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Horseytalk.net Special Interview
Jim Goddard and Rosie Jones
Kelly and Monty’s chief roadie and demo rider set up Intelligent
Horsemanship yard in East Sussex
Two Recommended Associates of Kelly Marks’ Intelligent Horsemanship Association (IH) are now working from a yard in East Sussex.
They are Jim Goddard and Rosie Jones.
Jim Goddard and his wife, Anna, herself a member of IH, moved to their yard last May, after a long search for the right place.
“It just had the right feel when we looked at it”, said Jim. “The day we moved the horses in, they all went straight to sleep in the paddocks without a care in the world.”
Jim, 42, is Kelly Marks’ and Monty Roberts’ UK Tour Manager, setting-up the different venues all over the country, installing the seating and pens as well as stage-managing all the shows. He even controls the hundreds of fans who, after each event, line up to get Kelly’s and Monty’s autographs.
Rosie Jones, 25, international demo rider for Kelly Marks, and Monty Roberts’ first ever female rider, is based up the road and collaborates with Jim.
“Rosie and I had already worked together
many times on tour so we knew that we worked well as a team. I run my
family yard, and both Rosie and I have our own private clients but when
it calls for it we work together to help the horses and owners that come
to us.”
They also run clinics from Jim’s yard in Dallington, near Heathfield.
Jim and Rosie are two of only 38 recommended associates of Intelligent Horsemanship in the world.
Rosie is the youngest recommended associate in the Intelligent Horsemanship Association having been given the accreditation four years ago when she was only 21 years old.
Kelly Marks founded Intelligent Horsemanship so that horse owners could get practical help. With her mentor, Monty Roberts, Kelly promotes respect and understanding of horses through courses, demonstrations and educational materials.
Both Jim and Rosie have scored a number of training successes.
Among them, for Jim, a TB, 16.2 hh, nine years old.
Says Jim, “He is a lovely riding horse.He loads perfectly at home – providing the lorry is facing in the right direction. If it’s not, he refuses to go in. Coming back, it was even worse. Somehow or other he would flip himself over backwards going up the ramp. We got him past the problem. He now loads beautifully.”
Jim also works with riders, particularly when it comes to confidence.
“You’d be amazed how many riders lose their confidence at some point for many different reasons. I work with the rider and their horse to create a partnership in which they trust each other. This is fundamental to the way I work.”
He has one private client who couldn’t hack out any more.
“We have worked on slowly building her relationship with her horse so that she trusts him to look after her. Before Christmas we went for a hack in the woods opposite her yard. Seeing the joy she got from that hack is what my work is all about”.
Both Jim and Rosie came to Intelligent Horsemanship from two completely different directions.
Jim, whose father was an international businessman, was born in Karachi, Pakistan. As a child, he moved to Lagos, Nigeria, where he rode all kinds of horses over all kinds of ground.
“I was a completely feral child,” he
says.
In his early 20s he landed a job as a wrangler or ranch hand on a 2,500-acre farm just outside Vancouver, Canada. The farm was owned by one of Canada’s top stunt riders who gave Jim the opportunity to become a stunt rider.
“We mostly re-enacted all the cowboy movies so I learnt to fall off horses, roll horses. Everything”, he says.
Jim also featured in many Canadian television programmes as well as commercials. It was while he was filming a television commercial for shoes that he broke his shoulder.
Back in the UK, he worked as a stud groom and stallion man for an Irish draught stud on Exmoor. Then after a year, he returned to his other passion in life: sailing. But he soon gave that up because it meant being away from home and his young family too much. He returned to horses.
Almost the first thing he then did was to go to a demonstration given by Kelly Marks.
“I had a look. I saw this man I’d heard of from America, Monty Roberts. I was impressed. After that I went to all of Kelly’s courses. I then decided that I wanted to do what they do.”
In 2010 he became a Recommended Associate of Intelligent Horsemanship.
Rosie, on the other hand, couldn’t have discovered Intelligent
Horsemanship in a more different way.
Born in West Cowes on the Isle of Wight, she comes from an un-horsey family. However Rosie and her mother, who works as a teaching assistant in Oxfordshire, now find common ground discussing the finer points of behavioural issues. As a result her introduction was gradual, growing from the occasional lesson as a child into a full blown teenage passion.
I used to ride Teddy,” she says. “He was a naughty little Exmoor pony. But he taught you to have a sticky bum. He taught you how to stay on.”
At 14, however, she bought her own pony – without telling her mother and father.
“I did all kinds of jobs to earn the money,” she says. “I had a paper round. I worked at some kennels. I baby sat. I even worked at a pig farm. Eventually I had saved up enough money. I went to Reading Horse Auctions and bought this little Shetland pony. He was about 10 hh. Four years old. I called him Piglet. Then I bought an old cart for £10. I broke Piglet to harness and sold him and the cart for £550”
“With that money I then bought two New Forest ponies. I sold them for £1,000 each, and so on. After a while I bought the best horse I have ever had in my life, Ocean. She was wonderful. She was a TB Chestnut. An ex-racehorse. She had also been in a polo yard. But she became very sour. I re-trained her. With her, I won lots of show jumping competitions. I bought her for £750 and sold her for £4,000. I didn’t want to. But I wanted to invest in my own learning.”
Rosie was still only 18-years old. But she now had enough money to enrol
in one of Kelly Marks’ training courses.
She did all the courses she could, following the training process that all Recommended Associates of Intelligent Horsemanship (IHRA) have to complete before they can be considered for becoming an RA. She completed the Monty Roberts Preliminary Certificate in Horsemanship (MRPCH) which on top of the 5 Day Foundation course includes training in foal handling and stud practice, psychology, feeding and nutrition as well as the biomechanics of the horse. She then went on to gain practical experience and complete her Horse Psychology Project (veterinary approved) before taking her Stage 2 Exams.
“I trained and trained,” she says.“Intelligent Horsemanship encourages an open mind to learning from every sphere, and so I did all the courses I could get my hands on taking each new element of learning and adding it to my work.”
She even went to Colorado to learn how to train un-handled Mustangs. It was she says an unforgettable experience, which accentuated the Intelligent Horsemanship ethos that all areas of horsemanship should be considered and explored in any good trainer’s development towards the most effective non violent approach.
Back in the UK her career really took off, running her own training
yard, teaching on the courses that she had been though herself only a
few years before and landing what some might seem to some as the dream
job: riding with Kelly Marks and later Monty Roberts in demonstrations.
She even found time to start a full time degree in Anthropology which
she is currently juggling along with her busy work life.
Today she and Jim are concentrating on helping private clients in the County and residential clients at Jim’s yard as well as holding regular Practical Skills Development Clinics. Between them, they work with everything from un-handled 12hh ponies to Western quarter horses and English competition horses; from horses who won’t load or be clipped to those with serious ridden problems like napping or rearing.
Last year Jim found Griggs Ghyll House and 30 acres of surrounding farmland in Dallington. He is putting in a sand school and when everything is completed he says he will have room for ten horses in training and livery.
The South East’s newest Intelligent Horsemanship Centre is officially open for business.
Apart from, of course when they are needed on the next Kelly and Monty tour in their roles as chief roadie and demo rider.
To contact Jim Goddard
email: jimgoddardhorses@btinternet.com
phone: 07540 607231
website: www.jimgoddardhorses.co.uk
To contact Rosie Jones
email: rosiejoneshorses@yahoo.co.uk
phone: 07872 589514
website: www.rosiejones.yolasite.com
For more information about Intelligent Horsemanship,
please go to www.intelligenthorsemanship.co.uk