Getting Her On Side
Jun 15, 2019 therubbercurrycomb
I've been working with a rider and her new mare over the winter, and we've had to adapt our approach several times as she is quite opinionated and nappy. She was very weak upon arrival, having been a broodmare for years, so it's been a slow journey of hacking, lunging, and working over poles from the ground. Now however, we're at the point where we're asking slightly more of her under saddle and she's taking umbridge at having to work her muscles a little bit harder.
This has been our approach in recent weeks. Begin by just walking her on both reins with a light, loose contact so she is unhindered and doesn't have an excuse to start napping to the gate. Then we progress this up into trot; a forwards thinking trot with large circles and changes of rein until she commits to work and settles into her own rhythm. At one point we were lunging her with her rider as she was far more receptive to my directives from the centre of the circle, and then we transitioned to her rider predominantly giving the aids and I backed her up if the mare baulked. Then we had an imaginary lunge line, before slowly taking the mare off the circle where she had to submit to her rider's aids.
She behaves perfectly for the warm up part now, but as soon as you start asking questions and putting on a bit of pressure the tail swishes, the hindlegs kick out and the bunny hopping begins. So I've adopted the approach that we ask her questions so subtly she doesn't even realise she's being asked anything.
For example, the mare has a very quick, tense trot which is very much on the forehand. We want to slow the tempo, shift her weight backwards and get her pushing forwards from her hindquarters. It's not just a simple matter of half halting with this mare as she'll take any rein aid as an excuse to stop and mini-rear, especially if the alternative is hard. I told my rider to think of her trot being on a sliding scale, of one to ten. Currently it was a six. Quietly, whilst trotting round on both reins and using circles, I asked her to experiment with the tiniest of aids to bring the trot back to a steadier five, then back to six, then back to five. She only needed to spend a couple of strides in the five trot, but the idea was that we made these micro adjustments so that her horse didn't notice that we were adjusting her gait and balance. The aim was to move towards a four trot, which we did after a few minutes, so that when we opened the trot back up into a five trot it was better balanced than the initial trot, but the mare would find it easier than the four trot and so be compliant.
It worked. The tempo became steadier and the mare relaxed so that her frame softened. The best part was that she stayed with her rider and continued with a good work ethic.
The next lesson, I wanted to work on improving the mare's suppleness as she was much more balanced in her trot. She didn't take well to the exercise I gave, which incorporated ten metre circles and stopped playing ball. Not wanting to lose the work ethic we'd created last week, I adopted Plan B. We reverted to riding large circles and when the mare felt particularly forward thinking and focused, I got my rider to ride an eighteen metre circle. Then back to the bigger circles. We repeated this, throwing in smaller circles more frequently and then the larger (normal) circles became eighteen metres and the smaller circles were fifteen metres. Eventually, the mare was happily riding ten metre circles without a second thought. She just hadn't realised that we were asking her harder questions.
I've come to the conclusion that whilst you always have to "ask a mare", with this one in particular you have to skirt around the subject, make suggestions and then let her take the idea and think that it's her own so that she willingly performs the exercise!
I used the bow tie exercise (blogged earlier in the week) last lesson with them but we had to slowly build up to the rapid changes of bend and small circles in order to keep the mare on side. By the end my rider felt she was a lot more adjustable and accepting of her aids. You could start to see where she is working more correctly because the hind leg action is improving, her neck is lengthening and lowering, and she has some cadence to her stride.
Hopefully we can build on the mare's new work ethic and begin to ask questions slightly more directly as she develops muscle and finds work easier. Then hopefully she'll become more open to corrections to her way of going from her rider. She may always be one who has to have an indirect approach, but I feel that now we've grasped the smooth handle (a What Katy Did reference for other bookworms) we will see lots of good work from this mare in the future. It's always a good challenge deciphering the workings of a horse's mind and how best to befriend them.
Everything in the world has two handles. Didn't you know that? One is a smooth handle. If you take hold of it, the thing comes up lightly and easily, but if you seize the rough handle, it hurts your hand and the thing is hard to lift.
Dressage, Teachingaids, Canter, dressage, Equestrian, Equestrianism, equine, equitation, Horse, horse riding, Horses, lunging, Pony, riding, Riding aids, teaching, winter
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