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glenatron"What?" I hear you ask, "Day four? Surely, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
glenatron, you have been at Silversand for five days?"
You are of course correct, but yesterday was a day off, so we went off and did a bit of tourism, visited the Murray river and realised everything was shut for Anzac Day and Easter Monday and came back. We saw pelicans and discovered that the Australian version of a Delicatessen sells several different types of pie, which makes it a little different from the British version.
Today the only students were Elaine and I and we were changing horses so we didn't go out with a particular plan, starting out with the idea of getting to know our horses a little and see what we needed to get done with them.
Steve suggested we take them up to the round pen and begin with some liberty work. He brought his stallion Saruman up, I brought Samson ( Saruman's full brother ) and Elaine had Kai to work with.
Steve and Saruman.
Steve talked us through the liberty work he does, which starts with the simple goal of getting the horse with you. The principle is almost one of keeping the horse at a constant distance from you- if you get closer to them, they should move off, if you step away they should follow. It's not quite that simple as the actual distance should change as you pick up your energy and decrease as you allow it to drop.
When I was working with Kai he was able to stay with me very well, but I found it hard to get enough push to move him on. I could do it with a stick, but I wanted to get the energy coming from me. I got there eventually, but it still wasn't close to the kind of change that Steve would have. My point to consider now is how it would feel if I really did mean it- I know if I was annoyed I would have access to the energy but I need to be able to reach it when I'm in my calm working-horses place.
It was interesting watching Steve handle Saruman at this point as he was getting very interested by a nearby mare and you could see how much Steve needed to be able to access that type of energy very directly to keep Saruman's attention and to keep himself safe.
Elaine was finding herself tending to leave Kai behind, so her focus in the liberty was to make sure she never left before her horse and made sure he stayed with her the whole time.
Halters back on, we returned to the school and did some work on the basic changes of direction, similar to what we were doing on previous days, getting in time with the feet to disengage the hindfeet around the near fore, then backing the horse up and then yielding their shoulder back and around in the other direction.
I found that when I was working on this if my timing was wrong Samson would just slow down and stop. This makes sense because if I stop the foot while it is moving, I'll be taking life out of the system, whereas if I just ask while the foot is on the ground, the other feet are still going so it becomes more of a case of redirection.
Samson tends to want to go forward most of the time as well, so I needed to really push to get the back-up working correctly, but once we had it, the change of direction was really smooth.
Elaine and Kai. I'm not sure what she is doing here, but I think the technical term may be "prancing." This caption may get my ass kicked tomorrow.
We then saddled up and got on, starting by working on getting in time with the front foot, moving the hindquarters around to redirect the horse and change direction. After a while though, El and I were just getting excited about riding new horses and skipping around the place.
Samson is very different to horses like Oscar and Zorro- there is no problem getting him to go forward, but he will tend to go forward as an alternative to thinking so getting him to soften without losing any of that impulsion will be a big part of our work going forward.
We came back from lunch to find Izzy, one of Steve's students from Germany who has been staying here for the last month, putting Oscar through his paces, cantering briskly around bridleless. She's a heck of a rider.
We got on and I started out by working on finding softness and just seeing what Samson could make available to me.
Samson and I.
When Steve was explaining the type of feel I was trying to get, he suggested I sit on Gandalf. Now Gandalf is Steve's saddle horse and people other than Steve don't really get to ride him very much, so that was a pretty big honour.
I could really see why it is hard for Steve to explain this to us. Having felt what his horse is like to ride I find myself fundamentally unable to explain it at all. Well, I can explain it but it may not make sense. It felt like riding a ghost, like he was totally transparent and everything was just there and available. Just picking up a soft feel in walk and trot everything was just so subtle.
I'm going to be a little bit assertive now and say that if you are horsey and you are reading this, you have never felt anything like that horse. You probably think you have, but you haven't. I have no point of reference for it whatsoever.
So I felt a bit like a compass being shown the north pole- my head is spinning but I have a clear picture of which way I'm pointing.
Getting back on Samson I could feel how he was heavier in my hand, his forwardgoing disposition and a bit of anxiety in his nature tending to incline him to run away through my hand, so we spent a while working on that.
Steve set us to working on a counterbend - turning a circle to the left on the correct bend and then using our leg cues to pick the horse onto a circle to the right, while maintaining the same bend.
From that we moved to hindquarters-in - Steve demonstrated on a circle, just asking the hindquarters to step to the inside so Gandalf was working on three tracks. That was harder to get, so we changed to working on the fence. I was able to get this going to the right, but to the left we got quite stuck so I went back to basics and made sure he could step away from my leg. Once we had that I began by going sideways along the fence and then asking for a little more bend to move along it. We straightened out a few times until I realised that again Samson was running forward out of my cue and I was losing the soft feel we needed to contain the movement and make the movement possible.
Working with a soft feel at the end of the day.
It was a very intense day- having a small group meant we had plenty to do the whole time and lots of space to work in - and I think it will take a long time to figure out what I learned to day. A very long time.
Gandalf shows he is a real cowhorse.
glenatron, you have been at Silversand for five days?"You are of course correct, but yesterday was a day off, so we went off and did a bit of tourism, visited the Murray river and realised everything was shut for Anzac Day and Easter Monday and came back. We saw pelicans and discovered that the Australian version of a Delicatessen sells several different types of pie, which makes it a little different from the British version.
Today the only students were Elaine and I and we were changing horses so we didn't go out with a particular plan, starting out with the idea of getting to know our horses a little and see what we needed to get done with them.
Steve suggested we take them up to the round pen and begin with some liberty work. He brought his stallion Saruman up, I brought Samson ( Saruman's full brother ) and Elaine had Kai to work with.
Steve and Saruman.
Steve talked us through the liberty work he does, which starts with the simple goal of getting the horse with you. The principle is almost one of keeping the horse at a constant distance from you- if you get closer to them, they should move off, if you step away they should follow. It's not quite that simple as the actual distance should change as you pick up your energy and decrease as you allow it to drop.
When I was working with Kai he was able to stay with me very well, but I found it hard to get enough push to move him on. I could do it with a stick, but I wanted to get the energy coming from me. I got there eventually, but it still wasn't close to the kind of change that Steve would have. My point to consider now is how it would feel if I really did mean it- I know if I was annoyed I would have access to the energy but I need to be able to reach it when I'm in my calm working-horses place.
It was interesting watching Steve handle Saruman at this point as he was getting very interested by a nearby mare and you could see how much Steve needed to be able to access that type of energy very directly to keep Saruman's attention and to keep himself safe.
Elaine was finding herself tending to leave Kai behind, so her focus in the liberty was to make sure she never left before her horse and made sure he stayed with her the whole time.
Halters back on, we returned to the school and did some work on the basic changes of direction, similar to what we were doing on previous days, getting in time with the feet to disengage the hindfeet around the near fore, then backing the horse up and then yielding their shoulder back and around in the other direction.
I found that when I was working on this if my timing was wrong Samson would just slow down and stop. This makes sense because if I stop the foot while it is moving, I'll be taking life out of the system, whereas if I just ask while the foot is on the ground, the other feet are still going so it becomes more of a case of redirection.
Samson tends to want to go forward most of the time as well, so I needed to really push to get the back-up working correctly, but once we had it, the change of direction was really smooth.
Elaine and Kai. I'm not sure what she is doing here, but I think the technical term may be "prancing." This caption may get my ass kicked tomorrow.
We then saddled up and got on, starting by working on getting in time with the front foot, moving the hindquarters around to redirect the horse and change direction. After a while though, El and I were just getting excited about riding new horses and skipping around the place.
Samson is very different to horses like Oscar and Zorro- there is no problem getting him to go forward, but he will tend to go forward as an alternative to thinking so getting him to soften without losing any of that impulsion will be a big part of our work going forward.
We came back from lunch to find Izzy, one of Steve's students from Germany who has been staying here for the last month, putting Oscar through his paces, cantering briskly around bridleless. She's a heck of a rider.
We got on and I started out by working on finding softness and just seeing what Samson could make available to me.
Samson and I.
When Steve was explaining the type of feel I was trying to get, he suggested I sit on Gandalf. Now Gandalf is Steve's saddle horse and people other than Steve don't really get to ride him very much, so that was a pretty big honour.
I could really see why it is hard for Steve to explain this to us. Having felt what his horse is like to ride I find myself fundamentally unable to explain it at all. Well, I can explain it but it may not make sense. It felt like riding a ghost, like he was totally transparent and everything was just there and available. Just picking up a soft feel in walk and trot everything was just so subtle.
I'm going to be a little bit assertive now and say that if you are horsey and you are reading this, you have never felt anything like that horse. You probably think you have, but you haven't. I have no point of reference for it whatsoever.
So I felt a bit like a compass being shown the north pole- my head is spinning but I have a clear picture of which way I'm pointing.
Getting back on Samson I could feel how he was heavier in my hand, his forwardgoing disposition and a bit of anxiety in his nature tending to incline him to run away through my hand, so we spent a while working on that.
Steve set us to working on a counterbend - turning a circle to the left on the correct bend and then using our leg cues to pick the horse onto a circle to the right, while maintaining the same bend.
From that we moved to hindquarters-in - Steve demonstrated on a circle, just asking the hindquarters to step to the inside so Gandalf was working on three tracks. That was harder to get, so we changed to working on the fence. I was able to get this going to the right, but to the left we got quite stuck so I went back to basics and made sure he could step away from my leg. Once we had that I began by going sideways along the fence and then asking for a little more bend to move along it. We straightened out a few times until I realised that again Samson was running forward out of my cue and I was losing the soft feel we needed to contain the movement and make the movement possible.
Working with a soft feel at the end of the day.
It was a very intense day- having a small group meant we had plenty to do the whole time and lots of space to work in - and I think it will take a long time to figure out what I learned to day. A very long time.
Gandalf shows he is a real cowhorse.
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no subject
Date: 26 Apr 2011 14:01 (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 Apr 2011 17:49 (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 Apr 2011 18:33 (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 Apr 2011 20:57 (UTC)I mean, what? I didn't just admit to that. *cough*
no subject
Date: 26 Apr 2011 21:00 (UTC)Elaine and Kai. I'm not sure what she is doing here, but I think the technical term may be "prancing." This caption may get my ass kicked tomorrow.
Totally worth it. From our point of view, anyway. :D
no subject
Date: 26 Apr 2011 23:00 (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 Apr 2011 23:05 (UTC)no subject
Date: 27 Apr 2011 03:12 (UTC)Arlene
no subject
Date: 27 Apr 2011 04:29 (UTC)At one clinic in the past Steve talked about this german term "Durschlasigheit" ( spelled a bit like that ) which translates as permeability but doesn't quite have a direct English term. I think that is what I was feeling here, the sensation that the aid goes right through the horse and the whole horse is there ready for whatever you ask them for. It's really something.
no subject
Date: 27 Apr 2011 06:34 (UTC)I don't think I could ever ride a horse that sensitively schooled, because I'm just not that strong a rider, and would only confuse the horse with involuntary signals.
But I've had a few, brief moments on Charm of utter connectedness when I've felt the earth beneath her hind feet, and known I could move her in any direction simply by the tiniest shift of weight... A few brief moments in a relationship of twelve years!
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Date: 27 Apr 2011 13:34 (UTC)One can focus on having a horse straight straight straight, frex, and succeed (more or less) in creating a straight horse even if it's tight and unforward (although of course the overall performance and feel would be suboptimal). But one simply cannot create throughness in an unloose horse, or a crooked one, etc. So it's simultaneously an essential revelation and a bane-of-existence to those of us prone to tunnel vision! *g*
(I often wish I'd learned German in school instead of Spanish. And sometimes I think about trying to teach myself to read it, if nothing else, so I can see some of the texts in the original. The precision and flexibility of the language really appeals. But I think it's maybe a bit too late for me, alas, and not like I have the time right now, anyway.)
What's up with all the yellow horses?
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Date: 27 Apr 2011 23:18 (UTC)