The Greatest Trainer You’ll Ever Have
I’m a firm believer that the greatest riding instructor you’ll ever have is your horse. Things Ace has taught me over the last week:
- he doesn’t like to feel pressured
- he doesn’t like it when my upper body gets too forward. He stops if I get in front of the vertical.
- I can’t ask him too many different things at once yet. One step, one aid at a time.
- he is very forward without any convincing when it’s cold out
- an active seat drives him forward more effectively than nagging legs
- he likes to walk on the rail and hug the corners
- encouragement rather than pushing him forward is more effective
I had a lot to think about for our weekend rides after the lessons I was learning about Ace’s personality last week. And it paid off! We had two very good, albeit not perfect, rides. Ace was more responsive to my legs and moved forward more energetically. While I still have an issue with him deciding to break gait, he would move forward again when asked instead of planting himself or going backwards. And that is definitely a step in the right direction. He continues to move his hindquarters very easily for me.
I still need to work on getting him to move his shoulders, but at this point keeping our forward movement is more important.
I spent some time letting Ace go whereever he wanted as long as he kept walking. And wouldn’t yah know it, but the silly horse just stayed right on the rail. He walked the same direction, right by the wall, hugging the corner, for at least 10 minutes. Guess I don’t need to worry about him getting bored just going in circles.
I was also excited to discover him acting very thoroughbred-y on Sunday. He was very attuned to his environment and was much more energetic and tightly strung than normal. And it was kind of fun. That kind of behavior doesn’t bother me in the least; we did some groundwork to calm him down and get him focused and otherwise we had a nice, energetic ride.
Tomorrow my mom and sister are coming to visit for a specifically horse night. Mom and I will probably both get on Ace while Shawna plods around bareback on Marahute. I’m looking forward to making mom play photographer so I can finally get some pictures of me actually riding Ace!
greyhorsematters said,
November 10, 2008 @ 2:40 pm
Ace’s forward movement sounds great. I like the fact that he likes to hug the rail and corners, and also the fact that he doesn’t like you to get in front of the vertical, that should make some of the training easier. I hope your mom and sister take a bunch of pictures so we can see how great you two look together.
OnTheBit said,
November 10, 2008 @ 3:32 pm
Awesome! Have fun with your mom and sister! And as for all the training…I am not one to give advice. It is just not me. I think that things will come along at the rate they are supposed to. I think the fact that you can tell these things about your horse already means that you can work with them instead of against his issues that that in time you will never believe that Ace would stop when he felt like he was done. And then new issues will pop up. That is why having a blog is good, you can measure the progress with pictures, videos and words.