Riding log -- me and Guiness

[quietann]

Rather than a description, today we have videos, thanks to deguspice.

At the canter (the best video). In case you can't tell, I had to work to keep Guiness from going too fast :) Rough transition down at the end, but oh well... Tina's voice in the background; she was using me as an example to the other students of how to do things right!!!

Walking in circles. Guiness isn't a naturally "bendy" horse but I was able to get him to bend pretty well. Please note that he unbends a bit to have a look at the cameraman!

Comments

[quietann.livejournal.com]

thank you :) And thank my husband for the video; he's not a horse person at all, but he accompanied me to this lesson anyway.

Now of course Guiness is a very good boy, and I was doing a lot better at not hurting his mouth. Although it isn't evident here, for slower downward transitions, I've figured out how to do them kindly. This was the best lesson I've had so far.

On the walking circles, well, the whole point of that was to use legs and hands. The smaller circle being done mostly with hands and just keeping the inner leg on the girth, and the larger circle keeping the exact same hand position but using a lot more inside leg to make him go bigger.

The canter, well, that was a good one :) Guiness loves to canter. It's not really detectable in the video, but when we were going down the long sides of the ring, I was really having to hold him back. Marge suggested last week that I needed to work on "rating" him more; he'd really prefer a nice hand gallop to a sedate canter! So there's a *lot* of gentle hand-squeezing on my part to remind him that *I* would prefer a canter over a hand gallop!

[unclebooboo.livejournal.com]

The key point in trying to slow a horse down at the lope/canter is to use the bit correctly- if you just pull back steadily the horse will set his neck against it, and you'll quickly lose the resulting pulling contest. Instead, when you pull back to ask the horse to slow down, reward the horse for slowing down by immediately giving a bit of rein back. It's amazing how quickly they pick up on this.

By the way, this is one area where western and english riding are quite different- in western riding we use a curb bit and try to ride with lose reins. Ideally you're only a couple of inches away from making contact with the curb chain but you try to avoid that contact until you're giving the horse a specific cue.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I'm still working on getting just the right rhythm for slowing him down without him breaking into a trot. He's got such a soft mouth that I'm very motivated to learn this right!

I agree that the amount of contact is so very different in English riding versus Western. I think it makes English more difficult because one has to pay so much attention to keeping correct contact and not hurting the horse. In the walking circles video, I was keeping Guiness on a fairly loose rein. He collects himself naturally and it's better to encourage collection with the seat and legs, anyway. He's wearing a big eggbutt snaffle, which is a pretty gentle bit. Minnie takes a rubber snaffle with cheekpieces, again because she has a very sensitive mouth, but she needs a bit more reminding to behave than Guiness does.

I'm now curious about how Guiness would be over jumps, but I doubt I'll get to try before the lesson session is up on June 8.