Clinic, Friday; Day 1

There were a couple of things Buck emphasised right at the start. First is to always start with a soft feel; if it gets ignored you go to plan B which is to drive. For example, offer a direction with the lead rope, and his feet should start to move. If they don't, then use your flag or the tail of your lead rope to drive; not frantically, just with as much energy as it takes to create movement of the feet. Getting to the horse's feet is the key to getting to his mind. His phrase is "offer a good deal;" if the horse doesn't take it then go to plan B. This is for all aspects of ground work or riding.
The other thing he was serious about was always keeping the horse's mind with you. My horse, for example would look at things going on, or would creep too close to me or to another horse while we were standing there listening to Buck. He showed us to do little things to keep the horse with us; maybe ask for a step back or sideways, or ask for a step over with the hip, etc. At the beginning of the clinic, several people had horses that were pushy and disrespectful with their humans, they were controlling the feet of their handlers instead of the other way around and by the end of the clinic, their handlers had much quieter, respectful horses. But it meant that you had to be aware of what your horse was doing at all times; you had to be with the horse at the level that you want him to be with you.
Buck does not tolerate a couple of things; one is violence or abuse of the horse, and the other is students who disregard what he is teaching. The first we all get; but there were little things that he corrected, such as frantic use of the flag creating fear in the horse instead of using it just enough to get the horse to do what we were looking for; timing the release.
As for the second part, he did say a couple of times that if students were just doing their own thing, they would be politely excused from the class, and may or may not be allowed back. I understand that he spends the majority of his year on the road teaching, and if people aren't there to learn then don't waste his time, he'll work with the ones that are there to truly learn. I get that. He gives us things to work on during the class and expects us to try; we may not get it right at first, but we do have to try. I actually like this style of clinic because it puts the onus on us to apply ourselves instead of just being babysat.
We worked a progression of exercises; moving out on the soft feel, moving the hip over, backing, circling with the front and hind united and then asking for a hind end step over and then back united; change of direction by moving the hip over then asking for the front shoulder to come across in the new direction. For all of these things, we were to time our ask with the reaching of the appropriate foot. This really got me paying attention to what the feet were doing and what it felt like when the ask was out of time with the feet, and how smoothly it worked when the ask was in time with the reaching foot. All of which translates to work under saddle. There were lots more details with each element we worked on, this is just to give you the basics of the first session.
Just as he started each class with a question session, he ended them the same way; if anyone was confused about something or needed help, this was the time to get individual help.

We were not allowed to video, and I was not comfortable with taking photos during the class but I did sneak this one in of Doxee. She was paying attention to me!

During the afternoon, we watched the horsemanship class, and could see how what we were doing in ground work in our class would progress to the exercises they started out doing. I won't go into detail on what their exercises were, but I could see that the same principles applied; soft feel first; bend and then send; stay in time with the feet.

Getting some help with handling the reins on a two rein horse 

The evening class was ranch roping, and Buck wanted them to put their horsemanship first, and learn to rope and work cattle with that as the first consideration.