I started off by getting him really forward and marching up into the contact, because for some reason, today he wanted to mince alone and just arch his neck. I did a lot of shortening the stride and lengthening it within the gait, and each time I lengthened, I asked for a little more, really concentrating on wrapping my legs around him and riding every step up into my hands. Once he settled into the contact – he would get pissy and start to bob his head around, so I kicked him forward every time he did that – he started to have some nice lengthening. I also had to concentrate on riding the outside shoulder. Something that Bruce Mandeville had me do with Miles clicked with me today – you press your outside leg right behind the girth (instead of back, where the belly sort of swells out, which is where I keep my legs wrapped most of the time), and press the shoulder over around a turn, using very little hand. Of course, they’ll want to fall in, which is where you keep your inside leg back (where the belly swells out) softly and ride them between your inside and outside leg, to keep the bend. Once they get to the point of where they’re practically going around the turn with no hand at all, except to support, it’s pretty easy to ride them straight into both reins. Oliver has a bad habit of popping his shoulder to the outside around a turn, or the open part of a circle, tempting me to pull him through the turn with my reins. It also creates a kink in his body which prevents him from truly stepping through. Anyway, after getting some good trot work, I started on the canter by walking a turn on the haunches by pressing my outside leg right at the girth (well, it’s really slightly behind, but I imagine that it’s at the girth) and getting him to step cross over in front with very little rein. Once he was responding to that, I would allow him to take a few steps of walk and then immediately canter from there, keeping the outside rein, and just sliding my outside leg back to ask for the canter. If I truly have him on my outside aids, he’ll pick up the canter smoothly and without hollowing, and I’ll get the most lofty canter strides I’ve ever ridden from him, with very little effort. I also make sure that I really ride him forward into the canter to keep the inside hind jumping through, and instead of keeping my outside leg back, I’ll bring it back to neutral position so I can press his shoulder back in if it pops to the outside. By this time, he’s really understanding my outside leg forward, so when I walk him, I head down the long side, slide my inside leg back from the hip to think “push his butt down the rail”, and then press my outside leg at the girth to keep the shoulders off the trail. It worked like a charm. He eased his way down the long side in a wonderful, correct shoulder-in, and it seemed effortless.
I’m finding that I don’t ride with leg, like I thought I did. I read in the latest issue of Horse Journal that dressage judges are seeing an alarming tendency for people to ride without leg, and it’s why the halt is crooked and sprawly in so many tests. They had a picture of a person riding from behind, and the lower leg wasn’t really wrapped around the horse. It wasn’t sticking out away from the horse, like I had imagined, but from the mid point of the calf down, it wasn’t really touching the horse’s side. So, that got me thinking. Today, when I slid my legs back to where I could really feel his belly under my calf, he squirted forward. That told me that I wasn’t really, truly riding with my leg, since he really isn’t a very touchy horse. I immediately started to keep my leg there, and when he tried to canter forward, I would just keep my hands still (and NOT pull down, which is very, very tempting!) and keep my leg on and just wait for him to accept it. He started to pull and yank away, which annoyed me as well as had the effect of pulling me forward in the saddle, so instead of pulling back, I lifted my hands and put more leg on, and that made him sit back on his butt more, and when he did that, I immediately softened and put my hands back where they belonged. So, he started to accept that at the trot, and then I started riding trot/walk and walk/halt transitions with my legs back there. He hated that – wanted to pull and root and yank, and every time he did, I would boot him forward into the bridle (making him work harder) and then ask again. It got to the point of where I could just sit back, put my leg on, close my hand slightly, and BAM – he’d give me a beautiful, uphill down transition, and even a square halt. At the canter, he protested just as much, so much so that I think I may have gotten some Grand Prix collected canter work (he would rather canter in place than do a correct trot transition???), but in the end, his canter would get lofty and then he’d slide into his trot transition and have a beautiful trot with self carriage right off the bat.
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