We have hit a plateau, a good one. Things are coming together on the ground and I discovered that Magic isn't a monster under saddle, so I figured I would let Maggie have some fun and go for a ride today. I warmed Magic up on the ground to make sure that she wasn't going to be in a weird mood before I put Maggie on her. I did the ground warm up exercises with just the reins instead of the long lines and Magic wasn't too sure about that change, but with some work and persistence she worked into it just fine. I had to be very careful though because I could tell if I pushed the wrong way Magic was going to get very upset, I'm not sure how I managed but I convinced her to do it with out an explosion.
Maggies time to ride! I put the long reins on that way if Maggie needed assistance I could be there for her. I did my best to explain the basics of dressage to Maggie and why its important to start a beginner horse with dressage. Dressage is known to be a beautiful art form in the horse world, so people also find it to be extremely boring, I have heard it described as being like "watching grass grow". There isn't a lot of risky thrill to riding dressage and I agree it can be slow tedious work. But I challenge anyone to find a horse that hasn't done a lick of dressage and show me that they can be any where near the balance of a dressage horse.
Horses have a natural tendency to move foreward on their forehand (the front half of the horse) and put more weight on the front feet than their back feet because that is how they support the weight of their head and neck. With out a rider on their back, this is fine. However with the weight of a rider on their back they lean forward even more and become unbalanced, affecting how their body feels and how they move their body. Now you have to start thinking of the horse as two separate parts. The body separate from the legs. Think of the legs as swinging pendulums underneath the mass of the body. The body weighs more then the legs, so therefore the body is going to have a great effect on the legs. Now in Magic's case (as with all beginning horses) her body shifts is always pushing forward a head of her legs, so that her legs have to scatter behind her to keep up with her body. The easiest way to understand this concept is try running leaning forward and then stand upright and run, which one is more comfortable? This scenario tends to produce a horse with too fast of a stride, tempo, and speed. So how does one fix this? Show the horse how to sit back on their haunches. They have to learn to engage their back and step under with their hind legs. More on this later...back to the ride.
I think Maggie's ride went great. Started to work on Maggie learning how to lean back and engage her seat to ask Magic to engage her body. A rider that is not engage will not be able to engage a horse. We also started to work on the whoa cue. In a perfect world all a rider should have to do is think walk and sit back a little and the horse should stop. A horse shouldn't have to be jerked with the reins to a stop every time. Now you may ask yourself, why are we working on Magic halting when she has balance issues at the walk trot and canter? Because in order to halt a horse they have to shift their body weight back to slow down and they actually naturally engage their haunches, the exact thing we want them to do. Also it is to challenge and see if Magic is paying attention her rider. If you sit back and think whoa and nothing happens, that means Magic is not participating in the ride, she is just a shuttle that moves around an arena. A horse must learn whoa, before they learn go. I think Maggie started to realize the importance of this exercise and could start to see a change in how Magic was moving and listening. This is also a good example about how a few good steps is better then several bad steps. Hopefully Magic and Maggie are starting to understand this concept.
Next time do the foot fault exercises with Maggie so she can actually start to feel a horses movement.
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