Ample Prosecco
Still wittering on
Another great Joe lesson. Started just by demonstrating her lovely relaxed, loose reined canter. Which she did beautifully! So the next step now is to start to ask for more collection. Before she was able to be soft in the canter, there was nothing to work with. You can’t get a tense, rushing, braced horse to collect. We had to build a better canter first, and now we can add in some refinement. Which requires a very different approach. Before, we were circling for ages, waiting for an opportunity to release, because she had no idea what we were after. Now she gets into a lovely canter straight away, but she loses balances and speeds up. So we stop, re-set and start again. He used the analogy of walking a tightrope. If it starts to go wrong, is it better to just keep hanging on for dear life, to try and regain balance? Or is better to put a foot down, regroup, and go again. This worked really well. So I’d ask for collection or lateral work and if it went wrong, bring her back to trot, rebalance, pop her into canter, try again.
Again it showed me the difference between LEARNING and ‘schooling with instruction’. The exercises are always moving on, because she is always moving on. And there is so much home-work in between.
Also did some gate-opening practice. Lots of holes show up there. As you are one handed and needing the horse to move very precisely. So that led on to work on leg yielding - which in Lottie’s case should be called hand -yielding, because she does not understand that the leg alone means sideways. She needs a bit of hand. She will step the back end over with a leg aid at the girth, instead of side passing. So there is a gap there and we have lots of homework to do on moving laterally and backwards, just off the leg. In fact we got some nice rein-back steps with no rein at the end. She was really searching for the answer. She’s a clever horse and she is learning to learn.
Finally worked on downwards transitions and the soft stop. Did this in a straight line, through walk-halt, then trot-halt and finally, canter- halt. And will then also progress to canter-jump-halt. Aways ending with a soft feel, and a step back on a long rein so the horse is not just moving back while thinking forward, but is actually thinking back. That stops the bracing in the downward transition.
Joe is all about functional skills. Is the horse a useful animal? Whatever you teach should translate to doing a job easily and well. Does not really matter what the job is. If you can control all four corners of the horse, forwards, backwards and sideways in all gaits with one hand, with no bracing and tension, with the horse feeling confident and willing to search for the answer, then you have a good horse. And that horse can go on and do any job.
I have been a bit hung up on needing eventers to train me to event. But I don’t think I need that anymore. Not at the moment anyway. Maybe later for more technical skills, but this stuff feels foundational.
One more interesting thing is that there were a lot of parallels between Lucinda Green’s XC masterclass and Joe. And very little between Lucinda and my event training. Take straight line halt which she teaches. I have been asked to do this before in XC lessons after a jump, and it has felt adversarial. Pulling Lottie’s teeth out. Horrible. The masterclass says it is a fundamental skill – but it is hard for horses to do and needs to be taught progressively. And the key is the horse is STRAIGHT and stopping by sitting down on his hocks. This is a foundational skill for being able to collect, at speed, while staying straight - so you can collect for technical jumps just with weight shifts, and without wobbling off the line.
So to me, that sounds like something that needs to be schooled into the horse over time, not just used in a lesson with no explanation of the point of it. Other than to teach her to listen. (Which it didn’t – it taught her to argue). Joe’s straight line halt exercise seems to be exactly the same as Lucinda’s. He also focused on straightness and on the need for it to be progressive. Training a ‘soft stop’ into your horse over time. A million miles away from jumping a line then hauling your horse to a stop with no focus on the straightness.
I did also ask about the new bit. He hates it. And the grackle. But maybe that is for a different thread….. My bitting search goes on….. Or maybe with a few more weeks of schooling, I can just jump her in a snaffle.
Again it showed me the difference between LEARNING and ‘schooling with instruction’. The exercises are always moving on, because she is always moving on. And there is so much home-work in between.
Also did some gate-opening practice. Lots of holes show up there. As you are one handed and needing the horse to move very precisely. So that led on to work on leg yielding - which in Lottie’s case should be called hand -yielding, because she does not understand that the leg alone means sideways. She needs a bit of hand. She will step the back end over with a leg aid at the girth, instead of side passing. So there is a gap there and we have lots of homework to do on moving laterally and backwards, just off the leg. In fact we got some nice rein-back steps with no rein at the end. She was really searching for the answer. She’s a clever horse and she is learning to learn.
Finally worked on downwards transitions and the soft stop. Did this in a straight line, through walk-halt, then trot-halt and finally, canter- halt. And will then also progress to canter-jump-halt. Aways ending with a soft feel, and a step back on a long rein so the horse is not just moving back while thinking forward, but is actually thinking back. That stops the bracing in the downward transition.
Joe is all about functional skills. Is the horse a useful animal? Whatever you teach should translate to doing a job easily and well. Does not really matter what the job is. If you can control all four corners of the horse, forwards, backwards and sideways in all gaits with one hand, with no bracing and tension, with the horse feeling confident and willing to search for the answer, then you have a good horse. And that horse can go on and do any job.
I have been a bit hung up on needing eventers to train me to event. But I don’t think I need that anymore. Not at the moment anyway. Maybe later for more technical skills, but this stuff feels foundational.
One more interesting thing is that there were a lot of parallels between Lucinda Green’s XC masterclass and Joe. And very little between Lucinda and my event training. Take straight line halt which she teaches. I have been asked to do this before in XC lessons after a jump, and it has felt adversarial. Pulling Lottie’s teeth out. Horrible. The masterclass says it is a fundamental skill – but it is hard for horses to do and needs to be taught progressively. And the key is the horse is STRAIGHT and stopping by sitting down on his hocks. This is a foundational skill for being able to collect, at speed, while staying straight - so you can collect for technical jumps just with weight shifts, and without wobbling off the line.
So to me, that sounds like something that needs to be schooled into the horse over time, not just used in a lesson with no explanation of the point of it. Other than to teach her to listen. (Which it didn’t – it taught her to argue). Joe’s straight line halt exercise seems to be exactly the same as Lucinda’s. He also focused on straightness and on the need for it to be progressive. Training a ‘soft stop’ into your horse over time. A million miles away from jumping a line then hauling your horse to a stop with no focus on the straightness.
I did also ask about the new bit. He hates it. And the grackle. But maybe that is for a different thread….. My bitting search goes on….. Or maybe with a few more weeks of schooling, I can just jump her in a snaffle.
. 
