I had the last of my boot camp lessons tonight; three lessons in 7 days, and probably the most progress I’ve ever seen in myself and my horse over the course of three lessons. I’m trying not to be too sad that the trainer is leaving for Florida because that gives me a whole winter to do my homework and take checkup lessons with the barn’s other trainers and then kick butt in the spring.

Key takeaways from last night:

– Get him straight and forward first and before all else. I was trying to supple too early, and following some previous training advice which said to get him overbent and kick him on through that. R. compared this to a kink in a hose: if he’s overbent all that forward I’m asking for gets stuck. Better to start with a straight horse and then channel that.

– When he flings his head skyward when I apply leg, don’t get suckered into fighting with him about that. Give the reins so he doesn’t have anything to brace against and KICK. Kick him until he’s very very forward and then praise him and go back to a gentler aid. So putting my leg on in the trot resulted in a head flipping, I refused to take the bait and booted him into a good rollicking canter, nearly a hand gallop, patted him, and only once the forward gear had been established did I take him back to the trot. Repeat as necessary.

– In picking up canter leads, I need to pay more attention to his shoulders. If he’s overbent to the inside, his shoulders are pointed to the outside and I’m just inviting him to pick up the wrong lead. Similarly, don’t drag down on the inside rein through the transition.

– Seriously need to work on elastic arms and shoulders. That’s the key to a more consistent contact and more even way of going.

– FORWARD. We have made big strides in this department but I need to stay on task and not settle for “more forward than last time” but really truly establish where he needs to be.

We did make the switch in his bitting arrangement. He’s going in a thinner bit with a football shaped lozenge in the French link rather than a flat piece, the bit was raised two holes, and we’ve added the flash back onto his bridle. Overall he’s much more consistent and happy in it.

He’ll get a well-deserved night off tonight. I’ll start banking barn time again and probably check in with a lesson at the end of October, but we have lots to work on in the meantime.

Second lesson on Tuesday, and it went really, really well. I think the 30 minute spots are a perfect fit for us right now: I have him warmed up, we zero in on a few specific issues, and then I have homework.

Warmup was a bit rocky on Tuesday, as he was hopping about rather than go forward, so I stood up off his back and urged him into a canter for a few minutes, and focused on staying forward and straight rather than anything he was doing with his head.

When R. came up for the lesson, we started by testing the response to driving aid exercises we’d been drilling and she saw huge improvement. Not perfect, but already much sharper off the aids. So now that we had laid the forward-and-straight foundation back down, we added flexion back ion.

She talked about something I’d never really parsed for myself before. If the inside rein is responsible for flexion, then there are three types of inside rein that can help achieve that flexion. The first is an indirect rein – a subtle lift and shift of the inside rein more toward the outside rein, while brings your elbow back behind your shoulder. Second was direct rein, which is straight back. Third was open rein, bringing the rein away from the horse’s neck.

Indirect rein is more for collection, is more subtle, and is a lighter aid. Direct rein is, well, more direct, and in Tristan’s case in particular I have to be careful not to kill the motor when I use it. Open rein is more for greenies who are just learning to steer (and also for oh $h!t moments on XC, I should think…).

We worked on a 20m walk circle and re-established flexion. Tris settled in beautifully, thankfully showing R. that instead of the lazy lunatic who slams into walls as in our last lesson, he does have a dressage pony in them. Within a stride or two he flexed beautifully into the inside rein and filled up the outside rein. We’re not talking FEI collection, here, but he recognized and executed the concept beautifully. We repeated at the trot, and worked through a rough patch tracking left – he is hollow to the left and over-eager to fling his shoulders to the outside. So we applied a few strides of counterbend, release, inside bend, release, counterbend, release, and he worked through it nicely.

Then we worked on layering in a half-halt for more collection into that outside rein, once he’d filled it up. R. doesn’t like to use the term half-halt when teaching because she feels it places too much emphasis on the “halt” – it’s more of a half-go, or as she calls it a connecting aid. I’ve always thought of a half-halt as that guy in the old phone commercials – “Can you hear me now? Good!”

So we broke the half-halt down into its component parts: forward energy, inside flexion, outside rein, and release. In the perfect, imperceptible half-halt these all happen practically simultaneously. I’ve never been that coordinated and in the past my half-halts have been an approximation of this but I’d like to take this opportunity to really nail them. So then we worked half-halts on the 20m circle at the trot.

One of the most useful concepts R. gave me while we were working the half-halts was about recycling energy. That’s essentially what a half-halt does: if you feel like your energy/collection level is at, say, a 2, then your next half-halt should be at a 2.5, and think about loading the hind legs, increasing the collection, etc., up to that 2.5. Then go for a 3 on your next half-halt. The idea being you’re always asking for a bit more with each half-halt and that you aren’t “leaking”” energy in between (or at least hopefully not). I am thinking of them a bit like a catalyst, too – you’re checking in, you’re putting a finger on the connection, and when you’re asking for more dressage collection you use it to recharge the battery, but if you use a half-halt out on XC or in the jump ring, you’re asking for a re-orient – “here, the jump is here, let’s touch base, let’s re-form ourselves to tackle what’s next.”

Tris was a bit tired even after that short lesson, as he used his back and hind end waaaaay more than he has. Our prescription is 10-15 minutes of this work a day for the next stretch and then we’ll check in again and take the next step. We’ll also make sure we get plenty of road hacks in there, too. 🙂