Cooking, lessons, teaching, Hack with Mum, Blenheim Horse Trials, Dressage to Music and Gardening! Busy, busy busy!!!!!

Another trip to France
I had a few days in France earlier this month whilst my parents are away to help my sister take care of the horses and my elderly Nan. It was very relaxed, and although I was sad we couldn't do any riding (my sisters horse Beanie was suffering with a bout of COPD) I made the most of the time to indulge in a bit of home cooking!

Coffee and walnut cake

The horses at the pony club near by are lovely and they have such a range! From 'Til' the biggest horse to the newest baby shetland foal!

Til is huge!

Training with Sue Edwards
Straight off the plane and I had two lessons with Sue Edwards last weekend. We reviewed my recent elementary tests and decided to work on clearer transitions into and out of the mediums. On day one we worked mostly on the trot, increasing engagement and lift of the shoulder in the collected trot and then 'releasing the belly button' to allow the energy out more directly into the medium. The medium should be 'allowed' not 'driven' as this will unbalance and cause the horse to fall on the forehand. The more we worked on it the better Guinness understood the aid from my core. The second day we did the same in the canter. Lots of square turns helped with engagement and collection and then we 'allowed' some mediums. I think it's fair to say these are the new highlights of my forthcoming tests! I had no idea how much power was really in there!

Mum finally gets to ride her new horse Hero!
My Mum finally got the chance to ride the horse I encouraged her to buy last year as she was over in the England for a holiday. Hero has been with me for training and hacking before he makes the move to France. My Mum suffers with a few health issues and hasn't ridden since she lost her horse Frosty last year to a fatal melanoma. Thursday was glorious sunshine and after a bit of bonding time grooming, we tacked up and headed off for a leisurely hack around the chess valley countryside. Hero was amazing as always! He is the perfect combination of safe but forward and fun! Mum lead the whole way with Guinness and I following along behind. It was so lovely to ride with my Mum after such a long time!

Mum and Hero!

Blenheim Horse Trials
Saturday I was very lucky to go to Blenheim Horse Trials with my friends Toni and Poppy and we met up with my friends and clients Tammi, Sarah and Ryan there. I've been going to Blenheim since I was a small girl and I love watching the Cross country! Poppy who is just 9 years old wants to be an equestrian photographer when she's older and she took some amazing photo's! It was amazing to watch the high jump challenge and total credit to Laura Collett jumping 5'10 bareback!!!!

Dressage to music
Guinness and I have been busy working out our floorplan and editing our music ready for the freestyle at the Chiltern and Thames Dressage Championships at the end of October...watch this space!

Peroni & Shinty
Peroni had an exciting week this week - he got a new field buddy! 'Shinty' has moved in and already they are in love!

 
Lots of teaching
I had lots of great lessons this week. Too many to mention but was great teaching Kayleigh on Mr Darcy and having a bit of a jump! Mr D loves jumping but can get a bit over excited at times!

Next week sees the start on the next 'Take Back the Reins' courses at Moorwards which is a course especially designed for adults who want to get back in the saddle and maybe haven't ridden since they were young. If you want to find out about your nearest TBTR centre go to www.hoofride.co.uk for more information.

Gardening?!
I even managed to fit in a bit of gardening this weekend although I was more interested in saving all the earthwoms, spiders and snails from the strimmer! These are a few of the beautiful, multi-coloured friends I made today :-)

 

Introduction to Dressage - Part 2

Part 2 – Contact

Next we disgusted contact. 

To me, contact is the soft, steady, accepting connection between the riders hand and the horse’s mouth, created from the energy of the horses’ hind leg flowing through the horses’ body, up into a lifting shoulder and thus allowing the poll to be the highest point. It should not be achieved through a backwards hand but should follow the natural motion of the horses head. The frame should be neither behind the vertical nor too much in front of the vertical allowing the bit to sit comfortably and in an accepting way in the corner of the horse’s mouth, with the rein extending in a straight line past the riders hand to the elbow. The pressure on the horse’s mouth should be as soft as possible, with the horse working in self carriage, whilst with enough security of connection to direct and support the horse as much as required through the movements. 

Wow – the amount of words required to accurately explain contact makes you realise how complex and delicate a thing it is. Like most things, most riders spend their lives trying to achieve the perfect balance between either not enough or too much. Not enough and the horse cannot be directed sufficiently and will lack ‘attention’ and ‘confidence’, too much and the horse will appear resistant, without ‘submission’ and ‘harmony’. It is only with time and practise can we as riders develop the refinement and feel to create such a perfect balance and only when the training, strength and physical development of the horse allows it. Thus most of us will spend the rest of our riding lives refining and further refining it as our level subtlety and intricacy of communication develops. Because of this I always ensure I am not critical of a rider who has not got close to this balance yet, but instead I will gently ensure the rider can feel the direction in which further refinement is required. 

So where do you start with a 13 year old? As a human, we can only learn effectively if we concentrate on one area at a time. First we begin by visualising the shape. Neither behind nor too above the vertical. So how do you teach a horse to do this? Ryan already knows that reins aren’t for steering or stopping (except in emergencies!) but he has never used them for ‘shaping’ before. 

How to ask a horse a question (pressure and release)

In the halt, we ask Puzzle a question. This might sound like a strange thing to say, but horses don’t speak English (although of course they recognise tone/ energy/emotion). Ryan visualises the picture he wants to create whilst asking Puzzle a question. We always ask horses questions by applying some sort of pressure e.g a touch of the leg or even a pressure with our eyes but none the less a pressure of sorts. This doesn’t mean the horses instantly knows what we are asking him/her to do, but they know we are asking them to do something and thus the horse tries to work out the answer to the question through trial and error. I ask Ryan to lift his inside hand to apply a pressure on the corner of Puzzles mouth (the nicest place to place a pressure on the horses’ mouth) whilst keeping a contact in his outside rein so as to keep the pressure even in both reins. A very light pressure at first and then we wait. Puzzle does not seem to realise we are asking her a question and is quite comfortable and unaware what we are asking her. So I tell Ryan to increase the pressure gently to a level where she will understand that we are asking her to do something different. Puzzle realised something has changed and then begins to work out what she should do with this pressure. First she leans on the bit and pulls at the rein, but Ryan maintains the same amount pressure. Then she throws her head upwards but Ryan maintains the pressure. Then she softens a little by lowering her head a little and stretching her frame in to a vertical shape. This is the most crucial part of training any horse – the release of the pressure. Only when the pressure is released can a horse comprehend that they have answered the question correctly. This applies to any pressure; a leg aid to trot on, a ‘soften the rib cage’ aid in a leg yield, a canter aid. The pressure is the question and the release of the pressure signals the correct answer (or in the beginning an answer going in the correct direction). When you stop and think about, why else would a horse want to do what we ask? No horse should ever be discouraged for getting the wrong answer as it is only through trial and error these amazing creatures manage to fathom what on earth it is we want, but by the same token, the pressure must be maintained until the answer were looking for is given otherwise we just create greater confusion. Over time, with repetition and practise, a horse can learn what our different aids are asking for. 

We may have only touched on the very beginning of contact by achieving a few moments of softness and shape in the halt and walk but learning is best absorbed in small manageable chunks.

Ryan was thrilled and had enough to work on between now and his next lesson without feeling overburdened with too much new information. This is such an important part of being a coach, being challenging enough that the rider can progress whilst always making it as easy as possible for both horse and rider to understand and succeed.

Introduction to Dressage - Part 1

Part 1 - The scales of training; Rhythm and Relaxation the foundation of all good Dressage training.

Last weekend I had a thought provoking lesson with Ryan. Ryan learnt to ride from scratch over the past 12 months at Moorwards and now I also teach him privately on his family horse ‘Puzzle’ whom they bought from Moorwards on my recommendation. Ryan is an exceptional rider. He is only 13 years old, but he has had a natural position and excellent balance since day one, and he also is very body aware and is able to lower his energy and use relaxation to ride more advanced and high energy horses than many people of his age.

Ryan enjoys hacking and jumping but is keen to progress towards doing some dressage with Puzzle as he feels it would benefit her physically and mentally.

“Do you know what the word ‘Dressage’ means?”  I ask him? Ryan looks at me blankly.

Dressage is in fact the French word for ‘training’. And what is it that dressage trains?

“Horses are perfectly design to be horses” I explained to Ryan. “They need no training to be observant, to graze, to run from danger, this is what they are designed to do and they excel at it. They are not designed however, to carry a human around on their back although many are humble and willing enough to do so. Dressage," I explain "is the training process by which we train a horse to use its body more effectively over time to carry the weight of a human". 

So where do we start?

At preliminary level a judge will be looking for a few basic levels of training.

Correct paces  (walk: 4 time beat, trot: 2 time beat and canter: 3 time beat) which maintains an active and regular rhythm.

Suddenly I realise we are drifting in to a vocabulary that is going to need further explanation.

‘Active’ meaning it has the appearance of having natural energy and the horse gives the impression he is carrying the rider rather than the rider driving the horse.

‘Regular rhythm’ means that the footfalls (the timing of each foot making contact with the ground) is in a rhythm and neither slows down or speeds up despite the movements in the test.

Ryan practises walking, trotting and cantering and allowing himself to feel Puzzle’s footfalls and notice when her rhythm changes on both reins. It’s apparent that Puzzles walk and trot tempo varies greatly although her canter rhythm is very regular. I ask how Ryan could go about trying to influence Puzzles varying tempo. Ryan as always hits the nail on the head. “If I keep the rhythm I would like to keep going in my head and maybe even count it out loud at first, maybe this will be enough signal to Puzzle of the speed we should be going at”. I’m often quick to clarify when the words speed and rhythm are used, which one is correct, but I knew exactly what Ryan meant. Off Ryan went again and at only his first try Puzzles trot and walk rhythm was already showing greater consistency.

I explained to Ryan that Rhythm is the very first step on the Dressage scales of training and you cannot have rhythm if you do not have relaxation from the horse, and of course, you cannot have relaxation from the horse if you do not have relaxation from the rider. I realise this might be getting a bit complicated for a 13 year old boys first ‘Dressage’ lesson! But Ryan was taking it all in…. he is a sponge for knowledge and when he understands why something should be done one way or another, then he feels confident about what he should be doing.

Knowledge comes with understanding

A while back Ryan asked me about side reins. Some one had told Ryan he should use side reins when lunging Puzzle to help her build more muscle. ‘More muscle” sounded like a positive thing for Puzzle to Ryan and he feels he cannot challenge those who have been riding for a greater length than he has, even though I know, despite only recently taking up riding, he probably has a far greater breath of knowledge about horses and riding than many who have been riding all their lives.

I asked Ryan to explain to me how side reins work and he realised he didn’t know the answer. I explained to Ryan how muscle is built in all animals. By contracting and stretching/relaxing a muscle over time, the strength and size of the muscle can be increased (just like a body builder doing biceps repetitions with a dumb bell in a gym). Only by relaxing and then contracting the muscle is it worked. Put this into the context of a side rein. Yes, the side rein encourages the contraction of the muscle but it doesn’t allow the muscle to relax, it is simply held in a position. Like any muscle, held in contraction for a period of time, it will begin to ache and because the muscle cannot be stretched/ relaxed the horse will compensate by trying to support with additional muscles. This may lead to the horse leaning on the contact or over-arching to relieve the pressure on the mouth and as a consequence, the horse is likely to end up building muscle in undesirable places. Following this explanation, Ryan decided he didn’t want to use side reins on Puzzle, not because I had told him not to, but because now he understood how they worked and why they would not help Puzzle in the way he thought they would. I told Ryan not to disregard suggestions from others as some may be very useful and I encourage everyone to share the best practises they have learnt through experience, but if someone suggests something to you, and you ask them to explain how and why it works and they can’t, then it’s probable their theory/ belief is misguided or at the very least, will require further research.

Lots of lessons and first Elementary tests at Widmill Farm with Guinness

So Guinness rested up on Monday after our one day event. He's out at night which really helps with his stiffness in his hocks and so after walking it off Sunday night he was fresh as a daisy on Monday!

Didn't have it before but here is the video link of my showjumping from Aston le Walls....

Aston le walls showjumping 30.08.15

Monday was quiet at work as it was a bank holiday but had a great lesson teaching Jess who's been working on her canter. She has struggled for a while keeping her bottom in the saddle in the canter and leaning to far back and this was the first time I had even given her a lesson. We popped on a neck strap and I had her trotting around the arena in XC position with the fingers tucked in to the neck strap before going up to canter. This helped because as she had previously been so focussed on trying to stay in the saddle in canter she wasn't able to canter for long enough to really get the feel of the canter. After a few circuits she was starting to get the feel of the motion of canter and slowly we worked on her lowering her bottom in to the saddle whilst keeping a forward upper body position. Gradually, without loosing her relaxation, she slowely brought her shoulders more upright and before you knew it - TA DA!!! She was sitting the canter perfectly without bouncing or leaning to far back. The grin on Jess's face said it all! 

Tuesday I practised my dressage tests with Guinness in the morning and in the afternoon I taught Sophie and Grace how to ride a related distance on a dog leg. Sophie particularly struggles to control her pony Em's drift through her right shoulder and this exercise proved particularly difficult for them at first. Em really loves her jump and once Sophie had the hang of speed and shoulder control, they where flying through like pro's!

Wednesday I went to Windmill Farm Dressage in Chalfont st Giles for my first affiliated Elementary test.  I swapped to the training section at the last minute, as I didn't want to get any points which would put me out of the Novice Chiltern & Thames Championship I've qualified for later in the year. Guinness was an absolute star in every way! He loaded, travelled and chilled at the venue like a seasoned competitor. We didn't over do the warm up and E45 went smoothly with no major mistakes. E59 was our second test and is probably the hardest of all the elementary tests. Guinness tried his heart out and although we didn't have our maximum power in the mediums or the 10m half circles it was clean and accurate. I was pleased with 62.41% and 61.56% respectively. It was also a lovely surprise that my parents, who are over in England for a holiday (they live in the south of France) were able to come by to watch my first test. They haven't seen me ride Guinness since they emigrated in 2013, and they were over the mood with our preformance and especially Guinness transformation in behavior!

 Little snippet from my first test

In the evening I taught 10 year old Kaitlin Rose at Moorwards. Kaitlin rides well beyond her years and is totally besotted with horses and riding. She also loves her flatwork and is always a pleasure to teach. This week I taught her how to ride a 'change of leg through trot' in the canter. Dinky was on fire and loves an opportunity to show off her capability and together they progressed to really nail the movement with accuracy and impulsion without loosing the control!

Thursday was very busy at Moorwards with back to back lessons from 1:30 until 7pm! Gilda and her own horse Seren who regularly come to Moorwards for training made great progress and Seren is getting stronger and stronger as his lateral suppleness improves. Gilda even managed her first leg yield across the diagonal! Great work!

Friday was a day of teaching and catching up on jobs. Anna and 'Will' are such a pleasure to teach as Anna is so aware of her own body and has a really great feel. Will's suppleness has greatly improved with the lateral work we've been doing over the last few months and this really showed in his paces today. We worked on collecting and extending the walk with Anna using her core instead of her leg and when we moved up to trot his increased strength really showed with the engagement of his inside hind on 15m circles. I couldn't resist a little sit on at the end and Will and I demonstrated some beautiful collected and extended trot work again focussing on using my core instead of my legs. Such a super boy!

Peroni is doing well after his little operation and his nose looks great. He's almost got a covering on his ribs now finally (and a little belly too!) and I'm keeping my fingers crossed we can keep the weight on him this winter with all the grass and some warm rugs. 

On a personal note, my little boy had his first day at secondary school this week. I still can't get my head around it! He's so grown up and he had a fabulous day and made lots of new friends. He's very bright but this often leads to him losing interest in class so I'm really hoping his new school will keep him challenged enough that he can stay engaged in his lesson. I'm one very proud Mummy! x

On Sunday I'm back off to France for a week to help take care of my Nanny whilst my parents are away so an easy week ahead for Guinness and more riding for me across the beautiful French countyside....