A POWERFUL PARTNERSHIP

Clement Freud, the famous wit, chef, politician and horse racing journalist died last month, just nine days short of his 85th birthday. He was a grandson of Sigmund Freud, the father figure of psychoanalysis – a man who spent years looking at subconscious drives and at our dreams. I always wonder what horses dream about. Some say they don’t dream but I have no doubt that dogs and cats dream and I can see no good reason why horses shouldn’t dream.

SOME USEFUL RATS

Studies conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology led Cambridge researchers to believe that their dreams can be highly complex involving long sequences of replayed waking events. The results, published in the 2001 suggested that rats trained to run a specific route then dreamed about their experiences.
The researchers mapped the animals’ brain activity using electrodes as they used this route to find food. They found that neurons fired in a specific pattern, depending on the rat’s position and what it was doing. They also noted activity took place in the hippocampus, the area associated with memory. Then while the animals slept, electrodes continued to record brain activity.

Like humans, rats experience various stages of sleep, moving from slow-wave sleep to rapid eye movement or REM sleep, which is when humans do their dreaming. They studied over 40 REM recordings from the rats. When the animals slept, about half of them repeated the same brain pattern seen during the waking exercise. The correlation was so precise scientists could even pinpoint where the dreaming rat was in the maze, and whether it was sitting or running. They concluded that reactivating memories could be a mechanism for instilling the experience into long-term memory, making a good case for at least one reason why animals dream. A rat that remembered how to navigate the maze by practicing in its sleep was more assured of food.

TWO SIDES OF A COIN
Of course if a horse can dream it also means they can have nightmares and is possibly why even one very bad experience can leave such a lasting memory and have such a negative effect on a horse. Equally the other side of this coin is that good experiences should also be reinforced in this way and this is how I give these thoughts a positive take. I always try to be positive.
To the contrary, despite his many successes, Clement Freud was famous for his negativity and ‘hang dog’ facial expressions. Finding the good in people was not something he did. I believe this was a huge limiting factor in his life and is also a huge limiting factor in some riders and trainers. We all know the arrogant riders who quickly find all the reasons why a horse can’t do things, while missing all the reasons why extraordinary things are possible.

WE WERE WRONG AGAIN
There was another wonderful example of this in the recent Kentucky Derby won by Mine That Bird ridden by Calvin Borel, winning by an extraordinary six and three quarter lengths at an extraordinary price of 50 to 1. The odds show how wrong people were about Mine That Bird and the record of Calvin Borel shows how wrong and how negative people were about Calvin Borel. He is now 42 and has been a professional jockey for 25 years but it is only in the last three years that he has been recognized as a top-flight jockey. 
Calvin rode the cheap horses at the cheap tracks and lacked the support system and true assessment of his talent that would have brought him to the notice of the top trainers many years earlier. So it is a golden rule of mine to look for the positives in both riders and horses, and then work from what they can do rather than from what they cannot do. It is a staggeringly powerful philosophy that allows dreams to be fulfilled.

INCH BY INCH
Clement Freud was estranged from his very famous brother, the painter Lucien Freud, which is such a sadness. It has been suggested that the genesis of their separation was when they were boys and having a running race in Hyde Park. Lucien was winning so Clement shouted “stop thief” and a public spirited passer by delayed Lucien sufficiently for Clement to claim the prize! 

The other lovely story about Clement Freud concerned his five stone weight loss to ride in a match race at Haydock racecourse, against the then owner of the Harrods store in London, Sir Hugh Fraser. He won the race, and a huge side bet, but not long afterwards he was seen to be piling on the lbs again. When criticized by a friend, who said that he thought he was getting into shape, Clement responded “I am, and my shape is a triangle!”

How Clement Freud loss five stone is hugely important for all riders and trainers. It is the same story as all successful weight loss strategies and it is that great partner of a positive attitude. He did it inch by inch, one day at a time. Inch by inch life’s a cinch, yard by yard life is hard…..and this is so very true, and so very effective once you start down this road. Both with ourselves and our horses we progress best by using ‘bite size’, small action steps.

A FREUDIAN SLIP

Setting ourselves simple tasks can be relied upon to give us a taste of success. When we witness ourselves succeed, our confidence takes a turn for the better and little by little this enables us to reach our goals. This small action steps strategy may not seem like rocket science, but just think what we often do instead: Right from the start we either decide we don’t have sufficient talent or intelligence, and stay firmly on the couch; or we bite off more than we can chew, drafting overlong to-do lists without a plan, and the result is invariably failure. So the use of a positive attitude and small action steps reinforce each other and form a powerful partnership…in both your conscious and subconscious mind. 

When asked ‘can you do something’ it is not a Freudian slip to reply “we can” instead of “I can”…we all need the partnership of family, friends and coaches to make the most of ourselves. However we all also need the partnership of compatible ideas and these two ideas were made for each other. Of course as riders we also have the huge bonus of our equine partners, just as Calvin Borel had Mine That Bird. Something tells me we are therefore so very lucky and so very blessed. Happy days. William

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