As I write this, I see snow outside my window. I don’t like
this time of year, and not just because of the cold. I refer to winter as ‘purgatory,’
because most of my usual training help has headed south. I spend 3 months wondering if I’m developing
my horses correctly, or if I’m off on a garden path. Because let’s face it, the worst place to see
what a horse looks like is from his back. And ‘feel’ is a tricky thing – often,
what I think things should feel like is pretty far removed from what they
actually feel like, but that’s a topic for another blog.
This year, purgatory has been delayed a bit. In the last 2
weeks, I’ve been in front of 2 trainers that I highly respect, and I went down to
the FEI Trainer’s Conference to watch for 2 days. The problem, of course, is I been
exposed to a snapshot of 3 different trainer’s systems. I now have the job of
analyzing that info, and seeing where and how it integrates into my
system. I have pages of notes to read, a bunch of video
to watch, and a bunch of ideas to percolate in my mind.
A quick aside – yes, correct training is correct training.
But just as different versions of Christianity are all built on the same
fundamental beliefs that center on Jesus and afterlife, and all read the same
book, each denomination has a slightly different flavor. I’m not here to start
a holy war. In my opinion, as long as all paths lead to heaven (or, in our
case, a relaxed, happy, balanced, obedient horse), who am I to criticize.
As I started to look at the info by topic, I realized I had
a nice progression of half pass work. Venus and Secret’s winter training goals
both include improving their half passes, so timing was perfect. Half pass training
lends itself easily to a large variety of exercises, and the following three conveniently showed up at just the right time to address the ideas that were bubbling up.
So, the exercises, and what they improve in a horse-
Leg yield to the
wall, half pass in a little, leg yield to the wall, half pass in, with no
change in the neck position.
Catherine Haddad gave me this exercise for Venus, who tends
to like to power along so much she loses suppleness in her back.
I played with this for a few days, and found it did improve
Venus’ back. Additionally, focusing on keeping Venus’ neck in the same
position, she started to stretch her outside shoulder out towards the wall more,
which helped improve her shoulder freedom. Then I tried it on Secret, and
instead of loosening her shoulders, it provided her with a wonderful escape
route – if she pushed her shoulder a bit too much, aka popped her shoulder, she
could get to the destination without lowering her hip.
That Saturday, Secret was scheduled to go in
front of Gigi Nutter, who gave us the following pattern:
Same pattern as
above, but straighten the neck in the leg yield, and re-position it for the
half pass.
The purpose of this variation is to improve the acceptance
of the outside rein in the half pass, and therefore helping the shoulders “stand
up.”
I played with this exercise for both mares, and liked the
control I had, but feel like, even though neither mare loses tempo significantly
in the half pass, they could both use more “bounce” when they go sideways. I know this is very common, but the best
horses don’t lose energy or cadence when going sideways. As I was pondering which
of the many half pass variations would help, I went down to FL to audit Stephen
Clark at the FEI Trainer’s Conference. He had a rider demonstrate the following
exercise:
On a diagonal, looking
at destination letter between the horse’s ears, ride forward, then ride half pass,
then forward. Always keep the neck and shoulders on the diagonal line.
Stephen Clark used this exercise in the FEI Conference to
improve expression and keep the same quality of trot in the half pass. The
super-fancy-genetically-gifted-for-dressage horse went from quite nice to
really impressive, so I was curious what it would do for my mounts.
I plugged it into the mare’s half pass plans, and for Secret,
it made a really smooth, fluid, this-sideways-stuff-is-easy-peazy half
pass. For Venus, her natural tendency of
make-big-steps got channeled into make-big-sideways-steps.
Just like a musician’s variations-on-a-theme exercise, I
have variations-on-a-half pass to fill my days in wintery purgatory.
