm positioning myself beside the horse. I'm asking whether it's with my body or with my voice, depending on you know where the horse is at, but I'm asking the horse to walk on, and I'm looking that the horse can respond to my aid and that we can walk together. So there's the sense that we are going together rather than she is following behind me. And so then as we kind of migrate that position, like I was describing, and we eventually end up in our ground driving position, I'm looking that I can give that aid, and the horse is stepping into my hands. And nice. So, and this is the other piece, you know, a ground driving, as you get a little bit more experienced with it, whether it's with your driving horse, riding horse, whatever, is we're really teaching, we really have the opportunity here to teach that horse to reach into your hands, to reach into the bit that this feeling of contact comes from the horse stretching into your hands rather than just pulling back against the horse. It's the horse is actually seeking you by stretching into that bit, into those reins. Um, and then, you know, when I feel that horse in my hands, it's it's like putty, right? I can just in what I do with my hands, once we have that contact where I'm feeling the horse, she's feeling me, well, now I can shape her body as she moves forward. And the other piece I want to include in there, in you know, skills that the driving horse needs to really understand, is what I like to call uh being self-propelled. And what I mean by that is when I give, when I ask my horse to walk, you know, I give my walk on, I give my step up, whatever my voice command is gonna be, that my horse steps into this nice, comfortable, flowing walk and maintains that gate on her own until I ask for something different. Right. When I'm behind her, I don't want to have to ask, walk on, walk on, walk on, walk on. I don't want to have to keep asking, right? It's it's almost as Simon says that once I give her one um aid or one command or one question, she's gonna just keep doing that until I give her something different. So once I say, okay, walk on, now that horse is stepping into this lovely walk, I can shape it, trusting that she's gonna maintain that walk. Right? So she has her job, I have my job. This creates the sense of partnership.

SPEAKER_04 35:23

I love that. And I think the horse is gonna feel good about that. You know, I mean, if he's been handled well, he's going to feel good about that because I know what I'm supposed to do. You're being congruent. You are matching your body and your brain are matching what you want the horse to do. You're being clear with your direction and not being wishy-washy, which is why your lines when you drive are straight. And when I was driving, my lines, uh, the tracks of the tires were quick because my hands weren't steady and I wasn't clear in what I was asking. So uh that leads into my next question. What was the biggest, what are the biggest mistakes you see people make when they start driving?

SPEAKER_01 36:01

I would say the biggest mistake is not having enough contact in those rates. And now this is gonna depend a little bit on what style of riding you're coming from. So if you're coming from something like dressage, maybe hunter jumper, um, this is gonna be easier for you. If you're coming from anything western where it with an indirect rain, this is gonna be a learning curve. Is that when we're driving, we actually need quite a bit of contact in those reins. And so what I want you to do, if you're a rider coming into driving, I want you to think about your hands and your reins more like your seat when you're riding than like your hands. So the job of my hands on those reins is not just about pointing my horse's nose in a direction. Certainly that's in there, but it's also largely about feeling what's happening in my horse's body. I need enough contact in those reins that I can feel my horse's hind legs, I can feel her hips, I can feel her spine, I can feel the movement of her body, I can close my eyes and still be able to feel exactly what's happening in her body. If you don't have enough contact in those reins, that becomes impossible. Now, I want you to notice I'm saying contact and not something like pressure or pull. So, what makes this work, right? We're not water skiing behind our horse. That's not what we're going for. That would be a mistake. That would be a mistake because that would have your horse feeling like she's stepping into a brick wall, which is also not going to work.

SPEAKER_04 37:42

So it's a good analogy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

The the trick here is I have a good hold of my reins, my fingers are closed, I'm feeling into my horse's body, but my elbows are elastic. So my shoulders and my elbows are able to move back and forth with my horse's body, right? So that and this is how I feel her is that my upper body is like there's there's a strength here, but there's also a relaxation, there's a softness in my joints that I can move along with her body, just like you do when you're riding, and your hips, your legs, your lower back are following the movement of her body. That's what happens in our arms and our upper body when we're driving. That's what we're doing. And so the biggest mistake mistake. Yeah, the biggest mistake is just, and it's I think it's becoming more common in, especially in some of the natural horsemanship circles we have today, where there's this really this focus on lightness. And I think this idea of lightness gets misconstrued in a driving context because if we don't have enough contact, our horse feels like she's stepping all by herself into a black hole.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

There's I could see that.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

Right? That feeling through the reins is the only contact she has with us. And so we need to really make the most of that. We need her to feel that we are here, right? I'm here, I'm behind you, I have your back, we are in this together. You're not out there by yourself. And what I'll often see as a coach, as an instructor, is I'll see a student ask the horse to go and nothing will happen. And it's because the reins are floppy. And if those reins are floppy, the horse has no idea if you're there behind her. And she has enough of a sense of self-preservation to not just step on a whim in a prayer, if you will.

SPEAKER_04 39:40

Wow, that's that's very good. What uh we've been in the real world a lot with horses, and like we talked about before, usually if you're driving a horse, um, you end up with something around you, some kind of traffic, you know, bicycles, people, dogs, uh, because you're having to use a road of some sort most of the time. So, what does a horse need from us in a chaotic environment? You mentioned before how those horses really need to know how to handle the world around them more than, say, a regular riding horse.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

That's an awesome question. And the biggest thing here is your horse needs to know what to do when she's unsure. So, and you know, especially having spent many years training horses to work in the city in these urban environments, you cannot possibly prepare that horse for everything she's ever going to encounter. You you just can't. There's always gonna be curveballs, there's always gonna be things that are new. So, you know, certain things we want to introduce the horse to. We want to introduce her to cars, to trucks, to trailers, to motorcycles, to, you know, buses, right? We can kind of gradually ramp things up in that way. But the bigger skill here is I want that horse to know how to respond sensibly when something comes totally out of left field that we couldn't prepare for. Right. And the example that I love to use on this one is when I was working in the city, every year, about the well, I think it was in May that it usually happened, the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation runs, I assume they still run it, um, a really delightful fundraiser where you get into groups of like 20 people and you set a fundraising goal. And, you know, the whole, the whole team works to raise this money for the charity. And your prize or your celebration, once you hit that goal, is you get to do a tour through your city center. And this thing like travels across the country, and it spends a few days in every major city across the country. Okay. So it's a bright red, 20-seat, I think it's 20-seat bicycle. So we've got five rows of four seats, all with pedals. You've got a driver at the front who's got pedals and you know, a steering wheel. And then at the back of this contraption, there is an entire percussion section. We've got tambourines, we've got shakers, we've got noisemakers, we've got flags trailing behind. Oh my. It is absolute chaos. It is so delightful. It's like I love the premise of the fundraiser. I think it's fantastic. So this big red bike shows up for like three days every spring. I can't prepare my horse for this. I don't have a 20-seat bicycle, right? Like, and it doesn't even stick around for long enough for the horse to get used to it.

SPEAKER_04 42:34

No, it's just pretty shocking.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

There's going to be two or three days a year where we just have to deal with that and we don't get to know when it's going to come around the corner and surprise us. So that horse needs to have the skill to see this thing, check in with me, and that we can have, you know, a bit of a conversation, the horse and I, to figure out what we're going to do with this. And so it's, you know, it's not desensitization, it's learning to learning to communicate, learning to problem solve, trusting that partnership. And that goes both ways. I need to trust my horse, and my horse needs to trust me. Right. When we're going, when we're heading into town, if I'm like, oh no, I'm afraid he's going to spook and I'm not trusting my horse, I'm giving him absolutely nothing to work with. Right. Right. So I need to trust that horse, which means I need to trust the training I have given that horse. I need to trust the education that my colleague has given that horse or that the trainer I bought him from, right? I need to trust that my horse has the foundational education to be able to work through this situation. And then I need to trust that the partnership between the horse and myself, that we know how to communicate through this situation together. Absolutely. And it's not always going to be perfect, right? It's not always going to be totally smooth. It's not always going to be seamless. But if we can get through it, if we can, you know, that horse might spook. And this is the other piece of that is, and this is especially for anybody out there who's training a driving horse. I don't actually care too terribly much if my horse spooks. Right. Horses are prey animals. They're going to spook. I spook. I startle. Right. That's just what I'm interested in is what happens next. I want to know that that horse can have a moment of spook and then take a deep breath, come back to me and recover, and that 30 seconds later you would not know that anything just happened. That's the skill that makes or breaks the day. Right.

SPEAKER_04 44:51

And that that's all about trust and being congruent again. Exactly. That we can count on you to keep him safe. Otherwise, he's going to do it for himself. And that's exactly the best judgment.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

If the horse doesn't trust me, then he's on his own making his own decisions, and then we're in trouble. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Because then we're dealing with a prey animal with a flight response making the decisions that a prey animal makes in a flight response. With something attached to him, which is a few more than a few. With something attached to him.

SPEAKER_04 45:22

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So what does what do horses end up teaching people through this kind of work? What do people learn from being around driving horses? I love this question.

SPEAKER_01 45:35

People learn a lot about themselves. Most of my students, sooner or later, will give me this funny look and they'll go, we're not actually training the horse right now, are we? And I go, oh, you caught on. I spend a lot of time as a coach, as a trainer. I spend a lot of time finding ways to make it look like we're training the horse when we're actually training the human. And where this shows up more than anywhere, um, and I think this really says a lot about our our society, our culture, our pace of life in the 21st century is a lot of people will come to me with horses who have a hard time standing still. And I have certainly been here myself. I've had to learn these skills myself. And nine times out of ten, it's not the horse that's the problem. It's the person. It's us who can't stand still, it's us who can't slow down, it's us who don't remember to breathe, who get into this rush. And then the horse just mirrors that. And then we have a horse who can't stand still, and that's when we realize there's a problem. But the root of the problem is actually not the horse at all. The root of the problem often comes back to ourselves. And this is where we really, you know, as a coach, this is where I see which drivers are going to excel and which drivers are gonna really stay stuck and struggle for a long time is whether or not they can see that this is this is a me problem. This isn't my horse. My horse is just a reflection of my own energy, what's going on in my own body, my own brain. Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_04 47:15

No, absolutely. Um, when my grandchildren come ride um and they're just learning, and I have an angel of a horse in a little Morgan mirror for them to ride. Um, and they haven't had much, we haven't had a really good spot for them now. We built an arena and we're able to actually get out of the wind and the mud and the constant rain. So um they're actually able to ride a little bit, and uh it was really wonderful. Um, my eldest grandson is riding around in a circle, and I instead of doing a pony ride kind of thing, I'm letting him actually, you know, because April's so good, that's the horse. Um, go ahead. You can you you can just, you know, walk away from me and then circle, you know, like control the horse. They're using just a halter at this point because they don't have the brain control and I don't want to pull on her mouth. Yeah. Um, and the he was so proud of himself that he was able to like she was listening to him because they were working together, you know. Like if we could teach people that right away, that like they look to each other, they're working together. And he he said, I'm a little bit afraid. And I said, That's okay, you can tell her that, that you're a little bit afraid because she can feel that, you know. So what you're saying is like, you know, we're gonna worry he's gonna spook, but then he's gonna spook because he doesn't know you're afraid of him, you know, and whatever. I loved, I love that my grandson's been around enough to understand, you know, animals have feelings, of course, and that they can share the feeling and worked with and then he he bent over and petted her and told her what a love she girl what a lovely girl she was, and that just makes you feel like, oh, you know, the boy. Uh because a lot of a lot of kids just want to get on and you know go. And it's not, you know, I love that he was sensitive, but you're exactly right. Most of the time a horse has a problem, but it's us. That's just a dog or anything else, you know.

SPEAKER_01 48:55

And sometimes we have to fake it till we make it, and that's okay, right? Sometimes you might be feeling afraid that your horse is gonna spook, or you might, you know, I find a lot of students, you know, when we first start trotting on the carriage, it feels totally different than trotting when you're riding. There is a bounce to it, and there can be fear there, and that's very normal. And, you know, sometimes we have to really focus on that breath. And and you know, I'll say to my students, we need your horse to breathe. So you need to demonstrate the kind of breath that your horse needs. Oh, Christine, I love that. You know, we're we're totally faking that until it starts to develop, and that's okay. That's okay, that's okay. If you can recognize it in yourself, you know, okay, well, I'm going to I'm going to model what I need for my horse, even though I'm totally feeling the opposite. And eventually it'll start to develop, and eventually you'll start to feel that confidence, and your horses start to feel that confidence. Confidence only comes from stepping outside of our comfort zone and surviving. That's that's the only way that we can expand that comfort zone. Now we have to be obviously sensible about that. We won't don't want to just dive straight in the deep end with no rescue plan, but we do need to dip our toe outside of that comfort zone in order for it to expand, in order for that confidence, both ourselves and our horse to develop.

SPEAKER_04 50:26

I was gonna say the horse needs that too. And we can't keep him, you know, um, in a rubber room and never let them learn anything.

SPEAKER_01 50:33

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 50:34

Build confidence.

SPEAKER_01 50:35

I have a young horse in training right now, um, and we're doing a lot of work on the road. And, you know, she's pretty okay with most cars and passenger vehicles. But then, you know, the other day we had like a pickup towing, a flat deck trail. It was empty and bouncing down the dirt road and you know, clanging and banging and making all kinds of things. And, you know, she did have a little bit of a spook. She jumped sideways, she stopped, she watched it. We stood and breathed for a couple moments, we carried on, right? She needs to have these experiences and survive them to realize that it's okay, right? There's no other way. I didn't die, I didn't get in trouble, nothing bad happened, right? Right? We carried on, we had a lovely drive. This is the only way to expand your horizons. And so we have to take, we have to be willing to take some measured risks, right? Not stupid risks, but measured risks to go, you know, I think we can go a little bit further afield, and I think we have the skills to deal with it. And some surprises might come up. It's you know, it's spring right now, so we've got you know the birds that come erupting out of the bush as they do in the spring. And you know, we need to sort of put we need to to step out of you know the safety of the farm and go out into the world, experience it, have these, oh my goodness, what was that? Oh, okay, we're fine. Okay, and then the next time it's not quite so bad, and the next time it's not quite so bad, and we just gradually build up that that tolerance and that confidence until these things become old news. And as we do this, we're building that skill of learning how to work through these things together, right?

SPEAKER_04 52:24

Right, and so they get confident together. Exactly. With the expression like, um, when you have a really good horse you're working with, you know, like, yeah, that horse would climb a tree for me, you know, if I asked her. I mean, because you you trust each other so much, you know. Totally. Um, those are usually our hard horses that we remember because of the um well, let's talk about your driving 101 course that's going to be starting up quite soon. Let's talk about that.

SPEAKER_01 52:51

Yeah, absolutely. So a few years ago, kind of during the pandemic, I I was noticing a trend where, you know, so many people, so many riders would be going onto social media, going into driving groups on on Facebook or wherever else. And okay, you know, I'm I'm trying to teach my horse to drive and I'm not quite sure where to start, or I just got this harness, does it fit okay? Or, you know, all of these sort of beginner driving questions. And, you know, for a long time, I sort of subscribed to the idea, well, green and green makes black and blue. And it's there's a lot of truth in that statement. And, you know, the the idea there is that if you're a beginner, you need an experienced horse to learn on, and an experience and a beginner horse needs an experienced driver. And certainly that is the best case scenario, there's no doubt. But the thing with driving is that not everybody has access to an experienced horse, not everybody has access to an experienced coach. And there are a lot of folks out there who really want to learn this driving thing that don't have anybody nearby to help. And so during the pandemic, when all my clinics got canceled, I went, okay, well, what can I do to create something online, something that anybody with an internet connection can access that can teach those fundamental driving skills that can help somebody who has decided they want to teach their riding horse to drive and can get them, you know, pointed in the right direction, on the right foot, and having a good time, having a safe time and learning, you know, what they're doing without having huge disasters along the way.

SPEAKER_02 54:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01 54:35

And so driving 101 is my my online course that came out of kind of that that place. And so it's it's a fully online um curriculum really geared towards riders who are new to driving. And so there's it basically the course walks you kind of through what we've been talking about from the very, very beginning, groundwork, just leading with your horse to ground driving like a pro, right? Ground driving here, there, and everywhere, like you know what you're doing, going up and down the road, all of the things, kind of right to that point where you're starting to think about being ready to hitch onto a vehicle. So driving 101 is a groundwork program. You do not need any driving equipment. I designed it that way very intentionally. Um, we can do all of this fundamental groundwork pretty much right into ground driving without spending a whole lot of money on driving gear. So we can get you, you know, beyond needing a pair of long lines, we can get you successfully ground driving your horse, and then you can decide if this is something you want to take further.

SPEAKER_04 55:44

Um ground driving is excellent for any horse. Like I have the two young horses that are not under saddle. I like letting my Morgans grow, and so I don't start them at two, you know, back them at two or three or even four very much. So ground driving is all this work I can be doing with them so they're understanding that when I finally do get, you know, and I'll have some young person get on them first, but they finally do um saddle train them, they have a clue over asking. I mean, it's such a foundation. It's such a foundation, you know.

SPEAKER_01 56:15

But that's just it. And so, you know, the people who come into this course are people who, you know, want to teach their saddle horse to ride, or like you're just describing, Barbara, folks who have young horses that want to do this groundwork before thinking about putting a rider on. And we also get folks who are experienced drivers but training a driving horse for the first time. And then we get folks who have an experienced driving horse, but they're brand new and they still want to go through those fundamental pieces so that they can actually learn what their horse knows. So there's sort of a few different types that come into the program. Um, but we really we start from the very beginning, we work through this groundwork, we work through our leading work, we get into our lunging, we spend a lot of time learning to work on the lunge line very effectively. We move into double lunging or long lining, and then eventually we move into ground drive it. And as we it's a it's a six-month curriculum. Um, some people get through it in six months, some people take a lot longer. Um we, once you join the course, you have lifetime access. So there's not any sort of pressure to keep up. Um, but if you're working your horse several days a week, you can probably get through it in six months most of the time. Um, and then kind of along the way, we're really learning about driving. So we'll, you know, we include classes about harnesses, we can include classes about carriages and different vehicles. We sometimes will bring in um guests who do different things. Recently we had a guest talk about combined driving, which is like three-day eventing, but for driving. Um, prior to that, we had a guest come in to talk about farming with horses. We so we bring in people doing all sorts of different things in the driving world to just kind of give our students a sense of what's out there, what's possible. Um, but the goal is that by the end of the course, you are ground driving your horse safely, effectively, sensibly. You're having a ton of fun, your horse is having a ton of fun. And then if you want to continue into actually putting your horse to a vehicle, now you're in the place where we can start talking about how to do that.

SPEAKER_04 58:29

Oh, that's wonderful. Wonderful. And where do people find you online? How are they getting in touch with you? We're gonna have your notes and stuff, of course, you know, connected to the podcast, but let's just say it too. How do they find you?

SPEAKER_01 58:40

Yeah, absolutely. So online, I'm ChristineBitaEquine.com. Um, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube when I remember, I'm at Christine BDEquine. Um, you'll find me most active on Facebook. And I also have um a weekly email newsletter that you can get to from my website, you can get to from my Facebook page. It's pinned at the top of my Facebook page. It's probably the easiest way to find it. Um, but I do send a weekly newsletter that's just it's it's training tips, it's stories, it's you know, a little bit of everything about driving horses. Um and then if you're particularly interested in the online program, Driving 101, it's Christine BDEquine.com slash driving101. Um, the wait list is open. We will be opening the doors uh next month, but the second week of May, I'm planning to open enrollment. So I open the doors twice a year. Like I said, it's it's a six-month curriculum. So we go through kind of with a cohort, we work through everything together. Um, and then we had to go back to the beginning every six months and do it again with a fresh group. So we will be opening that up in May.

SPEAKER_04 59:55

This podcast, it's April 14th. This podcast will be without be up within seven days. So hopefully people um will tune in and uh you'd be able to get into that program if they'd like.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:07

Beautiful. It's always it's it's so fun to bring new students in. I've got students at this point from like all corners of the world. We've got Alaska to New Zealand and everything in between. Um, it's really, really cool. We have some folks who are just up the road from each other. We have folks who are just up the road from each other and never knew the other existed. We have folks on opposite corners of the world. Um that's so cool. So it's a really cool little community we've got. And, you know, the other thing that I wanted to kind of bake into this course that I'm really proud of is this sense of community because nice, you know, if I certainly had the experience when, you know, I was the only person at my barn who was interested in driving, and I had these draft horses, we're sort of doing our driving thing, and everyone else is doing their hunter jumper thing. And it can feel really isolating when you don't know anybody else doing the same thing as you. And so we've got this sense of community where everyone's on the same journey and everyone's kind of witnessing each other, and you get to share your wins. And if you're struggling with something, somebody else is probably having the same question and is just too sharp to ask, right? And so we get this sense of you're not actually doing this alone. There's all of these almost hundred other people doing the same thing at the same time.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:27

So that sounds marvelous.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:30

Yeah, we have fun. Cool. Um, so in closing, uh, what do you wish more people understood about horses?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:40

Oh, what do I wish more people understood about horses? I think I would have to say that horses are very honest, and horses I think horses are always doing their best with what they have to work with. And you know, I I always get, you know, the that kind of little tingle in my back when somebody says, oh, he's misbehaving, oh he's he's trying to he's trying to get away with whatever. And I think so often horses are just doing the best they can with the information that they have. And I, you know, personally, my own ethics are I would so much rather assume that my horse is doing her best and needs more information from me rather than assuming that she has all of the information and is just choosing something different. Um I don't think they're capable of that. Right. And it's not to say that they don't have their own personalities and their own corpus. Of course they do. They're not malicious thinkers. They're not choosing. I don't think they're malicious thinkers. I really don't.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:50

And I think they're just horses, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:53

They're they're just horses, and some of them have a sense of humor, certainly. Oh, yeah. Which, you know, you spend around enough time around horses, and you certainly wit witness those who have a little bit of a trickster in them, but I don't think they're malicious. I don't think they're, you know, out to get you in any way. And I think when and when it seems like they're misbehaving, I think it's usually a case of they're missing a critical piece of information. And it's our job to put the detective hat on and figure out what that piece is that's missing and fill that gap in for them.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:25

Exactly. Well, I tell you, Christine, I have learned so much. Now I want to start learning how to drive again. I mean, not drive. I've just learned how to drive in general, I should say.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:36

For real this time. For real.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:39

Because you know, what irritates me so much when you watch a movie is somebody, um, I'm for my people that are only vi or audio, I'm bringing my hands up and down in tandem, like like pumping uh uh up and down, you know, like the reins are fine and your hands bump because you you know they're fake driving and it just fake driving and they're you know slapping the horse on the bum with the rain and hitting them with a whip, which you guys don't do, and you know, just like oh makes me crazy. But uh I love that everything we just learned so much today, and I appreciate you taking the time for all of us. And everybody look her up if you want to learn how to drive and take her course. What a wonderful thing to be offering, because there are no driving trainers. I mean, they just don't exist in person anymore.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:20

We're so few and far between.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:22

Yeah, it is such a wonderful ancient sport. I mean, good heavens, uh you know, and I think every horse would benefit whether they ever get driven, but just get benefit from learning how to be worked from the ground and at a distance. So thank you for that.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:34

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me, Barbara. It's really been a pleasure. And I I love sharing this with people. I I so want to see more people in the driving world. We have so much fun here. And you know, our the driving community is very, very welcome of newcomers. Um, and I think anywhere, whether it's online or in person, anywhere you hang out with drivers, you'll find that we're a very, very open, very supportive, very friendly bunch of horse people. And we take a lot of pride in that.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:06

They're the lovely people I've met. They're just, I can attest to that. And they do care about their horses very much because they have to trust them. So very, very much so. Yeah, it's I think it's even more so than just some weekend rider that you know, just yeah, I really think there's a relationship there when you're driving. There really is. So thank you again, Christine.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:25

Well, thank you so much, Barbara. This has been lovely. Thank you so much for having me.