This week in lessons

This week in lessons we are going to work on some of the exercises that we worked on during the Dale Irwin clinic.

#1 is releasing the inside rein. Dale had us release the inside rein as often as possible; mostly in corners or during lateral work. This release helps make the rider be more effective with their inside leg; you can't release the inside rein and stay on your track if you are steering with reins rather than legs!

#2 Stroking the horse with the inside hand; as well as releasing with the inside rein to make sure the leg aids are effective, we also quite often stroked the horse with the inside hand. To do this you keep the rein in your hand, and just reach forward and stroke the horse with your fist. As well as being nice for the horse, this can really loosen up riders that get locked against their horse.

**for both the above, it is important to remember that the inside hand is the one on the side that the horse is bent into, it does not refer to the side the arena wall is on.

#3 Doing exercises in quick succession to test that the horse is listening and that the rider isn't abandoning their passive aids. During the clinic Dale had us do exercises such as doing walk/trot transitions in shoulder in, or doing half pass for a couple strides, then leg yield, then half pass. This was tricky for me, and really showed me that when in half pass, I was neglecting my outside leg. We won't be doing that exact exercises, but the staircase exercises where we do leg yield, then straight, then leg yield will be an easier alternative.

For jumping, we are finally going to be doing Nicole's course! We are going to try to do the turns with a soft inside rein to carry the flat work exercises over to the jumping!

Karen