2000 & Great!
From Alison Short
Good Christmas? Not really! Pretty awful, like most people I had the cold that manifested itself in half shut eyes, constant sneezing and partial deafness (which had its benefits). All that and still the mucking out had to be done, TWICE something that a non horsey family have still struggle to get their heads round, believing its just a tactic to escape mountain of washing up!
Thank goodness a full recovery was made for a most enjoyable if not a little over intoxicated New Year spent with friends in Kent, so things where looking up in 2008 already! Now all we have to do is battle through the next few months of rain, rain and more rain hoping to keep both ours and our horse’s sanity, this can be very difficult with little or no turnout. With stair rods of rain and limited day light hours the only thing that can often be achieved in a twenty minute window is loose schooling or a crab like trot round the school battling against the weather.
”It’s on days like these that my virtual friend gets pulled out to assist, my trusty Pessoa!”.
To some of you this portrays an image of ropes and pulley’s. One of my clients has renamed it her horse’s climbing gear! It can at first come across as a technical gadget which some people are very wary of but as always, used and fitted correctly it is an ingenious piece of equipment. Not only does it work your equine partner through his back and encourage him to engage his hind legs more but it is improving his suppleness. I defy any one not to notice the improvement under saddle, opening the paces and providing a more metronome trot. Like all achievements it takes time and some consistency in its use, gradually building up in increments of time, but it has meant for me that on the days when you feel your goals are slipping back for the coming season simply because of spending less time in the saddle, a twenty minute session with my friend “Pessoa” and it’s investing time in training.
Now that the trot has become so much more relaxed, open and has achieved greater balance I am now able to work on developing this same cadence and confidence in the lateral work with a Connemara I am training. He has good regular paces but still finds the rhythm difficult to maintain with suspension. When you have achieved an initial understanding of your horse yielding away from your aids to step side ways you can sometimes feel an element of tension, this is often the case with horses with paces at either end of the scale. A horse with big paces and often a wide frame will find the crossing over of his legs more difficult equally so will a horse or pony with shorter steps simply because to develop his paces to become more open and free requires constant monitoring from the rider, any new introduction to side ways movements means the paces will often resort back to less suspended steps, also helping your horse to avoid carrying weight on his hind legs.
The awareness of the riders weight is of paramount importance any change to the symmetrical position above the horse will lead to a loss of balance and therefore a loss of rhythm and suspension to the pace.
Firstly try to remember to keep your weight from the waist to your feet down with a soft bend in the knee and a supple heel, whilst the upper body must lift and grow tall with supple mobility.
Now think about the horses barrel between the shoulders and his loins, where your saddle sits, think of his spine as a wooden broom handle now tie two pieces of string to the handle front and back and suspend from these an oil barrel. The barrel is now hanging directly below the broom handle (spine), imagine climbing up and sitting on that suspended barrel if you sat slightly on your right buttock the barrel would slip out to the left, and if this was your horse the compensation he would make would be to fall on his left shoulder. If this were to happen at the beginning of right shoulder in or leg yield away from the right leg you can see how the balance and so the rhythm and suspension would be compromised.
“Your responsibility as a rider is to keep the positioning of the barrel beneath the seat all the time, this will reward you as if by magic!”
At first practice trotting down the three quarter lines parallel to the track, making sure your weight is equal on the turn, to start with you may feel as if you are drastically altering your position and now more of your turning aids are coming from the outside leg, but this is a step forward and does not compromise your ability to bend your horse to the direction you are travelling, it just takes the emphasis away from pulling your horse round to the turn but keeping a supple bend and the leg riding more of the direction. For those of you with a less established horse, who feel the more subtle adjustments are difficult to notice the key is you must own the pace, this is not meant in a dominant holding way but an ability to ride the horse in a consistent rhythm where the horse is not running into the rein, keep relating back to your metronome trot feeling.
The awareness of this equality through the seat and its affect on the hanging barrel are also very rewarding in the canter transitions, keeping control of the horse’s hind legs and so engagement, equalling improved balance and so consistency of the outline and suspension within the pace. Even if this is for two or three strides it can be built upon and with consistency grows combined confidence.
This is a large part of your road to success and with this tool in your training box it looks like it really is going to be 2000 and GREAT!
Alison Short is a freelance Trainer as well as a British Dressage Judge who is happy to teach all standards as well as RC or PC clinics alisonshort@btopenworld.com 07719 900275.
