Invitation

I mentioned in passing the idea of inviting Theo up into a higher frame.  I feel like this concept needs a bit more explanation because it's been a game changer.  And, realistically, shouldn't have required a visiting clinician to point it out but all riders have their flaws.

When it comes to getting a horse on the bit or working on a contact, my training has been to shorten the reins and the horse should shorten up because that means it's time to work.  If the horse doesn't shorten up, they're not paying attention and you should correct them with the hand.  This has resulted in Theo typically jutting his nose out and bracing when I shorten my reins.  He's kind of an oppositional jerk that way.  Unfortunately, I will respond to that by getting in his face and away we go with one of our bickering sessions.  We're both very stubborn creatures.

During my clinic with Ashley Navarro in May, I was introduced to the idea of inviting my horse up into the higher frame.  She was rather scandalized to see me just shorten my reins up without giving Theo a hint beforehand that work was coming.  The idea was that I should let him know with my seat and legs that things were afoot and that he should rebalance.  To rebalance, he'll need to pick his head up and engage his topline.  When he picks his head up, I need to shorten up the reins so my hands don't end up in my crotch as the distance between my hands and his mouth shortens.  I shorten an inch, then ask for more with my seat and leg.  Shorten my reins again.  And again.  Lo and behold, with a couple of iterations, I was able to invite my horse up without him feeling claustrophobic or stressed.  He can lick and chew while in that frame that we're aiming for at Third.  It was his decision to pick his head up, after all.  His rider only asked him to tuck his nose a bit, nothing to worry about.  What's a little flexion between friends?

I was delighted to find out that he could lift himself without that ugly hinge spot in his neck and doing some over dramatic nonsense.  Not for long, he has a lot of topline to develop, but it's possible.  After the clinic, I worked with Trainer A to practice bringing my horse up into a contact using my seat and legs.  It's slow going.  Any project that involves teaching Theo to listen to my seat and legs requires me to tighten up my riding so I'm not making a lot of noise that he has to ignore.  It also requires Theo to listen to situations where he used to ignore.

As a direct off shoot of this concept, I've been working on making my legs quieter but also making them my default.  Confusing, right?  I need to work off of my seat and leg far more than my hands even when I'm mucking around with his head, but at the same time, my legs need to be very quiet because Theo is a rather sluggish horse.  So cues need to come from my leg and seat, but then my leg and seat need to come back off.  If Theo is getting heavy on my left hand, I need to make him step off of my left leg, then get that leg back off. 

This has taken a long, long time to beat into my thick skull.  If he's heavy in my hand, I automatically want to correct him with my hand.  Everyone knows that feeling.  Trainer, trainer, he won't stop dragging on me!  I'm having to pull so hard just to keep going straight!  While your trainer is slowly shaking their head, watching you try to play tug o' war with a thousand pound animal.  Then they say stop pulling and you yell back that you can't stop.  At this point you're not even sure why you have to keep pulling, but by golly you are not going to let go of that rein before he does!

Trainer A has resorted to throwing things at me to get me to go to my left leg when he starts to drag my left arm.  We went around and around on a 20m circle, working on leg yielding my stubborn pony every time he started to brace and drag.  He's trying to throw that left shoulder out.  However, pony is not a fool and started to travel straight after a few dozen reps.  If I pull, he has something to fight.  If I poke him in the ribs?  He moves his ribs over to make me stop poking him.  Presto change-o, that makes him get off his left shoulder and travel square.  Once he's settled into traveling square, pony has got some moves on him.  Half pass at the trot no longer bothers him and he prefers it to the leg yield for some reason.  He will contentedly do a 10m half turn and then half pass back to the rail in both directions in the trot.  I'm sure that understanding why he is better at half pass than leg yield would be a grand revelation into his biomechanics but for right now, it's all a mystery to me.

As I slowly trudge forward into the world of mid-level dressage, I'm trying to hang on to Theo's personality.  He has the mind for dressage, but his personality isn't exactly easy.  I don't want blind obedience and he certainly isn't offering it.  I don't want him to become tense or angry or resistant to the work.  Part of the problem I had with moving him to a connection was my reluctance to force the matter.  If Theo isn't chewing and licking while we work, I'm not happy.  My early attempts at a higher frame resulted in a dropped back, locked jaw, and tense neck. That's not okay.  Now I'm learning to make the higher frame something that he offers and I can reward. 

I have to do this a couple hundred more times until he automatically comes to me when I ask with my seat.  Then he'll do the same when the aliens have landed, taken over the arena, and set up flower covered bases from which they will enslave the world starting with the equines.

If Theo were a human, he would be an alien conspiracy believer.

French and German

This came up in my clinic on Saturday.  It's something I've heard in a couple of different places, but it's not something I've put a lot of thought into.

Caveat: This was presented to me in a 'the TRUTH of TRUE dressage' sort of way, so many grains of salt will be needed.

I mentioned my interest in western dressage being based in not wanting to hustle along a horse that really doesn't want to power along like WB.  Short back, short stride, heavy shoulders.  Limits.  We haz them.  But he's really cute and does try for me.  I wanted to try him in a discipline where harmonious, calm, light, and obedient will trump fantastic movement.  It's a little heart breaking to know we'll never see big scores in standard dressage no matter how hard we work.  And I know it takes power and balance to do a collected jog, don't get me wrong, but it seems like a kind of power that won't make Theo blow his top or refuse to play.  He likes to be powerful.  He does not like to extend.

"Sounds suspiciously like work, mom"

I trotted for a minute and she announced with great conviction 'I know exactly why your horse won't extend.  He doesn't like being off balance and he's too on his shoulders to extend right now'.

Well, yeah.  Duh.  I've been working on shifting his weight back for nearly three years.  But I'm going to just nod and go along with this because she doesn't know me and from what I hear, she rarely teaches anyone with a formal dressage background.  I also love to collect tools for my toolbox and as Theo hasn't read any of the books on how to correctly horse (whip tap means slow down in his little pony mind, for fuck's sake), I need all the help I can get.

This was when she started explaining that western dressage is based on French training while competition dressage is based on German training.  German training starts with getting your horse as big and forward as possible, then brings them back to collection using lateral movements.  French training starts with balance and lightness, then adds the bigger forward.  French training includes 'classical' dressage and the Spanish style of dressage.  It suits short backed horses that aren't made to be huge movers, the ones that can piaffe all day but find extensions challenging.  German training is better suited for ground devouring WBs that take the bit and soften because they were bred for it.

She really, really didn't like German dressage.  She really thought the more physical ride didn't suit 95% of the population and set a lot of people up for failure.  She prefers to focus on balance and keeping them as light in the hand and leg as possible.  French is apparently coming more into fashion when you see the much lighter contacts in the GP ring.  By her defintion, Vitor Silva is French.  I don't think he'd be happy to be called French, but she did qualify that 'French' was a misnomer and it covers a lot of western Europe.

The idea is that western dressage is focused on lightness and harmony.  Even on the score sheets, submission is replaced with harmony.  Gotta say, I like that.  A calm, accurate, obedient test is what they're looking for.  After all, a working ranch horse is useless if it's bouncing about with lots of power and expression but can't halt and stand.

I personally feel like clumping dressage into these two 'schools' is a massive oversimplification.  I usually hear it from a clinician or trainer trying to explain how they train TRUE dressage while the others are leading me astray (or worse, depending on the level of preaching going on).  It's a spectrum and most trainers are actually in between these two schools.  I've heard it in enough places to be familiar with the two concepts and to have a good idea of what I'm going to hear if someone uses it to describe their training.  It gives me a rough guess on whether or not they'll suit my horse.

With Fiona, the German way of training was the way to go.  She wanted to move, ate up the ground in her gaits, and wanted to reach to the bit.  She would lengthen any time I let her, I had to ask her to come back.  German focused trainers loved her and she worked well with them. 

Exactly one setting:  GO

With Theo?  Yeah, that's not happening.  He needs to learn to sit and develop power while keeping his jaw relaxed and his back lifted.  Then we'll have an extension.  Not an 8, but a solid 6.  Vitor has been, hands down, the best fit for Theo in terms of understanding how his pony brain works and his body moves.

He's thinking about nap time in this picture

So I can't say that I'm a student of one school or the other.  It depends on the horse I'm sitting on.  But it does help me understand why some trainers have more success with Theo.  He's not a WB.  He'll never be a WB.  We'll always aim for our obedience and accuracy marks because our impulsion and extension scores will be low.

Which school is better?  Neither.  I've seen both go off the rails and I've seen both succeed.  I don't believe in absolutes.  Pick and choose from all schools to find the combination that suits your horse.  For Theo?  It's a good thing I took French in high school.

Je veux que mon cheval aille de l'avant, s'il vous plaît

The power of straight

There's this thing a lot of people talk about.  A bunch of dudes in Germany wrote it once upon a time, they thought it was important.  It's almost a religion for a lot of the dressage-y types.

Yeah, that thing.  It's a nice, simple thing, but it surely can't apply to all horses, right?  RIGHT?

We all know training isn't linear.  You improve something, then you go back and tweak something, then you hop ahead to add something new, then go back to clear up something that popped up, repeat.  I'll admit to taking this whole pyramid thing as a neat idea that has very limited application in real life.  You learn it but it doesn't apply in real life.  Especially with a stubborn, evasive draft cross that isn't at all a purpose bred dressage horse.  Theo hasn't read the manual. 

Guys, I was wrong.  Again.  Training may not be linear, but that pyramid exists for a reason.

In Trainer A's clinic with mi papi, she got the book thrown at her for not locking down straightness before asking for collection.  In our attempts to unlock his resistance to any kind of bend in his upper neck/poll, we'd been turning Theo into Gumby.  Which worked for some things.  He relaxed, settled into the bridle more, started to give us lateral work.  He stopped using his under neck and started to develop a topline.  But that was all relaxation and connection stuff, we never went back to straightness.  We threw some energy in and then said 'collect, Theo!'.  We skipped from impulsion to collection.  The classically trained fella was having none of it.

Who cares if he's in front of the vertical right now?  Get his shoulders in front of his haunches, get his neck straight, and ride him that way.  No, he does not need to practice bending through his neck, that's half of your problem!  Look at him break at the C3 instead of the poll!  Keep him straight and keep his poll up!  Slow, steady, relaxed, forward, and STRAIGHT.

By gods it works.

Yes, that's Theo with Trainer A in the saddle at her clinic.  Look at that stretch and bounce!  She brought it all home and promptly threw the book at me.  Ride him straight!  Shoulders in front of haunches, neck straight, poll at the highest point.  If he's breaking at the C3, that's not softening, that's evasion.  Fix it.  Slow the rhythm, relax, settle into the connection, add energy, get him truly straight.  Forget his muzzle, just keep him relaxed, straight, even in the connection, and forward forward forward.

It's been a game changer.  His rhythm in the trot has dropped by a full beat per minute and sometimes two.  We are now shifting in and out of lateral movements without him falling on his face.  He's not a huge fan right now because he's having to sit evenly on both hind legs and can't break in the middle of his neck to fake flexion, but he's getting the hang of it.  I have to think of moving his shoulders, not his haunches or barrel or neck. 

His haunches are on a straight line, pushing us up and forward.  The power runs forward through his body so long as there are no kinks in the hose.  His shoulders I manipulate from side to side without the haunches leaving that straight line and without letting his shoulders pop out and block the hose.  I do not ask for bend in his neck.  Do not let the hose kink in the neck.  Flex is not what I thought it was.  If I can see his eye, that's plenty.  I don't want a change in the middle of his neck.  If I have a bend in the middle of his neck, I've lost the shoulders.  Pressure in both reins, cycle back through to the haunches.  If the outside rein is light, the shoulders aren't where they belong.  Inside leg to the waiting outside rein, bring the shoulders in front of the haunches and straighten the neck.

It's been hard for me because I hate having his muzzle out that far and my brain keeps screaming that I need to bend in the circles.  To do this dressage thing correctly (and move up through the levels), he's going to have to give through his poll and that's been very difficult for him.  When I give him massages, his poll is usually very tight.  Always has been, even before I started riding him seriously.  He hated having his poll touched when I started.  I think he stores his rage there.  Once he lets me work my fingers in, there's usually very dramatic yawning and chewing and stretching, particularly on the right.  He really, really struggles to flex left through the poll.  It's painful, but the vet says it's just tight, not arthritic.  Chiro agrees.  Massage therapist thinks he has rage issues.

Taking away his evasion has finally broken through that resistance.  In my last lesson I asked him to give me a little flex to the left and he did it.  Neck didn't move, but I could see his left eye.  He was calm about it, just offered the adjustment.  With each ride, he's comfortable bringing his muzzle in a bit more.  Just a bit, a fraction of a degree, but it's adding up.  He's learning to travel with his poll as the highest point and to flex through those previously locked muscles.  And at his last massage, his poll was less tight and painful.  Bit by bit, he's becoming supple now that he doesn't have a choice.  And as he gets more supple, he's less resistant to the idea of traveling correctly.  I've heard dressage referred to as yoga for horses and it looks like it's working.

It's been an interesting couple of weeks while we back up and fix this basic that we somehow blew past.  Theo's had some temper tantrums because this is new and hard and his evasions are suddenly being stopped, but nothing severe.  He likes being powerful and once he's rolling, he usually has that cheerful expression from the clinic photo.  Trainer A laughs at him when he's warmed up and hit his stride.  He loves to show off and let everyone know how big and powerful he is.

So I once again have to admit that I was wrong.  The training pyramid is a thing for a good reason.  While training isn't linear and it's not a case of completing a level and moving on, it's a checklist that needs to be revisited frequently and in that specific order.  The same way a tiny shift in my position changed everything about my riding, this tiny shift in how I ride my horse is rippling through everything.  It's going to be months before we see the full results of the change, but after three weeks, I'm very excited for what the future holds.  He looks like a real, honest too goodness dressage horse!