Jim Wofford at the Midwest Horse Fair

Midwest Horse Fair. Not the first place you'd go looking for quality eventing instruction, but this year was certainly an exception! The great Jim Wofford was on hand, and I was fortunate enough to be one of his guinea pigs! We had one mounted demonstration, and one lecture each day, and Jim did an excellent job of balancing the needs of the riders looking for precious nuggets of knowledge, and the spectating western pleasure public, many of whom didn't know eventing was a sport, or even that "Oldenburg" was a breed!

On day one, we focused on position. "Sit right to jump right" was the theme, and luckily for us, we all had a pretty solid position, but Jim still took the time to explain the perfect placement of the foot, and why the leg is where it is, and what is a two-point, for the sake of the audience. The jumps were very straight forward, to the point where they almost weren't a part of the equation, but it gave the horses a chance to adjust to the tense atmosphere. In lecture later, he continued with the position theme, but now incorporated dressage and cross country position into the conversation as well. Major take away: you WILL ride without stirrups. I've been too chicken shit up til now to drop my stirrups with the green bean, but I guess she's trained enough??

Describing correct upper body angle
Image (c) ShortHorse Studios

Day two's ride was lengthening and shortening, and the gymnastics were a bit more interesting, one set at the 'correct' distance, one set two feet short, one set two feet long. Generally, the horses who excelled at the short distance struggled at the long distance, and vice verse.  One horse was able to bounce the shortened one stride, while another horse was able to chip in a third stride in the elongated three stride! Because Z had been bum-rushing the correct distance, Jim predicted she would struggle in the short, but she was more willing to listen to me on the new exercise and came in quietly, making it look easy. Then, he told me "not even to breathe too hard" in between the longer strides, just let her go a bit, and she made that look easy too! Really nice to have a horse who can adjust after the Sgiltinator's famous trick of always-adding-a-stride-even-at-4'-but-still-not-touching-a-rail!!

Overachieving
Image (c) ShortHorse Studios

The afternoon discussion focused on conditioning, and I decided after that talk it was time to update my conditioning regimen, since everyone seems to use shorter intervals than I do!! Jim's interval system ((3)4 minute trots + (3)3 minute canters) is the way I learned originally, but somewhere along the way I learned to do longer trot sets, 15 minutes for young horses, 20 minutes for up to training level, 30 minutes for prelim/intermediate, and 40 minutes for advanced (followed by short canter intervals). Maybe a holdover from the long format days?

The third day was a gymnastic to prepare the horse for jumping a course. It was a one stride, followed by a choice. Three stride bending line to the left, two stride bending line to the right, or four strides to an oxer straight in front. By switching up which way you turn, the idea is to teach the horse to wait for your instruction. Once that's been mastered, the three individual jumps + the one stride can then be used to create a little course.

Image (c) ShortHorse Studios

The last lecture was "Trends in the Sport." This talk was pretty depressing. It was primarily about two things: drugs and professionals. The drugs was mainly about the hunter ring, but I'm sure there are some guilty eventers as well, basically winning "by the needle" instead of through good horsemanship. The professionalism discussion had to do with the fact that (and yes, Jimmy was this blunt): "if you didn't decide when you were 18 to go be a professional rider, you're not going to go to the Olympics. If you're 35, college educated, working 9-5, with kids, its not going to happen."  Well, I'm 26, no kids, but would still really like to pass through the finish flags at Rolex some day.... so I guess I'll keep working!

The Gang

Spring Bay; or, winter to summer in one weekend!

Well, I am over the moon with Zahra after this weekend! Her ridability has come so far since her first show last July, and really grown leaps and bounds over the winter, despite being stuck in the indoor since November!

Photos (c) O'Shea Eventing

Dressage was just about all I could ask for. It was her personal best, absolutely. She was soft and relaxed in her trot work, her canter departs were a bit early, but soft, and if I'd only halted at the right letter, she'd have done 2 points better! There's still room to improve, absolutely. Once soft and relaxed are the norm, then we can push for brilliance, but one stride at a time!



Show Jumping was very good. I put her in a couple bad spots (most notably, the double, I gave her a terrible spot to jump in, forcing her to really reach for B), but she's so athletic, she saved it for an easy double clear. I know this is where I need my work!

Cross Country was so exhilarating!! Having not been out to school, I felt like it could have gone either way. Maybe she'd refuse to leave warm-up, maybe she'd run off with me? But neither was the case, although she did try to keep galloping up the hill past #4, so I did have to set her straight there! You'll see it in the HelmetCam! She was spot on to everything, and by the time we were at 10, I was completely giddy! She was as happy to be out as I was, and all I had to do was point her at the next set of flags, and she'd take care of the rest!

We're both feeling fully confident to make the move up to Training at Otter Creek in a few weeks, although I do hope the Wisconsin weather improves well before that!

So it begins....

I have begun work on Mr. Puck in earnest now. For a while now I have been saddling him up and sitting on him, but I couldn't have gone anywhere even if I'd wanted to-- he had no "go" button installed yet! So we've worked in the round pen on verbal cues, in hand on pressure cues, and most recently, I began long lining him!

I've been the young horse crash test dummy for many years, but with my own Puck, I had to begin training the next generation, since I could not be in two places at once! Haley has been my able bodied assistant, first laying across him like a sack of potatoes while I walked him, then sitting up and going for a little pony ride. He has handled everything like a champ, so this weekend Haley and I let him do his first T-R-O-T!!

He was beautifully relaxed and uphill, no thought of naughtiness at all. His brakes are still a little questionable, but that, like the steering, will come. I can't ask for a better head on his shoulders!

We've gone at a snail's pace with Puck, making sure he was completely at ease with each new task before beginning the next, and it shows in how confidently he faces each new task, and how much he looks to me for support when he is unsure. It is such an amazing feeling, finally starting my own horse, and being able to do it completely my own way!

Next up, free jumping??

Puck as a yearling.
Photo (c) Shorthorse Studios

Love, Joy, or Both?

Sgilti at Otter Creek Intermediate.
Image (c)Xpress Foto

Recently, I looked back at Sgilti Lightfoot's (aka Wonderhorse) competition record. I remember our time together as fighting the odds-- a nobody horse and a nobody rider, coming together to take on the world! We defied the odds and defied expectations, and for that, Sgilti won an eternal place in my heart (and guaranteed retirement from my checkbook). But now, a few years and a few horses later when I looked back at the raw numbers, I see a very different picture. Sgilti and I were, quite frankly, not very good. Our dressage was middling, our SJ was not ideal, and even our XC record was littered with the occasional 20 penalties. So, is it naive of me to think of him as the greatest horse ever? Maybe. Or maybe it was this lack of perfection that drove me to keep fighting. Maybe if he'd been perfect, I would have rested on my laurels and "moved on" with life as so many aspiring riders are wont to do.

At the Florida CCI* jog
(c)Xpress Foto

Adam and I started dating at the end of Sgilti's career. He saw me enjoy my last few rides with the old man, then watched me struggle for a year with Wolfn, and now watches Zahra and I, and he said something very insightful the other day (good work for the non-horsey type!!). He said "I like watching you and Zahra, because you work together. It always seemed like you and Wolfn were working against each other. And Sgilti looked like he just did what he was told."


That comment got me thinking about Love and Joy. When you boil it down, those are the reasons I event: Love of my horse, and the Joy of the ride. Maybe its overly simplistic, but I feel like Sgilti competed for Love. He wasn't that good, and maybe it wasn't as much fun for him as I might have liked, but he did his best with his limited abilities to make me happy. He did it for me, and that took us pretty far. I Loved that horse. We worked our way up the eventing ranks together. We probably had no business competing at Intermediate, but he still did it. He gave me all he had, every day, even if it wasn't to be our day.

Oh, Wolfn is over jumping? What else is new?
(c)Xpress Foto

Wolfn, on the other hand, was supremely talented. She enjoyed cross country for the Joy of galloping. I remember the first time out on cross country with her, when I let her open up her stride, and she took it and flew. It was exhilarating! That mare loved to gallop! Everything else-- the jumping, the dressage, trailrides at speeds other than gallop... none of those things were really "her bag." But I got away with making her do this other work because it was so easy for her. It wasn't until I jumped her over a 4' oxer that she finally used herself--and she still wasn't really trying that hard!! Going around Novice and Training courses was a total snooze for her, so of course she did it. There was no challenge. But I wonder what she would have done had she not had the trailering issue, if we'd been able to move up to Prelim and Intermediate. Then there would have been some challenge. A certain level of Trust would be involved. Would she have ever developed that? Or would she have stopped trying as soon as the work got hard? I'll never know.

Zahra at Richland this summer
 (c) Shannon Brinkman

Zahra and Puck, I believe, fall in the middle. They are both purpose bred sport horses, so the natural ability is there in spades, but there is something more as well. Puck's never had anyone else in his life except me, and he trusts me wholly and completely, which has been hugely apparent as he begins his training. When I am calm and deliberate, he is calm and happy. When I am the least bit anxious (e.g., trying to carefully pull a tick off his chest), he dances around nervously. Either way, he feeds off of me entirely. Conversely, Zahra has been handled by many people, as she was born at a college campus. Her personality is stamped with an upbringing of love and devotion from all of her many handlers (just imagine being a cute foal surrounded by college girls, and you get the picture!!). So although she is puppy dog sweet, she did not inherently trust me when I first bought her. We had a couple big trust issues early on (detailed here, here and here). But this fall, I feel like we've finally gelled as a team.

This past Summer, Zahra competed for Joy, because it was easy. Next year, as it gets harder, I hope it will be for Love and Joy. And Puck? He already does it for Love. He'll learn about Joy next year in the fox hunting field!

♥ Puck ♥

Lucinda Clinic

If there were a ratio of hours of instruction / amount of influence on my riding, Lucinda Green wins without contest. I've been clinicing with her now for 10 years, as often as I was able. She teaches something that no one else teaches-- what to do when it all goes wrong. Lucinda is the Queen of Cross Country, winning Badminton 6 different times of 6 different horses. She now travels the world teaching her clinics: "Cross Country: The Safe Way." Some of her gems include "Just remember: E.L.B.O.W. Engine Line Balance or OW!" "When in doubt, GET OUT!" and, my personal favorite: "There is no known distance between these fences." It's all about putting you into sticky situations so that you and your horse have the tools to deal with anything!

Day 1 is always closer to dog agility than it is to cross country riding, but in a good way! There is much less emphasis on jumping big imposing jumps than on figuring out how to connect with your horse and get her to do the job you need her to do! So, lots of skinnys and arrowheads, a few oxers and panels... lots of strange 'uncomfortable' distances. The rules are simple: Don't have a run out. Lucinda will tear down the jump if necessary, but you better stop square in front of it if you do stop. Much better if you can scramble over in some fashion or another... they're all quite small, so there's no reason not to walk over them! The horses generally pick up on the game quickly, while Lucinda targets the rider to really force you to focus you're eyes on the jump and wrap your horse in the 'tube' of your legs. The sum of all this is a finely focused partnership cantering up to these skinnys, and its all accomplished in the first 30 minutes of the first day!

The next activity was the tarp, which as you may recall, is not our strongest suit. After struggling to get over it within the group, Lucinda pulled us aside to work on it on our own, saying that we'd stay there all night if we had to. We actually got over it fairly quickly once we left the group, and we continued to go back and forth over it for another 30-45 minutes. She never truly settled, and every 5-10 minutes we'd start back at the beginning, with the rearing and naughtiness all over again. Finally, after I'd won the battle again (for the fourth time), I stopped working on the tarp and walked back to the group. I'd won the battle, but the war was still on-going, so I wanted to end her day on a good note-- riding 5 fences with emergency rein contact!

Emergency rein contact is when you lose your reins and have a jump in the next few strides, so you don't have enough time to get them back. So you sit back and widen your hands until you DO have contact, and then ride the fence! Emergency rein contact becomes really important at Preliminary level and above, because course designers find ways to force you to ride with no reins (drop into water followed by a skinny?), but the point of Lucinda's clinics is that these situations can happen to anyone at any time. So you may as well plan for it! She actually had a great anecdote, about that plane that landed in the Hudson River? The pilot had exactly 120 seconds to decide what to do when the engine failed. But because he'd been over so many emergency situations in his mind so many times, he was able to quickly find a solution and save hundreds of lives. Obviously a very dramatic example, but the point remains: have a plan for when the manure hits the fan.

The second day began with walking through the water, and walking up and down small banks until the horses learned to just quietly step in and out of the water, and then repeating everything in trot. Next we put together a few small courses in and around the water complex, using the same skinnys as the day before.

On our first mini course, Zahra decided to give me a piece of her mind. After trotting up and down the banks happily for ten minutes, she decided she would not be trotting up the steep slope that had a skinny on top. A few little crow hops and general reluctance to go forward finally concluded in me giving her a resounding WHAP with my stick (turned upside down for bonus shock value). It's like the switch went off in her head, and she trotted up the hill and over the skinny. She didn't give me any grief for the rest of the lesson!

Before and After the spanking.
Photos (c) ShortHorse Studios

Once Lucinda had our horses listening to us and doing all the ins and outs of the water complex, she turned us loose to jump any combination of jumps and water that we fancied (just keep it small please). Zahra was foot perfect with everything I asked her!

Eat your heart out George!
(c) ShortHorse Studios

"Ragdoll Style" resulted in a foot in the ditch!
(c) ShortHorse Studios

Next, we walked over to the ditch. I'll admit, I was a bit trepidatious about this-- the only ditch we'd ever jumped was a very shallow, natural ditch. Although this one was not especially deep, it was much deeper than the one at home, and riveted on both sides! Plus after having that big tarp discussion, I wasn't sure what I'd gotten myself into. I swore I would ride it positively though, and so I banished all thoughts of worry from my head as we approached the ditch "rag-doll" style. She didn't hesitate any longer than it took her to put one of her feet down into the ditch and then skip over it! A bit unorthodox perhaps, but I was ecstatic!!

Baby trakehner!
(c) ShortHorse Studios

After a few more times over the ditch (and even helping "pony" a few other horses over the ditch! A welcome change after every single horse in my group tried in vain to pony Zahra over the tarp the previous day), she made it into a small coffin with the skinnys. Note to self: Zahra will get between the flags, over the jumps, come hell or high water, but our "adjustability" needs work!! 
Finally, Lucinda added a skinny to make the ditch into a small trakehner. I was so overwhelmingly filled with pride when as we cantered up to the ditch, Zahra's ears pinged right on to the standards and took me there!

Another trip out to the main field to jump around and have fun-- this time I faced baby Z up to some bigger gallop-y jumps (up to training level), and she felt perfect! I was overflowing with confidence that she has become the horse of my dreams!

Jumping a moderately sized house without incident
(c) ShortHorse Studios 

Of course, than Lucinda brought out the tarp again, and she and I got to have a "mini-private" session on tarps! It was actually really a good thing to come back to the tarp. After a small fit, she began bounding over it, and once we got her quietly walking over it, I jumped off and let her graze while Lucinda imparted some words of wisdom. I'm paraphrasing of course, but do your best to imagine it in a very proper British accent:

Our private session with the tarp
(c) ShortHorse Studios

"I just had this very strong sense that we shouldn't beat her yesterday over the tarp. I could sense that she was genuinely afraid of it, so beating her would not help us. But I also had a sense, just as strongly, that we should beat her when she was being silly in the water. And I think you sensed it too, because you really gave her a good crack."

I'm not gonna lie, I thought that was pretty funny in an absurdest kind of way, but its also completely true. So many people struggle with where that line is. Some people don't want to ever punish their horse, even to the point where it can develop into a dangerous situation; while other people can be so far to the opposite extreme, beating their horse every time he steps out of line (which can also develop into a dangerous situation!!). Knowing the timing of when to spank a horse is not something that can easily be taught. You have a tiny fraction of a window to punish a horse after he is bad. You need to have your wits about you, carry out the punishment, and then remain calm and cool enough to continue on your ride as if nothing happened. Maybe a future blog post dedicated to this subject is in order... :)

One last epic picture to close the blog... :)
(c) ShortHorse Studios

Humble Pie, a dish best served salty.

The best laid plans of mice and men as they say....

Zahra and I were having a very solid prep for our first show. Everything was going smoothly, we were on a good track... the weekend before the show we were all set to do a dressage lesson with Janet Foy to smooth out any inconsistencies, and then go cross country schooling for the first time away from home, just to make sure she knew she could jump solid obstacles besides the ones we have at home! Alas, as I recently recounted, Zahra decided to take a gallop through the countryside and was laid up for the week before the show.

So, between the lost preparation time, and the big ol' hole in her leg, I had to abandon any aspirations of being "competitive" in any way. My entire plan, my mantra for the weekend, was "make it a good experience." As long as Zahra had a good experience and learned about the show environment, then it was a win.

I was giving myself a big pat on the back for being such a good horseman, putting my horse's needs first, so what happened next caught me off guard. We've had a little trouble getting her into the trailer in the past, but in the end, we'd always been able to get her on. Not so when it really counted. We worked for over 3 hours trying to load her into the trailer. She got all the way in once in the very beginning, before she flew backwards and hit her hip on the divider on the way out. After that, she was not going back in. Even after we removed the offending divider, it was too little too late. Zahra is the perfect storm of incredibly athletic (like a thoroughbred), but incredibly stubborn (like a plow horse). A TB will see reason eventually and get on the trailer. A plow horse can be coerced. But Zahra was the worst of both of these, and chose to rear and plant instead. Finally, at 10:30 at night, after going through all the stages of grief: denial (I'll get her on the trailer if I just keep at it!); anger (why won't this stupid horse get on the trailer?!); bargaining (Look at all these yummy treats I'll give you if you get on the trailer!); I came to depression and acceptance at the same time. I sat down with my feed bucket on the lip of the trailer until Z walked up to me to eat, and then I cried as I pet her, trying to make her believe that this was all I was trying to get her to do all night-- just stand by the trailer and eat grain, like it was the easiest thing in the world. Because, with horses, for better or worse, it always has to be a good experience.

Wild horses of OBX, NC. I would have had better luck loading one of these guys on the trailer.

Riding in France, or How I Learned to Train the Greenies.

When I studied abroad in 2008, I was given the very unique opportunity to ride horses for college credit. It had been my goal to try to find somewhere to take a few lessons while I was there—what I found far exceeded those expectations!!

Almost as soon as I set foot in Montpellier, France, I started trolling the internet looking for somewhere to ride. This is actually pretty hard to do when you really think about it. If you google the town you are in, and horseback riding, all the results will be horse-for-hire trail riding tourist-trap places! Not quite what I had in mind, but if I really got desperate for a horse fix, the option was there. Finally I found someone! It was an eventer married to a dressage rider dynamic duo, just a few miles out of town. Perfect! So I e-mail them, saying in my most perfect French that I am a student here for a few months, I've competed at the CCI* level, and could I please come take some lessons? The dressage riding wife writes me back and says that they are no longer together, I would have to call her ex directly to discuss the plan, and here's his number. Gulp. My first phone call with a native French speaker??? It took me two days to pull together enough chutzpah to make the call, but I did. And the first words out of his mouth? "How did you get this number??" I explained, now even more out of my element, that his ex-wife gave me the number. He then informed me, quite curtly, he had moved away from the area and he couldn't help me. As a last beacon of hope, I asked if he knew if there was anyone he could recommend in the area that could help me. "Non. Il n'y a personne." And then he hung up. How French. How devastating.

I completely gave up for a few days. I tried to come to terms with the fact that I would not get to see any horses, let alone ride, for the next few months. Of course, I quickly realized that that was just not an option! I started looking again, and the way I finally found Nadia (and here is your pro-tip): I searched the name of the city in COTH archives!!

Nadia, on her horse Pimlico

So, that is how I found this CCI*** eventer, Nadia DeBuck located just outside of town who agreed to let me come out and do a trial ride. When I called her, I was ready to do anything-- grooming, barn chores, anything-- I would have happily swept the barn every day, just for a chance to be around horses! But she had a groom, and she was pleased with my background (the benefit of having done a CCI is that its has international street cred!), so she wanted me to come out and try riding a horse.

L'écurie

Getting out to the barn for my first "trial ride" was an adventure all in itself! I lived right downtown, near the opera house, so I had to wake up in the pre-dawn to catch the very first train of the morning, take the light rail to the furthest stop, where Nadia's groom, Ann-Marie would pick me up in her "camion blanc" (pro-tip #2: should have looked up the word "camion" before hand-- then I would have at least known to look for the white van!); that first day, we had a hell of a time finding each other, seeing as neither of us knew what the other looked like (plus I was scrutinizing every single white, gray or silver vehicle, instead of just looking for a white van). Once we found each other, off we went, for the last 10 minutes of the trip out to "L'écurie de propiétaires dans l'Hérault." There I met Nadia, and she had me ride three horses that first day: an older, sweet horse named Harold, a crazy spunky gray pony, and one of the youngsters. I hadn't realized it was a test, but it absolutely was. First, can this girl actually ride? Let's put her on a safe horse and find out. OK, she can ride. Can she be useful? Put her on the crazy pony. He bucks. Hmm. That went well. Let's see if she can ride babies. Wow. Ok, let's keep her! 

For Nadia and I, it was a win-win. She had more horses in training than she had time for in a day, and I just wanted to ride!

But wait! There's more!!

This is Neno. I'm 5'11" WOW.

There was a class offered by my study abroad program whereby if you wanted to do learn about French business in the real world, they would find you an unpaid internship, and you would also have a one-hour-per-week class to learn about French business practices. So I approached the teacher of the class and said "Hey! Why not an internship at a stable?" They said sure, have Nadia fill out these couple of forms and have her give us a call.

…And that’s how I got college credit for being a horse bum!!

I went out to the barn 3 days a week in the morning, from 8-12, and rode anywhere from 2-4 horses, went out occasionally on the weekends, got to tag along to a few shows, and generally had an awesome time! The only thing I couldn't do was jump the horses, because their owners would come out on the weekends for jumping lessons, so no jumping for me. Of course, with all the money I saved by not paying for lessons, I did a week of cross country schooling in Ireland over my Spring Break. But that's another story...

Exercising the hounds in Ireland

Nadia was pretty spare with her corrections with me-- partly the language barrier, I'm sure, but I also always felt that she trusted me enough to know what to do, and to do it correctly. At the end of the day, we would always talk about all the rides of the day-- what went well, what needed work, and how to fix it for next time. This hands off approach really gave me a lot of confidence that I was truly a "good rider" and hadn't just gotten lucky with one good horse!

Oceane with her owner, Thom

It also helped that I could really see the horses progressing in the months I was there. I remember one horse, Oceane, an 18HH 5 year old Selle Francaise monster of a mare, was extremely difficult to work with when I first arrived. She was stubborn with a bad work ethic-- she was bigger than you and she knew it!!  She had figured out that if she planted her feet on your way to the mounting block, you couldn’t get on! But I was almost a foot taller than everyone else at the barn, so my long legs came along and just started getting on from the ground, and she quickly learned to just quit her whining and go to the mounting block. Although there was one time she refused to leave her pasture-- it took Nadia, Ann-Marie and myself all working together to bring her in! Her stubbornness made her very difficult on the flat, but with patience and persistence, by the end of the semester, her dressage was competitive enough that she was winning the 5 year old classes with her young rider!

Neno, doing the 6 year old class.

Nadia was a great believer in “éthologie” for young horses. Ethologie is basically the French equivalent of natural horsemanship, practiced at the celebrated Cadre Noir long before Pat Parelli or his ilk were even born.  She insisted on all the babies beginning their ring work in a halter, putting pressure on them so they learned to cope with this level of stress before a rider ever sat on their backs. And it worked! The two horses we broke out while I was there never set a foot wrong, and we were trail riding them within the month. The core belief that I took away from éthologie is that the horse is looking for a leader, and you need to show him that YOU are that leader!

Working with Nadia and her horses gave me the confidence to return to the States and say “Yes! I know how to start a young horse!” And that’s just what I did for many local breeders and trainers, and I am looking forward to taking all that knowledge I've amassed since helping Nadia and breaking out my own homebred, Puck, this fall!

As a parting thought, I'd just like to add that a lot of my other American friends spent their study abroad time going out to discotheques and meeting French boys, and at the time I felt like I was missing out on some of those experiences. But then I remember the time I groomed at the CIC* at Nimes, and slept in the back of the camion with Ann-Marie and her daughter Audrey, and I think maybe my French experience was the most authentic of all.

La paysage autours de l' écurie: La France, Authentique.

Intro to Teaching

Teaching horses is easy. Make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard. Expect little, praise often. I love the progression of teaching horses... even if its not always the lateral progression we hoped for! I absolutely live for the moment when you feel the horse underneath you "get it."

Teaching people is a completely different ball of wax, and one that I have given a wide berth to all these years. Recently I've had occasion to trade a couple lessons for favors to a couple different victims volunteers and it has been an education for me! I rarely talk about riding-- either I'm busy doing the riding, or I'm hanging out with friends or co-workers who haven't the slightest idea so I try to talk about other things. So now to switch gears completely and to try and talk non-stop about riding is tough! I think many people get the introduction to teaching through Pony Club, but since I was never really involved in a Pony Club, I missed the gradual, regimented introduction, and just dove in head first!

So here are some initial lessons I learned while giving my first "lessons."

1.) The easiest way to diagnose the problem is to watch the horse. Maybe the riders heels go up a bit over the fence, or she pinches with her knees a bit, but if the horse is flipping his head because she forgets to release, that's where you should start. Working your way back to the rider is much easier after you have a happy horse.
2.) No exercise is too simple. Its easy to want to "go big or go home" with the exercises like the big time clinicians, but instead it is important to "teach the rider in front of you," just like you must always "ride the horse underneath you." You can teach a lot with just two poles on the ground!
3.) Imagining you are the one riding can help diagnose the problem, but its also a crutch. By imagining its you up there, you can imagine what you might do different, but by the time your brain has connected to your muscle memories and then back to your brain, the moment has probably passed when you need to tell the rider to do that thing that you would have done if it were you!
4.) So, knowing that, what do you do? Go with your gut instinct. But then make sure you explain your gut instinct as you go-- as you're articulating your idea, you might just say something worth saying!
5.) There's an expression that I love in French, "la conaissance des escaliers." Literally it means "the knowledge of the stairs," but it is expressing that moment when you walk away from someone and come up with the perfect comeback as soon as you leave their presence. Similarly, there are many moments of 'Ah ha!!' about 40 minutes after the lesson is over. Best thing to do is to write it down and plan to work on it next time. (There will be a next time, right?!)
6.) The more you do it, the better you get. Duh, right? ...So, who wants a free lesson?

Green Horses & Green Riders; or, the Confidence Bank

It’s a cold fact, but we’ve all seen it. Green riders riding big, fancy, talented horses—and they are scared to death. They lounge the horse until it is exhausted, wait until the arena is empty, or find a secluded part of the show grounds, and get on with great trepidation. They hold their breath and tighten every muscle in their body. Through clenched jaws they mutter “Ho! Ho!” in some attempt to make the horse “relax.” Meanwhile, the horse, which looked completely calm while lounging, now has his eyes rolling to the back of his head. Mom doesn’t think this is a good idea, so why should he? Inevitably, they won’t have a good ride, the rider will lose even more confidence, and the vicious cycle will continue.

To break the cycle, the best case scenario is to get the horse in training, followed by the rider getting lessons as well until horse and rider can form a partnership. Another perfectly reasonable decision would be selling the horse for something more suited to the rider’s speed. This could be anything from an OTTB packer, to a TB/Draft cross that comes with brains “pre-installed.”  At the end of the day, we’re out there to have fun, and how much fun is it to ride a horse that is bred to do Rolex, if you can’t get him around a novice course?

Confidence, for you AND your horse, is like a bank. You can put confidence in, you can take confidence out, but you can’t take out more confidence than you put in. If you and your horse have been jumping 2’6” really well for a few months, you’ve been making small deposits in to that bank. If, then one day in the course of a jump school you raise one jump to 3’ and it goes well, you just put in a BIG deposit for your next beginner novice! If, however, you raise the entire course of show jumps to 3’, you will likely become a little strung out and frantic, and even if all the rails stay in the cups, you just took a big withdrawal out of the bank to make it happen.

Many upper level riders will only ride preliminary sized cross country efforts in the lead up to their biggest shows for this very reason. It’s important that horse and rider have done their homework well in advance of these big shows, so for the final lead up, they work on doing something the horse knows he can do, and feel good about it, adding money to the bank. When he gets out on the Big Course, hopefully his rider is giving him a good ride, but if the rider has a little bobble somewhere and the horse has to fend for himself and get them both out of trouble, he takes that big Withdrawal, but hopefully keeps going.

So think about that the next time you’re asking a big effort of yourself OR your horse. Is there money in your confidence bank?