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The Gentle Art of Submission...
Dec. 14th, 2011 07:55 pmIt's a horsey post tonight.
I've just come back from half-an-hour with Diva, and - oh, boy! - am I knackered!!
There were two aims of the lesson today. For twenty minutes, we concentrated on accuracy. Two parallel poles were set out on the inside track at C, and two more across the lateral line from E to B. The aim was to navigate the horse through the poles each time in trot.
So far, so good. I was thinking in terms of serpentines, and it worked very nicely. I got some lateral bend in the horse, which is impressive, considering she's a riding school beast and usually as wooden as hell. The difficult bit came when one set of poles were made steadily narrower, until there was only a gap of about 18 inches to navigate through.
Impossible! thought I, as we trotted our way round for the final approach. But we managed it almost perfectly - one pole got knocked once each time - which means that I actually find it easier to steer a half-ton horse than I do a mountain-bike. J says that this is because Diva has a brain, but I'm not really sure that Diva's brain is tuned in to trotting between two very slender poles laid down on the ground. I think I'm right in saying that she can't actually see where she's putting her feet at that stage anyway.
That went very well. And then we moved onto the dreaded trot-canter transition. Tonight, I started to make progress. I finally made my aids clearer, more precise and firmer, too, and the horse responded. I can't tell you what the difference was - I think I was thinking of moving through from the legs and the seat, pushing the horse into canter rather than sitting like a numpty in the saddle and flapping hopelessly. The only problem is... she kept going into canter on the left rein in the wrong leg. This is a Diva thing - I don't know if it's linked with her pelvis trouble, or whether it's sheer silliness. I'm not going to suggest it's laziness, because I'm a firm believer that a poorly schooled horse will have real problems performing what's asked of it. More work on her balance in walk and trot will I think bring dividends, but I'm just a lone voice in the wilderness. I think the kids who make up most of her work schedule wouldn't know what the right bend was if it jumped up and did a song-and-dance routine in front of them...
Anyway, apart from the odd strop when the trot-canter transition didn't go well, Diva did extremely well. I wasn't trying to get her down on the bit, and I'm sure she could have been more active from behind. But once again, even without being asked, she dropped her head and lightened up in the forehand. And again, I had that incredible buzz that you get when the horse you're working with becomes completely submissive to your requests, not because you tell her to, but because she wants to.
Ah, Xenephon. You and your Greek friends were so, so right about horsemanship....
I've just come back from half-an-hour with Diva, and - oh, boy! - am I knackered!!
There were two aims of the lesson today. For twenty minutes, we concentrated on accuracy. Two parallel poles were set out on the inside track at C, and two more across the lateral line from E to B. The aim was to navigate the horse through the poles each time in trot.
So far, so good. I was thinking in terms of serpentines, and it worked very nicely. I got some lateral bend in the horse, which is impressive, considering she's a riding school beast and usually as wooden as hell. The difficult bit came when one set of poles were made steadily narrower, until there was only a gap of about 18 inches to navigate through.
Impossible! thought I, as we trotted our way round for the final approach. But we managed it almost perfectly - one pole got knocked once each time - which means that I actually find it easier to steer a half-ton horse than I do a mountain-bike. J says that this is because Diva has a brain, but I'm not really sure that Diva's brain is tuned in to trotting between two very slender poles laid down on the ground. I think I'm right in saying that she can't actually see where she's putting her feet at that stage anyway.
That went very well. And then we moved onto the dreaded trot-canter transition. Tonight, I started to make progress. I finally made my aids clearer, more precise and firmer, too, and the horse responded. I can't tell you what the difference was - I think I was thinking of moving through from the legs and the seat, pushing the horse into canter rather than sitting like a numpty in the saddle and flapping hopelessly. The only problem is... she kept going into canter on the left rein in the wrong leg. This is a Diva thing - I don't know if it's linked with her pelvis trouble, or whether it's sheer silliness. I'm not going to suggest it's laziness, because I'm a firm believer that a poorly schooled horse will have real problems performing what's asked of it. More work on her balance in walk and trot will I think bring dividends, but I'm just a lone voice in the wilderness. I think the kids who make up most of her work schedule wouldn't know what the right bend was if it jumped up and did a song-and-dance routine in front of them...
Anyway, apart from the odd strop when the trot-canter transition didn't go well, Diva did extremely well. I wasn't trying to get her down on the bit, and I'm sure she could have been more active from behind. But once again, even without being asked, she dropped her head and lightened up in the forehand. And again, I had that incredible buzz that you get when the horse you're working with becomes completely submissive to your requests, not because you tell her to, but because she wants to.
Ah, Xenephon. You and your Greek friends were so, so right about horsemanship....
