Schooling help please.

Slave2Magic

Slave2Magic

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My mare is generally not bad in the school but I find that she speeds up on corners and falls in. If I slow my rising down and get her to think more she is better but we need a more consistant bend. Is it a case of practice makes perfect or is there an exrecise that would help?
 
I'd do lots of work on pushing her out around the corner to make her use her inside hind to push from.

Leg yielding in circles will help, concentrating on pushing her out into the bend each time, or once on a corner/bend try keeping that bend on the straight, so starting some shoulder in?

If she is speeding up, then try going down a gait before the corner, then up again after? That might make her think *slower*. When she gets the idea then you can keep in the same gait which should be more steady?
 
No expert on this but try trotting so slowly its nearly a walk. Try and keep the energy up though, don;t let her slouch along. Keep using small half halts with your outside rein to rebalance her into and during the corner. Make sure you don't lean in. Sit up and look where your going. If you look to the outside this should help. If she starts to fall in, support her with your inside leg and widen your outside hand (outwards not backwards). You could also try doing a 10m circle at each corner, but remeber to keep it slow, don't lean in and keep your outside rein contact so that she does fall in. Try thinking bring the shoulderrs round first using your outside rein not the inside.
 
I don't pretend to be an expert either, but one thing that worked well for my horse was riding a squarer circle with a couple of steps of walk in each corner. If your horse is leaning in she is probably carrying more weight on her inside shoulder / foreleg. Try alternating this with a normal round circle, on a consistent bend.

Leg yielding from a smaller circle to a larger one also helped greatly - this would have been my first suggestion if Eriskayowner hadn't already said it :)
 
Lots of good ideas above.
It might also be useful to put something in the way so that she can't fall in so easily, e.g. a cone to show you both where she needs to be.
 
Keep the outside rein close to her neck and constant. Inside rein try and get a really good bend and PUSH her out with inside leg. Really exaggerate with inside bend then she cant fall in.
 
Thanks for the advice. It has given me ideas for my next schooling session. It is hard to keep her slow in any gait as she is a very forward mare. She also has her own ideas about how fast we should be going. Being in front of the leg does have it's good points though. I never have to nag at her to go forward. We just need it done in a more coordinated fashion!
 
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