The Refusal

I've been doing jumps made up of poles (with tyres on the side as jump wings) with Princess for a while now, and it has been going well. No refusals, and generally clear. Today I set up two barrells on their side. Bit narrow, but I really can't be bothered dragging out another barrel.

I start off with dressage, then go on to jumping, starting off with trot poles, cross rail and then an upright, as per normal. Once the upright is going well, I head for the barrels. Three strides out, I feel the horse gazing at the barrels, and already deciding whether to dart left or right. In fear of a catleap I do too little, and she succeeds in darting right. A refusal.

I feel the fear. The little voice speaks up saying that maybe this jump is just too risky, we might fall off, blah blah blah. I do a circle, letting the little voice have his say. This is important. The little voice must finish speaking. Then I allow the competition voice to speak up. "You need to do this jump in order to compete. Period. How are you going to do it?" I strengthen the leg and my resolve and give it another go. Another refusal.

I get angry (but not vicious). This time we're going over. I do a circle. The little voice is quiet. We're right at the jump, the horse gets no choice but to go straight, so strong is my leg and seat. My hands support. A moment of hesitation, then cat leap. Cat leaps are never nice, and I jab Princess in the mouth on take off. Finally she does what I want, and she effectively gets punished for it. Great. This will cost me.

The little voice speaks up again "See, dangerous. You could have fallen off." I glare at the little voice, and come again at the jump. Refusal. The price you pay for jabbing your horse in the mouth. Another circle, and this time a flowing jump, I fold with the horse and release the reins. Beautiful. I feel the horse breathe a sigh of relief. I snort with her in agreement. Prrr. Prrr.

We do two more jumps. Both brilliant. Mission complete.

Shorten and lengthen the rein

When I am preparing to transition from trot to canter, I shorten my reins. At that point, Princess tends to rush forward into a fast trot. This is not what I want, so I thought I would spend some time just in trot, shortening and lengthening my reins. The aim of the exercise is for her to realise that shorter rein does not always mean canter, and she should stay relaxed.

I am trotting. I shorten the rein. Princess rushes forward. I ask her to slow back down to the trot we had a second ago. And here, the use of the reins becomes clear. Outside rein to control rhythm and tempo, inside rein to ask for flexion. Outside rein acts first, and continues acting, saying slow down. Inside rein acts second and intermittently asks "look inside the circle". Outside leg determines the size of the circle, inside leg says "bring the hind leg underneath". The outside aids are constant. The inside aids are intermittent.

The minute I have a nice soft horse on this really short rein, I lengthen the rein again. The trot largely stays the same, although possibly more engaged. This proves to be a superb exercise. We repeat it three or four times. It actually feels like fun! By the third or fourth time, the horse no longer rushes forward when I take up the rein. I ask for canter and get a very responsive transition, and a superb quality canter.

Relax the canter

Yesterday I went to watch cross country at the Tonimbuk Horse Trials. I walked away with a glaring message "get your horse to relax in the canter".

I jump on Princess, do a warm up and ask for canter right. This is her good side. I can feel that she's walking a fine line between almost being relaxed, and wanting to bolt away from me. "Relaxed" does not mean long rein, with head drooping between the knees. In fact, I have her on a very short rein, but her body feels almost relaxed. Almost. I encourage her to bring her right leg more underneath itself. She yields. It feels nice. I ask. She yields. Softer still. I look up. We're cantering on a 10metre circle! Wow! Job done. Back to trot.

I ask for canter left. The bad side. Here, she feels on the "bolting" side of that fine line. But she's not too far from the fine line. I try and fiddle, but I'm not sure that I'm getting anywhere. She's not bolting off, so I can't be doing too much damage, but I'm obviously not doing that much good either. I go large and just try to maintain what I have. Then back to trot.

Inside the square

These days we seem to be so focussed on looking outside the square for solutions to our problems, that we forget to sometimes look inside the square. That is, just look at the ordinary, the proven methods. Follow others who already successfully do what you want to do.

Today we went to Tonimbuk to watch the cross country phase of the Horse Trials. Horse trials (eventing) is what I want to do, and the cross country phase is what attracted me to the sport in the first place. The flowing, bounding feeling of galloping accross fences through the bush and paddocks. It's great! When you get it right, it's great. When your horse is madly galloping out of control, it's damn scary!

We rock up in the middle of the pre-novice XC. This means the jumps are about 1m high, and some of them are starting to ask some serious questions of the horse's bravery.

The first thing that hits me about the event is that I love it. The second thing that hits me, is that the horses don't really need to make that much of an effort to jump these jumps. And the third thing that hits me is that the elite level athletes, the Olympians, are competing together with the new kids on the block, the aspiring young talents, and the old Jo who just likes to go around a cross country course on the weekend.

In horse riding, it is the horse that is the athlete. And so each elite rider has horses at all sorts of levels. Which means that us aspiring eventers can watch these elite riders on their green horses and work out exactly how they get them to the top.

The last thing that strikes me is how many familiar faces I see. There's an old friend who's just finished his cross country. "Hi Will. Good luck!". There's my farrier sitting and officiating at jump number 3. "Hi Clancy". And there's a couple of friends from Uni officiating at the bank complex. A long conversation ensues about the fires, horses, coaches, physical intelligence and logical riding.

As I watch horse after horse going over the jumps, I can clearly pick the elite riders from the amateurs. The elite riders' horses are relaxed and bowling along. They prick up their ears before a difficult jump, and then fly over, with a genle pat and a good word on landing. The amateurs are walking a fine line between in control and out of control. Sometimes they issue harsh words of encouragement, as their horse looks to dive sideways and avoid that scary looking jump. Each successful jump is rewarded by a "good boy" or "good girl" shriek. I am not saying that I could do a better job than these amateurs. But the difference is stark.

By the time I walk away I am super inspired. But not just that. I walk away with a clear vision of what I need to teach my horses in order to partake in this sport.

Push me

I'm up at 5:40 and riding by 7am. It's an overcast, windstill day. I take Princess for a walk in the state forest. It's been a while since I've been out with her, and she lets me know her fears. She gets into it soon enough, and we have a really enjoyable ride. In fact, she's so relaxed by the end, that I'm holding the reins at the buckle!

I put her away and grab Crownie. We start on some dressage. Crownie, being a long horse, requires quite a lot of strength to get going in dressage. You have to work quite hard to get those back legs stepping underneath. I get some fantastic work, but the minute I stop applying the strength, it all starts to fall apart. The horse stumbles or loses a leg.

After 20 minutes I am exhausted. I do a halt and look at my watch. 20 minutes is just not long enough. I pick up my reins and do some more walk and trot. My muscles are screaming at me. I am wishing for a coach, that could be right here, right now, to push me through this. After another 7 minutes, I succumb to my weakness.

By midafternoon I'm kicking myself for wussing out.