Teaching Miss A. the basics

[PaulaO]

I’m a dressage person who has switched to being a hunter princess (don’t kill me). I don’t really want to do hunters per se, I want to jump. And I have no interest in showing (well, maybe one of those shows where you do a dressage test, then a stadium course).

For those of you who don’t know my boring story, I’m leasing a school horse (Ariel, aka Miss A.) and taking flat lessons from a non-dressage (i.e., “English”) trainer. Miss A. does not understand the concept of moving away from my inside leg, and likes to fall on her inside shoulder.

In my dressage thinking, a horse should be bent through the corners, and move away from your inside leg. George Morris would agree with me that this is also correct for jumping. I don’t want to get into “dressage” lessons because I just. can.’t. I don’t care about the perfect 20 meter circle; I just want Ariel to have the basics. Last night I did ground work with her, and she responds by moving her haunches away from the leadrope by turning on the forehand. It’s a start. Next I will bring in a dressage whip and get her to move her haunches from that. Then the whip by the girth. Is this the correct progression?
I was spoiled by Bob. He came as a 2 year old with all these buttons installed.

[StraightForward]

You might pick up the book Right from the Start by Michael Schaeffer. He covers some basic ground work that could be helpful for body control and suppling. Since Ariel is older, and probably has some ingrained muscle patterns, it might take some time to get her loosened up to where she CAN bend, so just keep that in mind vs. what a trainer might say about suppling a young/unstarted horse.

As far as the progression, I think it depends on the horse. Pickle has huge shoulders that she likes to use like a linebacker, and her breeder apparently taught all the horses to yield their hindquarters (valuable for not getting kicked in a field full of young stock). So for me, it was more important to teach her to move her shoulders away from me, and I consistently have to remind her with turns on the haunches or tight circles away from me before we move into lateral work in hand so that she doesn't get too bully with those shoulders.

Also teaching to square up is a good exercise. Just focus on the hind feet at first, and after halting, tap the trailing hind with the whip until the horse moves it. Eventually you can get more picking about having her bring it up under next to the other hoof, but at first, just teach her that when you tap, she picks up that foot. Try to consistently ask her to stand square any time she stops, even when tacking up, stopping to open the gate, etc. She'll learn to square up when you just point and/or use a voice command. I've been so proud watching my trainer work with Pickle and seeing her square up her hind feet in all sorts of situations.