Mutual respect key to horse trainer's success

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July 16, 2007

Acclaimed Wilmington trainer bonds with horses

By SUZANNE MOORE The Press Republican Mon Jul 16, 2007, 12:00 AM EDT

CHAMPLAIN -- A horse speaks its mind loud and clear to Jay Mele.

With body language.

The flick of an ear, a switching tail.

The shiver of muscles under a buckskin Quarter Horse's taut, glossy hide.

"He's either been kicked or spurred," the Wilmington trainer said, scratching the flank of Poco Dandy Blue. "Or," he added, "he just doesn't like this."

PREFERS PLAY

Horses are like people, Mele says, each an individual, with quirks that come built-in or shaped by circumstance.

Patti Beebie had ridden Blue just once, before she bought the 13-year-old gelding. Then, he was too thin by far.

"He had no life in him at all," the Champlain woman said. "When I got on, he barely moved around."

As he gained weight, Blue revealed a saucy energy that prompted Beebie to ask Mele to work with him a bit, to see just what to expect from him.

"He's a buckskin," the trainer chuckled. "He'd rather be playing than working."

Mele fitted a green rope halter on the horse's head, then, swinging the end of the attached lead rope, set him trotting in tight circles, first clockwise then in the other direction.

Stopping Blue, the trainer backed him a few paces. He rubbed a loosely coiled lasso over the horse's back, his neck, concentrated for several seconds around the ears.

Blue accepted the process without complaint.

As Mele tapped the horse's legs, one by one, with the rope, the horse skittered away. He reared when the trainer swung the open loop at him.

The behavior didn't faze the man.

"Just trying to find his hot spots," Mele said. "He doesn't have too many. (But) he doesn't like things around his back legs."

SADDLE UP

Get to know the horse -- that's primary, Mele says.

"The worst thing I can do is assume we're good old buddies," he said. "There's got to be that introduction made."

The groundwork with Blue acquainted the two.

Now, Mele hefted his heavy Western saddle onto the horse's back, adjusted it carefully over the thick pad and cinched the girth.

"I think he's going to be OK," he said, fitting a boot-clad foot into the stirrup. "We'll find out in a second."

COOPERATION

Mele, a Connecticut native, served in Vietnam then moved out to western Canada.

"I wanted to get away from life, I guess."

But it was there that he found his life's meaning. A childhood love of horses matured as he mastered ranch life, riding, roping, topping off bucking horses and corkscrewing bulls at rodeos.

But breaking a horse the old-fashioned way made no sense to Mele.

"It took 25 years to train a horse (that way). They'd ride em until they gave up -- then you didn't have anything."

In Colorado, he learned under renowned trainer Ray Hunt, whose style is based on cooperation and respect between horse and rider.

"I started training this horse that was supposed to be incorrigible," Mele said, "that put people in the hospital."

He worked his magic on Willie Alvin.

"I understood what it would take: time."

Willie died at the ripe-old age of 29 after years as the top Paint horse in New England.

"Probably taught 100 people how to ride."

VISIBLE BOND

A soft clucking put Blue into a trot, Mele on his back.

"Good boy," he murmured.

The horse moved in a circle, obedient to reins and leg.

"Whenever I watch him work with a horse, it's almost a spiritual experience," said Beebie, who has been a riding student of Mele's. "You know he loves them -- you can tell by the way he works with them."

"I would long-trot him, short-trot him," Mele told her from Blue's back. "Lope him 20 feet and stop.

"He's really not in balance -- that's why he's having trouble picking his feet up."

MUTUAL TRUST

It was Beebie's turn to ride; Blue balked.

"OK," she said, "what am I doing wrong?"

"Put some leg on him," Mele told Beebie. "Don't be afraid to move him."

Horse and rider need to connect, he says.

"The horse has to trust you. That's number one.

"Number two is you have to trust the horse."

Like electric lines, the reins telegraph the rider's state of mind.

"If I'm hanging on to him for dear life," Mele said, "he's never going to trust me."

Now Blue was stepping out, circling the small paddock as Beebie directed.

"You see that softness in his eye?" Mele said. "He's taking care of her."

"The ears will tell you where and when; the eyes will tell you what's on their mind."

MOVIE HORSES

Mele, 64, has six horses of his own and is training five others on his Wilmington spread, Jay Mele Training Stables. He gives riding instruction, clinics and offers all-day, individual sessions with concentration on problem solving, performance critique or lessons in disciplines from western reining to showmanship.

He trained a horse that appeared in the 1988 movie Young Guns, and another, Rain, for Young Guns II.

Mele's not done learning yet, himself.

"There are so many complexities to a horse," he said. "No way in hell I know it all yet -- in fact, I know I never will."

During a reining competition at a recent show, Mele's mount had bolted.

"It was my fault," the trainer told Beebie. "I knew he was in a rotten damn mood."

"So even somebody like you has bad days," Beebie said.

Mele said, "It's a process."

PROBLEM SOLVING

It's one he's followed with more than 1,000 horses, a good number of them "problem" equines.

Sometimes, misuse creates those issues.

"Or the horse is meant to do something different than what we want them to do."

Today's society wants what it wants when it wants it, Mele said. And that's at odds with the time and patience it takes to train a horse.

"It takes 200 or 300 times of doing the same thing before a horse understands what you want."

Blue, the trainer told Beebie, should prove a good mount for her.

"I'd spend some time with him," he recommended.

Again, it's about creating respect. That's what a successful partnership between human and horse is all about, Mele says.

That's his basic mantra.

"I wouldn't do anything to them that I wouldn't want done to me."

smoore@pressrepublican.com