Les works towards the first sketch of piaffe with Mustangs, Koa and Ilo. You can see Koa start to find the thought 1:15 seconds in.

This video shows the very start of the process, where the horse is learning balance and positioning – not expression and air. These sessions are about getting the horse to find the thought. Fanciness will come with time. We are doing it this way to avoid the “ugly” phase, where horses are scared, confused, and frustrated.

Koa has successfully offered several steps on her own without touch cues since, so it does work. The movement is not the end – the breadth, depth, and fluidity of communication is. We are working towards greater synchrony.

Today we almost didn’t get to have a lesson! Here was the barn owner’s message to us at 10am:

Hi all,
The air right now is positively brown with sand. Don’t come out here unless you call me first. Maybe later it might be better. We just hit the highest winds ever since we’ve lived here. Everything is blowing around, the horses are hunkered down behind, in and around the sheds. You can barely walk around. I don’t really want any body in the arena or the barn. Although knock on wood everything is still standing. Kali, if any of the kids are planning to be out here today, Monday, please call them.

Call me later if you are thinking of coming out. It might calm down. I HOPE.

Take care,
K

When we called Karen at 3pm, she said it was down to 20mph winds, with gusts up to 40, so the lesson was back on! It was Lauren, Taylor, Morgan, and Katelynn’s first official arena lesson with us. The horse’s were AMAZING despite the very trying weather.

Today’s lesson was all about synchrony. Synchronization exercises create equality between horse and human, help you learn about each other’s motivations and goals, teach you to read each other’s body language, and create connection. When all those elements align, you are in synch with your horse and, with any luck, with the world at large!

Lauren (10), worked with Thistle. Thistle is brand new to the idea of yielding to pressure. Lauren showed awesome persistence and ability to change her technique in the moment to help the horse understand. She was very willing to just come up with her own ideas for what she thought would help and try it out. It was cool to see. Lauren did lots of Friendly Game and The Whippings to help Thistle quiet down when she first entered the rattling arena. Then she learned the rest of the Parelli games and did more Friendly Game with the ribbons and ball. The last part of the lesson, she did a seatwork lesson on the longe. It was her first time in an English saddle. She was very enthusiastic and would repeat a motion if she didn’t think she did it as well as she could, even though I told her to do them just one time. She’s very self-motivated.

Morgan and Katelynn are 13 year old twins who got their first introduction to horses with us while we were working at the rescue. It’s been about a year since we last saw them. The twins oddly enough, ended up with horses who are as similar and different as they are – Quick Draw and Sarah – both white Arab crosses, but very different horsenalities. After warming the horses up on the ground, Morgan did a lesson with Gina and Katelynn did a lesson with me.

Gina had Morgan doing seatwork on the longe. Morgan’s balance got way better in just this short lesson. All our seatwork is done without stirrups so that the rider’s posture can evolve naturally. We make a point of not coaching the rider’s position. We choose whichever seatwork exercise will help the balance problem we see and good posture develops naturally. When I was growing up, trainers made us ride with sticks threaded through our elbows and behind our back so that the lower back would arch and the shoulders would come back. Today like-minded trainers buy a special vest that has the same effect. Such silliness. Seatwork exercises do wonders for a rider’s seat and confidence.

Les worked with Lauren’s sister, Taylor (13) on seatwork on the longe at the same time as Morgan was riding. Taylor did the same seatwork exercises riding Blondie. Did I mention we started Thistle, Blondie, and Sarah ourselves? Blondie is a coming 4-year-old and has had all her training with us. She’s virtually bomproof and an absolutely amazing teacher. She gives everything to a complete newbie, responding to the most convoluted cues, tests the cocky advanced beginners, and really goes the extra mile for kids who truly want to learn. This palomino mare is worth her weight in gold. Sarah is the same way, and we only started her in January.

After her seatwork lesson, Les tagged Taylor to help her learn how to steer. They worked on lifting up the reins and sliding down one side, opening the rein up to show the horse’s eyes where to go.

At first I tried having Katelynn do a little cantering on Quick Draw on the longe, but he wasn’t feeling it today. So, we switched to learning about lateral movements. I let Katelynn feel shoulder-in as I cued Q from the ground, then showed her how to use her aids to ask for it. All our lateral movement comes off one rein only  – no confusing things with 10 million cues. Quick Draw has amazing lateral movement, so learning shoulder-in was a breeze. Net we did a little half-pass, which is much harder for a rider to feel. In shoulder-in, the horse’s nose is bent away from the direction of travel. In half-pass, the horse’s nose is bent in the direction of travel. Katelnn and Q both did an awesome job. Katelynn is light enough to allow Q to do the movement and patient, calm, and cheerful enough to work through confusion. She seems never to get frustrated, and that is a cool quality in a student!

Gina played with her mini both before and after the lesson. Looks like she’s naming the little one Penny Lane

All in all – a great lesson. Very fun and rewarding.

Today was a busy day! Conner (12) rode KC, and Emma (12) rode Thistle and Celebrity. Les worked with Sundae and rode Koa, I rode Ilo, and worked with Sam. Gina worked with Blue Man and got things prepared for her new mini!

Blue Man was laying down when we went to go get him. He showed a lot of trust and didn’t hurry to get up. He looked very handsome and we were able to snap a few pictures. He’s such a site with his mane standing on end!

Blue Man is just about ready to start so I have been having Gina watch colt starting dvds by Lesley Neuman, Ray Hunt, and Parelli. She recently watched the Parelli Savvy Club dvd where Pat helps Jake start the blue roan QH gelding. Pat demonstrates ways to desensitize the horse and Jake rides the colt bareback, then later with a saddle. It’s a fascinating dvd because you get to see it all. We use some of the same techniques in starting our colts.

Blue Man is working on synchrony. He is very distractable and, while he likes humans, he thinks they are senseless and only require about 1% of his total brain power. We are working to convince him that we are interesting, useful, and worthy of his attention.

First we did Travel Together with Blue Man. He’s naturally balanced and relatively relaxed on the longe. Then we worked on Hippity Hop. He was not too keen on on standing quietly to have Gina lay on him so we went on to The Whippings. Blue Man became quite calm and attentive in no time at all. We then worked on balancing the for quadrants of the horse doing a pattern that involves sidepassing a pole, the balancera on the rail, and jumping a barrel at a walk.

Blue Man had never sidepassed a pole before, so Gina had to work up to it, starting with one step of sideways without a pole, all the way up to sidepassing the whole 12′ pole. As with everything, Blue learned quickly. Blue had very little trouble with the balancera. He was light and moved forward and back attentively with ease. He’s naturally nimble. When invited out of the squeeze, Blude did a good job not rushing through Gina’s hand in anticipation of the barrels. He was quite beautiful over the barrels, jumping calmly and efficiently, with good form.

During Emma’s lesson, I tagged her for the same thing I had Chloe working on the other day – a good release over the jumps. Emma progressed very quickly. It was Thistle’s first time trotting a gymnastic. We were working on migrating through the gymnastic, focusing on a fluid, no-brainer ride for horse and human. The jumps are treated as non-events, just an obstacle on the trail.

Thistle is the wonder pony, as Emma is the wonder rider. Thistle has been under saddle for just 1 month and Emma has only been riding for 3 months. Emma started Thistle herself with our supervision and has done all but 3 or 4 of her rides. The gymnastic was a trot-in cross rail, bigger vertical, then a smaller vertical, one stride in between, though Thistle trotted the whole gymnastic rather than cantering at all. We did two 15 minute jumping sessions with clicker play for Thistle in between. Thistle was quite quiet and content to just hang with Emma. She seemed to enjoy snuggling with Emma as much as pushing the ball or playing other games.

At the end of the lesson, we did a little liberty play, as Thistle usually likes it and is naturally quite fancy. Thistle jumped the obstacle on her own several times, even though we were guiding her away from it. She is a beautiful, brave jumper. She did the canter strides in between the jumps, making good distances 90% of the time.

Next Emma rode Celebrity. Isn’t she lucky to go straight from school to lessons where she gets to play with as many horses as she can in 3 hours? Celebrity was awesome. Emma trotted the same gymnastic on him as she did on Thistle Conner rode at the same time and worked with KC on a big X and on the gymnastic. Both girls were working on synchrony, building the range of what they could do together with their mounts. KC, traditionally a bit lazy and a head-shaker, was doing quite well. It was fun to see Emma on 12’1h Cebs and Conner on 15’1h KC jumping the same jumps.

Lastly I worked with Ilo on migration at the trot. She tends to worry quite a bit about sounds and any little extra movement I make on her back. We’re working on keeping trotting. Ilo has such a little shuffle of a trot that, as I’m encouraging her to keep trotting, makes me think of Dory singing, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming,” from Finding Nemo.

Les worked with Koa on synchronization while trotting bareback. He used a cone as a target for the circle. Koa progressed very well, building up to being able but connected to Les. Les felt discouraged at the end of the lesson, though, because Koa didn’t have much play drive, probably because they were working on a task that challenges her emotional fitness. During their play sessions, Les has been working with Koa using Mediterranean horsemanship principles to teach piaffe. While she was a little unexcited yesterday, Koa is doing quite well working towards piaffe. He cues her forefeet with a touch near the elbow and her hind feet with a touch near the flank. It it is quite imperceptible and graceful.

Sun, hail, gust of wind, sun, hail, gust of wind… April leaves me spinning!

Today Chloe (12) worked rode Celebrity and clicked him for jumping in a style suitable for tiny riders. Celeb is 8 years old and at just under 12’2h,  is likely to sell to a rider under the age of 10. Given that, we’ve been working on creating different cues for “just step over it” vs “jump.” Cebs is doing awesome. This fancy boy has been rewarded a lot in the past for nice square knees a a scopey jump, but three days of clicking for jumping like a beginner’s pony and he can go back and forth on cue. Today had an added challenge – the winds must have been a constant 20mph with 40mph gusts today! Plus, there were sudden hail storms throughout the afternoon, which were quite noisy. Nevertheless, Cebs never spooked once. He was awesome!

While she was riding, I tagged Chloe for releasing over the jumps. She tends to want to hold back. Chloe has a more natural dressage-type seat so closing her hip angle and coming forward for hunter style riding is a challenge for her. The cool thing about our Freeze Frame method for teaching, though, is that you don’t have to know what you’re doing wrong, only what you’re doing right. When you hear a tag, you know you got it. No tag = try again.

Chloe worked up from one jump to a 5-jump course on Cebs. This style of jumping is a migration exercise because it is about teaching the horse to maintain gait, rhythm, and straightness despite changes in terrain. The jumping can also be a synchronizing exercise, designed to bring the horse’s and rider’s energy into sync for greater range, but this exercise was simplified to focus on relaxation, peace, and contentment, making it a migration exercise. Cebs and Chloe migrated through the jumps as they would through a trail, letting their focus fade, enjoying the ease of movement, riding in a passive, yin style.

After Chloe rode, I got on to feel Cebs out. He was lovely, taking a smooth, rhythmic trot and a rocking horse canter. I was impressed by how light he was after Chloe rode him. He was supple and well-balanced. It was a successful day.

After Ceb’s session, I used Ilo, my WY BLM Mustang, to demonstrate some groundwork for Chloe. I had Ilo do what we call, “Travel Together,” where the horse travels over obstacles at a trot while you walk beside him at a distance. Travel together is a lot like longeing or circling, but our focus is on straightness and balance. We also stay just a little in front of the horse so we are leading him as opposed to driving him.

Using Travel Together, Chloe learned how to send Thistle over multiple jumps in a row, making a continuous flow around the arena that simulates riding. After Chloe and Thistle could do several jumps in a row without breaking gait, I had them play with some barrels.

We set up 3 barrel jumps in a row, going from hard to quite difficult. The last barrel jump was a single barrel off of the wall, so the horse had to volunteer to jump it, rather than just go around. Initially Chloe had quite a bit of trouble getting her tools organized to guide Thistle over the barrels, which are up to Thistle’s belly. Eventually, Chloe was successful and Thistle jumped the barrels quite beautifully. No photos of Thistle clearing the barrels today because I got to busy teaching, but there will be some soon.