Bozo's Carrots

Pulling a bow

It’s been a while since my last post; study, work, life in general just got in the way, I guess. Thankfully, it didn’t get in the way of my horse riding. In fact, I’ve been seeing Becky more than I normally do: twice a week most weeks. She is agisted about an hour’s drive from my home, which makes things a bit tricky.

Unfortunately, I can’t say that the whole softness and roundness thing is getting much clearer for me, though. The concept is clear; the practical element of how to achieve it – much more confusing.

The way I see it, achieving softness in Becky – where her head is down and there is no weight on the reins, and her back is rounded and she is stepping underneath herself freely and with long strides – is something that combines absolutely everything that I have learned in the last 3 years. My seat – have to sit back, and move with Becky, as well as directing the length and quickness of her stride with my seat. My hands - shoulders back and relaxed, elbows bent and steady, so that I give Becky a clear direction of how much bend to have. And also knowing how much pressure to put on reins, and when, and when to apply my legs.

And I struggle with all of it.

Particularly the hand steadiness and rein pressure. My lesson a couple weeks ago concentrated on how little pressure I could put on to achieve a softening from Becky. After my struggles before with trying to get Becky to respond to the rein, and ending up with a death-grip and us leaning on each other, it was quite eye-opening how little pressure she actually needed if I was quick to release her softening. However, during the lesson we ended up mostly walking, so translating this into trot was left up to me. And it sort of did… sometimes… I got some really good moments where we were trotting along soft and rounded… It did take some fighting and some pressure though, mostly with me pulsing the outside rein so as not to allow Becky the steady pressure to lean against. Becky would throw here head up and down sometimes in annoyance at it, or just try to ignore it, but I was persistent and we got some good steps. Most importantly – I felt that it was all slowly improving. I had to fight less and less for each softening response.

However, somehow I suspect that I shouldn’t have been fighting at all.

The next lesson we were concentrating on my hand position: something that I didn’t realize at all was that my inside hand was not at all steady, and allowed Becky to lose the bend and also gave her no steady guide to which to soften. The idea was that if she wasn’t soft or bent, she would end up putting pressure on herself by pulling against the rein… but only if my hand was steady! Also, we worked on a neurotical obsession of mine: there’s an area of the circle that I am convinced Becky really falls in on. As Marina demonstrated by putting herself as the focal point at the center of the circle that Becky was doing no such thing: her slight impulse to fall in was very easy to correct with just a bit of outside rein and inside leg, instead of making her step right out as I was doing circle after circle.

Yeah, I get obsessed about little things. Maybe I am getting a bit obsessed about the softness and roundness… but it’s still not really working!

Today’s session I paid attention to keeping my hands steady, not too much pressure on the outside rein, and the circles even… which I think was all working, except that the inside rein to the right weighed a tonne at a trot!! I constantly felt like I was pulling a bow taught. And it wasn’t because Becky just refused to bend – she refused to bend and have her nose down. That idea of having my inside hand in a steady spot, close to my thigh, which would give Becky a guidance as to how much of a bend I wanted and put pressure on her if she stuck her nose out or tried to lose the bend just didn’t work: Becky would put pressure on herself, and quite happily keep that pressure, leaning against it. There was no attempt to soften to it at all. Using outside rein and extra pressure just shortened her steps and made her head go up.

In hindsight, I am wondering whether she actually deliberately twisted her head with her nose to the outside, even though she maintained the bend. I was concentrating so much on her neck and the steady rhythm, that I didn’t actually check whether her head was hanging straight down. If it wasn’t, I was missing a very big clue as to what was wrong and where her attention was. Ah, the power of hindsight!

I ended up giving up on the softness, lengthened the inside rein, putting pressure on Becky only when she lost the bend (though I always felt her pushing against the rein slightly) and concentrated on rhythm and steady circle, which was all pretty good. At the walk, I tried to remember the lightness with which I managed to get her softening a week ago, and with combination of inside and outside reins, I again got some good soft steps.

But to get that at a trot – it’s still a mystery.

Working out how to stop the lean on the reins

Becky and I have a problem. We always had this problem and I think it’s a fairly common problem. Leaning. She leans on the rains. She doesn’t quite give to them. In the past, when I first started taking lessons, she was incredibly hard, particularly to the right. She would just tilt her nose away from the bend and just lean. As we worked with her, over the years, she did become softer and requests for bend did not result in me feeling like my rein was attached to an immovable brick wall. But a little bit of a tug always remained. She would just stick her nose out slightly at walk and trot, and, as far as canter was concerned, well she would just duck her head down, throw her nose quickly out, and launch herself up in the air. I would end up with a bucking horse and mile-long reins.

Last year, Marina and I made the first big step in putting a stop to this. Whenever I felt the lean on my reins, I stopped and applied pressure until Becky put her weight back and stopped leaning. During the bend, I sometimes literally had to jerk the rein on the side she was resisting in order for her to let go (mind you, I ride in a halter bridle with no bit). This went a long way to eliminating the “brick wall”.

Then we started to teach Becky to lower her head and step longer (which helped her to use her back and hind more), all on a lose rein; this also helped with relaxation.

Now we are introducing consistent contact and are working on her using her hind end a bit more, stepping underneath herself and lifting up her back, while lowering her head and not poking her nose out. All to help teach her to balance properly and not lean on the rein: if she uses her back properly, and has her nose down, she cannot lean on the rein.

At first, we just taught Becky the concept of putting her head down and nose tucked in a little (ie. where the head just hangs straight down). Then I asked for the backup until I felt her back come up, head come down and lightness on the rein, before asking her to go forward. At first, that movement forward resulted in the nose coming back out again, and the back getting hollow once more, but, after a bit of rinsing and repeating, I could reestablish her posture with a tug on the reins downward while moving forward. Although after a few lessons I was going around at walk and trot with Becky’s head down, back up and reins the lightest I’ve ever felt, the movement was all a little slow, a little constricted, because in order to fix things I still sometimes had to stop and back Becky up.

So now, we needed her to free up her forward, but not lose the posture, and this is where things got tricky. Marina suggested that I stopped backing up to fix things, but, instead, asked Becky to step her hind up when she got hollow in her back. Basically, do the reverse: instead of asking front feet to back up into the posture, ask the hind legs to move up. Sounds like a good theory, but I’ve been finding it real tricky.

At first, it almost immediately broke everything: Becky’s head went up and she started resisting the rein’s pressure to lower her head, which I was used to fixing with a backup, but now couldn’t. Instead, I had to keep pushing her on and be watchful for any movement down with her head which I could reward with a little release on rein. It worked while I was having the lesson, but I found I was having real problems when practing by myself. Isn't that always the case!!

At the start of a ride, Becky would be reasonably soft, but as I put pressure on and pushed her on with my legs, while waiting for her head to make the slightest movement down so I could release, she resisted me more and more. Particularly at the trot. The soft rounding I was getting before became a very rare occurrence, although she was certainly moving forward easier. Mind you, the first time I practiced by myslef, there were two other horses in the arena with me, which played havoc with Becky's focus on the job at hand! So, as well as working on her softening I had to continuously fight her drifting sideways towards other horses.

When I rode her yesterday, there were no other horses, but she was in a mood to rush, which hasn’t happened in a while. So her head was more up and her back more hollow than normal. Now, as well as trying to ask her head down with the reins, I also had to use them to slow her down when she rushed! This really confused everything, as she would sometimes put her head down from the rein pressure, but continue motoring ahead, so that I could not release when I otherwise would’ve.

In the end, I felt that I was encouraging her to lean on me more and more because I was never getting a full softening, but was releasing for little movements which did not add up to any changes in her frame.

So, I went back to the “drawing board”: I returned to a walk and stopped accepting pure head movements as queues to release rein pressure. I asked her to walk – had to keep pushing her into it quite a bit with my legs – while applying pressure with the reins, until I felt her coming off my reins. Because I was doing it while asking her to keep walking forward, the only way she could come off my rein was to bring up her back and lower her head – to, basically, concertina herself a little. Then I let go, and allowed her to walk out for a couple steps before picking up the reins again and asking again. It stopped being about the head for me, though that came down too when she came off the rein and rounded.

We didn’t return to the trot this time – will do so tomorrow (weather permitting) – but I managed to reestablish that feeling of lightness on the reins at a walk. The question is: did I manage to encourage forward enough?

I’ll let you know.