Knowledge swaparoony
Today was the day that Jessica and I got together to help each other out. She's a lovely hunter rider who has a lot of OTTB's and they all look lovely and have that nice forward swinging stride with a nice neck arch. And she's hilarious. And... she wants to event! So... we decided to do a knowledge swap day. We met up at Ashland. I brought Lyric and she brought Poppy, her cute bay pocket rocket type TB mare.
We started in the arena and she gave me some pointers. She uses a lot of ... illiterations??... Anyways, it was helpful! It was a whole lot of info and I probably can't remember it all. But here goes...
Reward the try! Even the tiniest little bit of try... release and reward. And if they give you the wrong answer, don't stop or "reward" that because then you're confusing them and teaching them the wrong answer. Give them lots of breaks so that they don't begrudge working. Keep elastic elbows. You can use your hands to tighten/hold/soften but you have to do that with soft elastic elbows. And it's all leg vs hand. Don't ride with the handbreak on and the gas pedal pushed down at the same time. And aim for in front of the leg at all costs. Because essentially it's hard to get a horse soft and straight if they're behind the leg.
She showed me a few exercises that she does. One is walking a square. Where she will walk forward four or so strides, then side pass to the left four or so strides, then back four or so strides, then side pass right four or so strides. Oh!! That's hard! Then she showed me how she rides transitions within gaits. She'll pick up the trot and on the long side, let them have a nice swinging working trot. Then as she comes into the short side, she sits, adds a LOT of leg, and holds and lifts with her core and body and closes her hands a tiny bit to get a collected trot. Then when she goes back to the long side, she doesn't add leg, she just allows the forward energy to flow! So.. kind of the opposite of what I was doing... Which duh... collection requires more leg. But for whatever reason, my brain forgets and I just use the brake to collect and the gas for forward and go. Sigh... We played with that and Lyric was getting a little better. But she also nailed us on our straightness. She said that Lyric and Poppy are similar and pop that right shoulder. So, tracking left I have to think about posting to the left to pull that right shoulder back under. Think of doing a step or two of shoulder in every other stride.. like an octagon/stop sign to help encourage them to sit upright and be under themselves. I have to keep my hands even because if one comes behind the other, it puts a kink in the hose and sends her laterally/jacknifes her, instead of forward and straight. And if that happens, even my hands and then more leg to send her forward. Steer into the skid! Ha. Kind of. Not really, I guess just steer forward.
It was a lot of fun and helpful. A lot of information though. But Lyric and I both seemed to get the hang of it. I did mention that it was hard for my brain to let go of the reins a bit because she felt like she really wanted the heavy connection. But when I was riding with more leg, she sat up and got nice and forward and then I was able to soften my reins to her and she got softer and reached a bit. So yay! Which... is sort of what I've been doing... with the softening of my hands, but... maybe I need to focus more on creating that feel before I soften with my legs vs with heavier hands.
After we played out there for a bit we hacked to the lake and let the girls splash around a bit. And then we hacked around to the barbed wire balls and then back to the green lake and then back home. Fun day! Although Lyric was giving Poppy the snark face some, so.. apparently she's not as chill with other horses as I thought! But she was good and didn't do more than pin her ears and snake her head. Typical Dan moves. ;)
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