Lessons this week

In lessons this week we are going to do an actual course. It will be a hunter type course and we will do a working hunter pattern and a handy hunter pattern. Handy hunter is different as the course is meant to show the horse's obedience and to be more challenging so will contain a trot jump and an inside turn.

The course's will be posted at the in-gate so that you can learn them as you would at a show. We will then practice the pattern as poles/little jumps, before making it a "real" course.

The key to hunters is to keep an even rhythm, get straight to the jumps, use the corners to give yourself time to get your lead change, rebalance, and ensure you have the right canter. You want to give your horse the opportunity to show how well it jumps by getting a good, or slightly long distance and leaving it alone as much as possible at the base. For this reason hunter jumps tend to be encouraging to the horse, with generous (well set back) ground lines and fill to help the horse find a good arc.

For flat work we will be working on adjusting the stride: long trot to short trot, long canter to short canter. The key with bringing the gaits back is to remember the LEG. The leg has to push the hind quarters under to shorten the horse, while the hand contains the front. The longer gaits should come from allowing the horse to move out...not by kicking...as you want to have the horse ALWAYS thinking forward, so the desire to go forward should always be there.

For Dressage lessons, we will be working a bit on counter bend vs true bend, and on counter canter vs true canter. This requires the understanding that the horse should bend in (or out) from where the rider is sitting...so the part of the horse where the rider sits (barrel) should be the furthest point out on the arc, with the head/neck/shoulder, and the haunches bending in (or out) from that point. Too often riders want to pop the shoulder out to create the illusion of bend, resulting in an off kilter and unbalanced horse. This requires LEG. Inside leg at the girth to keep the barrel stable as the point the horse bends in from, outside leg to hold the haunch IN, and inside rein active to bring the nose in (Outside rein against neck to hold shoulder from popping out, but not crossing the withers!)

It will be fun, so see you all soon!

Karen