I had a great time at the Equestrian Symposium this weekend! It was a tad confusing because my Sunday class was a part two (the Saturday class was part one) and everybody but one person who came today was not in the part one, so I felt bad that the riders didnt have the background from yesterday. But everybody did good. I had them work on groundwork, having the horse just stand still several feet away from the handler (where he cant be banging his head into you, shoving you, etc.) and not passing while being led. The horses were good at all that, and thank goodness we had one who was green and one who didnt want to back up so that I could actually demonstrate. :-) Then under saddle they worked on the bending rein and walking a train track circle using the bending rein, the opening rein and making a square turn using the opening rein, and a bit of the neck rein. When you use your reins your hand should move UP, not down. A bending rein has a lot of up, an opening rein has a tad bit of up, and a neck rein has a tiny bit. When you pull down on your reins you simply put a bunch of weight on your horses front end and make it hard for him to move in a free and athletic fashion. The major theme for the class was not to apply a backwards action on the reins when youre asking your horse to go forward. We humans like to reach out and bring things to us. Its how we eat, drink, hold our babies, maintain control of something valuable - we bring it close to us with our arms. Pushing our arms forward can feel like giving up control. But if your horse goes forward as you are pulling back, hes simply trying to be agreeable - hes not responding properly to the cues youre giving him. And of course some horses wont be agreeable - some might even get pretty upset. Blocking free forward motion by pulling back then asking for motion means back up, not go forward, and we saw that very clearly with one horse today. There were a few shining moments when the young rider was able to push her hands forward and ask for motion, and the horse moved forward, and it was beautiful. :-) We also bring our hands back when we want to grab the saddle horn. There is nothing wrong with needing to feel secure, but if you still need to do that, you should be in lessons on the lunge line, where your instructor can control your horses speed and direction and can talk you thru finding your independent seat, so that soon you wont feel the need to grab your horn. If you grab your horn with your reins in your hand, unless your reins are very long, youre going to cause your horse to stop. Its very hard to break this habit without lunge line lessons with a patient coaching type instructor. For our brains, every time we grab the horn and we stay on and dont get hurt, our brains think that action just saved our life, and it just gets reinforced more and more. Lunge line lessons, and then passenger lessons when youre ready (and on a great horse!) are the key to breaking this habit. I want to thank everybody who came out this weekend including the other trainers who were GREAT. We had great weather, and Brookside is of course a beautiful facility.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 05:00:11 +0000
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