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glenatronToday was the start of the second clinic of our visit, but we only had one new rider today ( the others arrive tomorrow ) so it didn't make a big difference. I was riding Samson again.
We began by talking a bit about the difference between cues and intent. A lot of trainers just teach a horse a series of cues, that the horse always follows. That works fine but sometimes you might want to do something that seemed like a cue. For example supposing you weight one side of the saddle to ask for sideways from the horse. That can be a little bit inconvenient if you then need to open a gate and have to lean over to get the catch- a lot of fairly well trained horses who have that particular cue trained in them will just walk off sideways from the gate. If you are working with intent then there is a difference in asking for sideways and just leaning over.
We started the morning doing some groundwork. Picking up from the other day after the basics we got back to doing side-pass towards me, which was better than before, and a bit of work on getting him to back up from his tail. That was all going quite nicely, so we moved on to trying to get some hindquarters-in on the ground.
I couldn't quite find that and after a while I realised that the problem was that we weren't really able to step into a bend- so if I asked Samson to bend his head to the right and then step his quarters around to the right, he wouldn't be able to do that. That seemed like a task better suited to working in the saddle so I hopped on and we worked through it on one rein.
After a while we got that and then we had some fairly nice side-pass with a correct bend from a single rein, which was nice.
Elaine was keen to do some more work riding with a stick rather than reins so we moved on to that. Steve talked us through some techniques for working this way. It's actually pretty easy to do, no different to anything else really, once you've got the idea of pushing rather than pulling.
Steve talks Elaine through working with two sticks.
The hardest thing for Samson was not leaning forward and we did a lot of work on getting back-up. By the end of the session I was getting a few steps of back-up purely from a body cue, without needing the stick at all, although sometimes I was needing to ask on Samson's mane a little to get his feet started.
I was finding it hard to get him to come down from walk to halt without using the rein, though - Samson is a very forward horse and he found that transition hard. I spent a while working on this and then went over to Steve.
"How little energy can you use to get him moving?" He asked.
With that idea I started doing a lot less to get us moving in walk, which put us in a place where we could come back to halt without needing the rein at all. In fact I was able to start holding him from my seat, spending a little while playing with picking up a foot and moving it back, forward and to the sides without using the rein at all. I didn't get it perfect by any means, but it was interesting to explore it.
After lunch I was working with the hackamore on again and continuing on my single-minded pursuit of constant softness. Samson is very quick to offer things you ask for, or that you might have asked for or that he thought you asked for or that you asked for one time before, but getting him to do it softly is more tricky.
We spent a lot of time working on going from halt to walk and back without it turning into a lean. Then trying to get from walk to trot and back. Often we had to stop and back up until he could start to soften and we could take a break and set off again.
Steve suggested I get him backing on a circle, so we worked on that- he was getting stuck and then unstuck so the quality of the movement was very bumpy and uneven. Steve suggested we swap horses so I had the chance to ride Gandalf ( again! :D ) and he worked for a while with Samson. He explained how this is one of the biggest exercises he works on with horses that tend to lean with their shoulder because it really gets them away from that idea. Gandalf showed me what it was supposed to feel like ( although Steve observed he wasn't giving me the same work he gives Steve, no great surprise there ) and then when I got back on Samson I could really feel the change.
This work took most of the afternoon really, it was hard and very emotional for Samson- we both ended the day quite sweated up - but I think we built some useful changes and with a night for it to soak through both of our brains I will be very interested to see what tomorrow brings.
Meanwhile everyone else played with polocrosse gear...
We began by talking a bit about the difference between cues and intent. A lot of trainers just teach a horse a series of cues, that the horse always follows. That works fine but sometimes you might want to do something that seemed like a cue. For example supposing you weight one side of the saddle to ask for sideways from the horse. That can be a little bit inconvenient if you then need to open a gate and have to lean over to get the catch- a lot of fairly well trained horses who have that particular cue trained in them will just walk off sideways from the gate. If you are working with intent then there is a difference in asking for sideways and just leaning over.
We started the morning doing some groundwork. Picking up from the other day after the basics we got back to doing side-pass towards me, which was better than before, and a bit of work on getting him to back up from his tail. That was all going quite nicely, so we moved on to trying to get some hindquarters-in on the ground.
I couldn't quite find that and after a while I realised that the problem was that we weren't really able to step into a bend- so if I asked Samson to bend his head to the right and then step his quarters around to the right, he wouldn't be able to do that. That seemed like a task better suited to working in the saddle so I hopped on and we worked through it on one rein.
After a while we got that and then we had some fairly nice side-pass with a correct bend from a single rein, which was nice.
Elaine was keen to do some more work riding with a stick rather than reins so we moved on to that. Steve talked us through some techniques for working this way. It's actually pretty easy to do, no different to anything else really, once you've got the idea of pushing rather than pulling.
Steve talks Elaine through working with two sticks.
The hardest thing for Samson was not leaning forward and we did a lot of work on getting back-up. By the end of the session I was getting a few steps of back-up purely from a body cue, without needing the stick at all, although sometimes I was needing to ask on Samson's mane a little to get his feet started.
I was finding it hard to get him to come down from walk to halt without using the rein, though - Samson is a very forward horse and he found that transition hard. I spent a while working on this and then went over to Steve.
"How little energy can you use to get him moving?" He asked.
With that idea I started doing a lot less to get us moving in walk, which put us in a place where we could come back to halt without needing the rein at all. In fact I was able to start holding him from my seat, spending a little while playing with picking up a foot and moving it back, forward and to the sides without using the rein at all. I didn't get it perfect by any means, but it was interesting to explore it.
After lunch I was working with the hackamore on again and continuing on my single-minded pursuit of constant softness. Samson is very quick to offer things you ask for, or that you might have asked for or that he thought you asked for or that you asked for one time before, but getting him to do it softly is more tricky.
We spent a lot of time working on going from halt to walk and back without it turning into a lean. Then trying to get from walk to trot and back. Often we had to stop and back up until he could start to soften and we could take a break and set off again.
Steve suggested I get him backing on a circle, so we worked on that- he was getting stuck and then unstuck so the quality of the movement was very bumpy and uneven. Steve suggested we swap horses so I had the chance to ride Gandalf ( again! :D ) and he worked for a while with Samson. He explained how this is one of the biggest exercises he works on with horses that tend to lean with their shoulder because it really gets them away from that idea. Gandalf showed me what it was supposed to feel like ( although Steve observed he wasn't giving me the same work he gives Steve, no great surprise there ) and then when I got back on Samson I could really feel the change.
This work took most of the afternoon really, it was hard and very emotional for Samson- we both ended the day quite sweated up - but I think we built some useful changes and with a night for it to soak through both of our brains I will be very interested to see what tomorrow brings.
Meanwhile everyone else played with polocrosse gear...