InTheSaddle
New User
A little bit of background:
My darling Kitty is a rising 5 year old TB x warmblood mare. She was backed as a 3 year old (although he wanted her earlier) by Jason Webb. Since then shes been ridden for a few months and then unfortunatley turned away for almost a year due to her owners quite serious neck injury. Since then I have been recruited to take her on as a project and I love her to pieces
, however she is not without her problems.
We have come quite far from where we first started when all I could do is walk her round the school because anything more sent her into a frenzy! Now we can ride for up to an hour in mostly trot without her even breaking a sweat, have 'hacked' alone round the big paddock (which was a massive issue for her
) and have done a little bit of canter but not too much for now.
The issue comes in schooling with her picking up the contact. Most of the time as long as I have her attention she picks up the contact pretty quickly, the only issue being when she has it she spends the training session leaning on the rein, gripping the bit and taking the contact then dropping it again. At the beginning of the training session when were warming up shes quite happy to walk and stretch out nice and calmly without the need for contact. However by the end of the session if I drop the rein completely she desperatley seeks the contact again dropping her head almost to the floor to try and find the end of the rein.
It's a problem thats probably quite hard to understand without having got on her but I hope I explained it reasonably well! Does anyone have any ideas what I can do to help her pick up the contact and keep it? I'm not asking for the perfect outline just yet just for her to keep her head still and not feel like shes dragging my down her neck
!
Thanks for bearing with me, rant over!
My darling Kitty is a rising 5 year old TB x warmblood mare. She was backed as a 3 year old (although he wanted her earlier) by Jason Webb. Since then shes been ridden for a few months and then unfortunatley turned away for almost a year due to her owners quite serious neck injury. Since then I have been recruited to take her on as a project and I love her to pieces
, however she is not without her problems. We have come quite far from where we first started when all I could do is walk her round the school because anything more sent her into a frenzy! Now we can ride for up to an hour in mostly trot without her even breaking a sweat, have 'hacked' alone round the big paddock (which was a massive issue for her
) and have done a little bit of canter but not too much for now. The issue comes in schooling with her picking up the contact. Most of the time as long as I have her attention she picks up the contact pretty quickly, the only issue being when she has it she spends the training session leaning on the rein, gripping the bit and taking the contact then dropping it again. At the beginning of the training session when were warming up shes quite happy to walk and stretch out nice and calmly without the need for contact. However by the end of the session if I drop the rein completely she desperatley seeks the contact again dropping her head almost to the floor to try and find the end of the rein.
It's a problem thats probably quite hard to understand without having got on her but I hope I explained it reasonably well! Does anyone have any ideas what I can do to help her pick up the contact and keep it? I'm not asking for the perfect outline just yet just for her to keep her head still and not feel like shes dragging my down her neck
! Thanks for bearing with me, rant over!
