Rideability: What does it mean to you? How do you develop it?

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piedmontfields
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Rideability: What does it mean to you? How do you develop it?

Postby piedmontfields » Tue Jan 30, 2018 2:59 pm

I was thinking about this topic after watching some masterclasses from Laura Graves and Robert Dover. The issue of rideability came up multiple times, both on established horses and on developing horses.

I think of "rideability" as meaning:
-acceptance of leg/hand/seat aids (with acceptance comes an appropriate reaction)
-willingness to be moved/changed by those aids
-willingness to be "touched" by the rider's aids

As I work on clarifying my flying change aids for Emi, I realize that a lot of our prep work is about rideability. And in fact, we have come quite a long way on this (she used to freak out if I touched the right rein for ex.), but it is an on-going process. I 'm sure a better rider/trainer would have improved her rideability much more quickly.

How do you think about it?

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Chisamba
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Re: Rideability: What does it mean to you? How do you develop it?

Postby Chisamba » Tue Jan 30, 2018 3:22 pm

i can tell you what rideability is not. I have had the rare opportunity to ride a horse that will spend every effort to try and avoid doing what you ask. ( why this horse is this way could be behavior, it could be previous life experiences, or it could be pain, although i had a vet and therapist try to rule out every possibility of pain) . If you simply asked the horse to turn left, he would veer right, if you continued to ask him to turn left, he would continue to veer right until he almost rammed himself into the wall. when you did not give up the aids to turn left and the wall was in front of his nose, he would finally turn left. After considerable training he almost got to the point where he would simply steer. simply go left ( or right) when asked, without attempting to pull the rein out of your hand. then began the long journey toward acceptance of the bit, acceptance of the aids, etc. Finally, after about six months, one day i got on and said I know you know all these things, and started to be very firm in the asking. after five minutes of being very firm, he relaxed, accepted the aids and became easier and easier to ride for the rest of the lesson. However I called him groundhog horse. Every morning he would start over with the intense resistance, i would give five minutes of absolute alpha treatment, then when i proved i could make him to every aspect of what i asked he would flip a switch, i mean it was an clear as flipping a switch, and soften and acknowledge that he could do stuff and knew the aids. I continued this way for another few months, and after that period of time recommended to his rider that she would be better vested in making him a simple trail horse, and get herself a horse that was more rideable.

I think i agree with your description, a horse that is willing to seek the answer that you give it when training would be my simple description. when we ride a horse we teach them a language of sorts. I liken it to a child learning to read. Some see a new word and try to sound it out and experiment on what the new word sounds like, others simply say i dont know that word. the first child is the metaphor for the ride-able horse.

is rideability trained or inherent. there is the interesting discussion

piedmontfields
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Re: Rideability: What does it mean to you? How do you develop it?

Postby piedmontfields » Tue Jan 30, 2018 3:38 pm

I like your learning to read comparison. It is also sort of like some horses are "interested" in reading while others are not! lol

"is rideability trained or inherent. there is the interesting discussion"

Yes--that is an interesting question. IME, I think it is both, but clearly there are individuals (and breeding lines) which have less rideability even with good training...

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Re: Rideability: What does it mean to you? How do you develop it?

Postby Palogal5 » Tue Jan 30, 2018 4:47 pm

I like the reading analogy too.
When learning flying changes even the most obedient, rideable horse on the planet will go off script for a while :lol:

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Re: Rideability: What does it mean to you? How do you develop it?

Postby Ponichiwa » Tue Jan 30, 2018 5:02 pm

Chisamba nails what rideability isn't.

For me, rideability is the horse allowing the rider to provide input without resistance. That means changes to bend, balance, and tempo are accepted without much fuss. Horses come with different baselines of input acceptance and that baseline may shift over time-- classic case: the pliant young happy 4yo that turns into the headstrong monster at 5yo when they get a bit stronger and more opinionated/confident.

There's a range to that. I recommend that people who are buying horses either ask for something outside of what the horse is normally used to doing (i.e. asking the TL horse to yield off the leg, or the 3rd/4th horse to provide a bit of on-the-spot half steps or similar) to test how the horse responds to requests outside of its strict comfort zone. Helps determine the level of project that the horse will be.

My mare Kiwi (as this board is probably aware) is not particularly rideable. She has, however, gotten a lot better. Improvements have stemmed from consistent and fair applications of the aids. As I've built up some cred in the fairness department, she's toned down the level of resistance. The key to increasing the rideable zone for her has been minimal reaction to any resistance she tosses up and focusing on the original request. I may be anthropomorphizing here, but it feels like if I react to her reactions, she feels justified that she's being asked an unfair question and then doubles down (usually in the form of slamming on the brakes, but there are other options in her resistance menu as well). And if I say, well that's all well and good, but you can still trot forward and sideways at the same time-- she relaxes into the work much better.

What hasn't worked: Avoiding the problem areas tends to shrink the rideable zone. I spent a couple years riding her like a baby horse and backing off when the resistances cropped up, which reinforced that she had a reason to be throwing up resistances. Again, this is all predicated on the assumption that I'm asking fair questions of her.

piedmontfields
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Re: Rideability: What does it mean to you? How do you develop it?

Postby piedmontfields » Tue Jan 30, 2018 7:54 pm

Ponichiwa wrote: For me, rideability is the horse allowing the rider to provide input without resistance. That means changes to bend, balance, and tempo are accepted without much fuss. Horses come with different baselines of input acceptance and that baseline may shift over time...


That's a helpful way of describing it. When watching the Graves and Dover clinics, I was struck by how often they both said something like "you need to work on your horse's rideability" or "he needs to be rideable here" (so that the rider could influence and improve the horse). It was useful for me to see quite educated and talented horses still need to make some major improvements in that area.

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Re: Rideability: What does it mean to you? How do you develop it?

Postby Ponichiwa » Tue Jan 30, 2018 8:25 pm

piedmontfields wrote:That's a helpful way of describing it. When watching the Graves and Dover clinics, I was struck by how often they both said something like "you need to work on your horse's rideability" or "he needs to be rideable here" (so that the rider could influence and improve the horse). It was useful for me to see quite educated and talented horses still need to make some major improvements in that area.


Man. I've been there. Especially in the tempi changes. They can feel so fragile that they feel endangered if you try to add more expression or power (i.e. you'll miss the count or they won't be clean or ... etc.). And the answer to that is: make the canter more rideable. Same with the pirouettes, really.

My walk pirouettes are currently suffering from this syndrome. Time to get to work.

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Re: Rideability: What does it mean to you? How do you develop it?

Postby mari » Wed Jan 31, 2018 6:24 am

If you're not an advanced rider, rideability to me also means that the horse will absorb some mistakes and try to figure it out, without losing the plot.
The aim of argument or of discussion should not be victory, but progress. ~ Joseph Joubert


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