wildhorses
Active Member
This is my first post. I've been a lurker for a while and have now decided to join the on-line world properly.
I do a fair amount of ground work with my horses and teach basic movements (very basic) from the ground before attempting them on board. I have found that if they have an idea what their legs are meant to be doing it makes ridden training easier for them. When I was younger I was lucky enough to watch a demonstration by Jenny Loriston Clark and Dutch Gold, doing dressage movements on long reins at her walking pace!! It was utterly amazing! Me and my lad are a thousand miles from what they could achieve but we are progressing and now we are a little bit stuck, hence the need to post.
I have a lovely horse that resonds really well to ground work. At the moment, lunging with two reins, he is able to walk trot and canter, lengthen his strides in walk and trot without going faster, walk to canter, rein back, spiral in and out, rein changes. I am currently working on asking for collection in trot, he shortens but struggles to maintain impulsion, his canter is also work in progress.
Long reining he is able to turn on the forehand and haunches, I can get him to move shoulders in or quarters in, so that his inside hind follows the outside fore and switch so his outside hind follows his inside fore, he can move sideways all in walk only. I struggling a bit to create and maintain the correct bend, as with ridden work sometimes he falls out through his shoulder, or curls his bum in too much. He can "leg yield" along a fence line but struggles going across the school, either going forward or sideways.
I think some of the difficulties I have is I'm still learning where I should stand etc and then trying to teach him so progress is rather slow.
If anyone has any advice for me on how I can proceed I would be very grateful. I have no desperate need to progress quickly, to me this is all training, for fun and personal learning. It seems to be beneficial to him, he is a sensitive soul and things he doesn't understand worry him greatly so to be able to break things down in to simple bite-size chunks helps. It is also lovely how his demeanour completely changes when he's trying to understand. You can see, almost hear him thinking and he tries so hard to do what I ask of him, even if our wires get a little bit crossed.
Thank you in advance
I do a fair amount of ground work with my horses and teach basic movements (very basic) from the ground before attempting them on board. I have found that if they have an idea what their legs are meant to be doing it makes ridden training easier for them. When I was younger I was lucky enough to watch a demonstration by Jenny Loriston Clark and Dutch Gold, doing dressage movements on long reins at her walking pace!! It was utterly amazing! Me and my lad are a thousand miles from what they could achieve but we are progressing and now we are a little bit stuck, hence the need to post.
I have a lovely horse that resonds really well to ground work. At the moment, lunging with two reins, he is able to walk trot and canter, lengthen his strides in walk and trot without going faster, walk to canter, rein back, spiral in and out, rein changes. I am currently working on asking for collection in trot, he shortens but struggles to maintain impulsion, his canter is also work in progress.
Long reining he is able to turn on the forehand and haunches, I can get him to move shoulders in or quarters in, so that his inside hind follows the outside fore and switch so his outside hind follows his inside fore, he can move sideways all in walk only. I struggling a bit to create and maintain the correct bend, as with ridden work sometimes he falls out through his shoulder, or curls his bum in too much. He can "leg yield" along a fence line but struggles going across the school, either going forward or sideways.
I think some of the difficulties I have is I'm still learning where I should stand etc and then trying to teach him so progress is rather slow.
If anyone has any advice for me on how I can proceed I would be very grateful. I have no desperate need to progress quickly, to me this is all training, for fun and personal learning. It seems to be beneficial to him, he is a sensitive soul and things he doesn't understand worry him greatly so to be able to break things down in to simple bite-size chunks helps. It is also lovely how his demeanour completely changes when he's trying to understand. You can see, almost hear him thinking and he tries so hard to do what I ask of him, even if our wires get a little bit crossed.
Thank you in advance
