Tag Archives: Area I Eventing Scholarship

Clinic Reports, Personal Stories, Training Tips and Techniques

Motivating the Lazy Equine Athlete

December 30, 2015 christinakeim 2 Comments

Further Learnings from the Area I Scholarship

In 2015, I was lucky enough to be one of ten recipients of an Area I Eventing Scholarship. In my application, I indicated that I planned to focus on training rather than competing Annapony this season. I used funds from the scholarship to pay for lessons with Verne Batchelder, Denny Emerson and Nancy Guyotte (see Another Clinic with Nancy Guyotte). Throughout each session, one theme became abundantly clear: Anna is a capable, but somewhat lazy, athlete, and nagging her for “more” will get you nowhere. My lesson with Nancy focused mostly on show jumping, while Verne tackled dressage and Denny, cross country. In this blog, I will discuss the main exercises and techniques learned in the sessions with Verne and Denny.

Verne Batchelder: Using Double Longeing to Improve Suppleness and Impulsion

Verne Batchelder of River House Hanoverians in Williston, FL, gives clinics regularly in New Hampshire. I have really enjoyed working with him over the past several years both with Anna and Lee. One of Verne’s great strengths is his ability to find many different approaches to correcting deficiencies, all while staying within a clear training system and progression. Verne is also an expert with work in hand, including double longeing and long lining; he regularly includes such techniques in the training programs of his own horses, which I had the opportunity to witness on a visit to his farm several years ago (see Winter Training Sessions: Mini-Pro Style).

Having worked with Verne a number of times previously, he is well familiar with Anna’s tendency to be generally lacking in impulsion. Some of this he attributes to her inherent mellow nature, but some of it is due to a lack of suppleness. We have worked on improving her suppleness in a variety of ways, including improved neck control, the use of traditional lateral exercises such as shoulder fore, leg yield and haunches in, as well as longitudinal stretching work like long and low or lengthenings.

This spring, Verne decided for the first time to incorporate some work on the double longe into our session. His intention was to provide increased support through the outside turning aids while improving control of the curvature of her neck. I remained mounted while Verne ran two lines; the outside line was simply attached to the bit ring and ran over my leg and around Anna’s hindquarters, while the inside line was set up as a sliding longe. This meant that the line ran through the inside bit ring and then attached to a loop on the girth, underneath my inside foot. With the sliding longe, the ground handler can smoothly achieve correct inside flexion. The outside line allows for a clear and consistent support through the entire arc of the horse’s body while also providing a mechanism to apply a traditional half halt.

Here is a video which shows a little bit of basic long lining.

It is quite a strange feeling to essentially have one’s horse ridden from the ground while one remains mounted! Anna has longed only a little bit, and I was definitely mildly (well, greatly) concerned that she might not be a model citizen when put into these boundaries. My job was to essentially hold the reins evenly and to remain centered, adding leg to support Verne’s body position and voice. At first, Anna was somewhat resistant to the idea of accepting the newly imposed limits. It is important for a trainer to remember that resistance is only the horse’s way of expressing their displeasure. If the question the trainer is asking the horse is fair given their physical condition and previous training, and the aids are appropriate, usually the rider’s best response is to simply ignore the resistance and remain consistent in using the aids to ask the appropriate question. In fairly short order, Anna relaxed into the new parameters established by the double longe and began to more actively engage the muscles of her topline as well as increase the degree of thrust from her hindquarters. In addition, the connection further stabilized and the quality of the bend improved.

After this session with Verne, I incorporated the use of about ten minutes of warm up on the double longe with Anna on dressage days, with the inside line set up as a sliding longe. When the horse is unmounted, side reins set just a little bit on the longer side will help to maintain straightness; as always, they should not be adjusted in such a way that the horse’s head is forced down or in. In working with this technique independently, I noticed that Anna could find her own balance and begin to develop looseness throughout her back more rapidly than when warmed up under saddle. When I rode her after this style of warm up, she was much more willing to stay “hotter” off my leg and therefore I could use a much quieter forward driving aid.

Here is a video of some double longeing.

One of the other huge benefits of using the sliding longe technique to warm up was that the overall work session could remain “short and sweet”. Because she had already loosened up her muscles, it was possible to keep the actual “work” session much more focused and organized. I think this is super important with all horses, but especially those which don’t have an unlimited reserve of energy. If you can get in the ring, do what you need to do, and then go out for a hack, the horse’s attitude will stay fresher and more enthusiastic than when they anticipate a long session of drill work.

Denny Emerson: Jumping Fences off a Forward Stride

Anna and I spent the summer of 2014 up at Tamarack Hill Farm, where we worked hard to rebuild our confidence over fences (see The Tamarack Chronicles: Vol III). We left in August with a renewed sense of harmony and assurance in our jumping work and completed the fall season with placings at King Oak and Stoneleigh Burnham Horse Trials.

Keim-C-090714-3765 — Anna at King Oak Farm, September 2014. Photo courtesy of Flatlandsfoto/Joan Davis and used with permission.

Overall, I was able to continue to apply the techniques I had learned at Denny’s to our regular schooling routine and keep Anna’s jumping skills tuned up while working on my own over the winter. In general, I keep the fences low enough that “mistakes” are not a big deal. I have focused a lot of energy on further refining my jumping “eye” and improving the quality and consistency of Anna’s jumping canter.

Denny always says that when under pressure, all riders will show a tendency to either “choke” or “chase” their eye. What he means is that we all have a preference for pushing a horse to lengthen their stride, perhaps leaving a bit too long, or to overly compress the horse, causing them to jump from a deep spot. While either option might be the best one in a given circumstance, neither is ideal as a method of riding to every fence; this is why most of us have to develop, through practice, the ability and habit of organizing the horse’s canter to arrive at the “ideal” take off spot. It is my opinion that horses, too, have a tendency to prefer to leave long or to jump deep, and they also need to be conditioned to be able to jump from a variety of different reasonable points.

Anna would be a “choker”. She can be carrying a decent amount of energy and power in the canter, and then in the final few strides before the fence, drop behind the leg, compress her stride, and calmly decelerate to the base with increasingly shorter strides. It isn’t quite the same as a “chip”, which is when the horse will squish one extra small stride right in front of the fence. With Anna, it is a steady deceleration which allows balanced but small strides to be fit into the space where a few longer strides would have been better. She is simply more comfortable jumping from a slightly tighter distance off a shorter stride.

For a long time, I have allowed Anna to manage her fences in this way, as it seemed to be the place from which she was most confident. It is also incredibly difficult to prevent her from doing it, and when I try to address the issue, I feel like I am beating her with my legs and/ or crop to keep the canter going. I have participated in clinics (most notably with Kim Severson) where the entire focus became trying to eliminate this change in the canter, to get Anna to jump more “out of stride”, but I always end up feeling like both Anna and I are frustrated. She also will begin to shut down if you really push her on it—her response seems to be, “hey, I jumped your fence, lady, what more do you want?”

The major issue is that there are some fences which simply do not ride as well when jumped from this tighter spot, including upright verticals like planks and wider oxers. In addition, she will often quit when faced with this deep distance and a tough question. Yet when I push her to maintain the same canter to avoid this situation, she will obstinately ignore my aids and put herself into the not ideal take off point. It is just yet another manifestation of her tendency to not stay in front of the leg. Story of our lives!

So if I rode like Michael Jung or Ingrid Klimke or any of the other equestrian elite, my horse would never have gotten to this point. But as I am a mere mortal, and have made a ‘deal’ with my horse, I am now faced with trying to change the terms of our established contract.

My session with Denny started in the show jumping arena. After a brief warm up on the flat, I began popping over a few of the smaller fences in the ring. Anna was obedient but also performing her signature “I change my canter on the approach” maneuver. Denny decided that the focus of our session was going to be keeping her much more forward overall, but especially in those critical last few strides before the fence.

JumpingtheCows — In this lesson at Tamarack in summer of 2014, we were racing an impending storm– the energy in the air came through into the pony and we finally found some forward intention!

Still in the show jumping ring, Denny had me kick Anna up into a cross country style canter—as much of a gallop as Anna will do under saddle (have I mentioned that she is not a very forward thinking animal?). My job was to do whatever it took—growl, flail, kick like a D2 Pony Clubber—to keep her not just in a jumping canter but a forward, cross country canter, to each and every fence I aimed at. I really did feel just like a 10 year old whose legs don’t clear the saddle flaps, both in technique and overall effectiveness. For her part, Anna did stay much more forward, but it wasn’t coming from within her—it was the result of my motivation.

So in spite of seeing this glimmer of improvement, Denny decided that we needed to go out onto the cross country course to seek more energy. Most horses show an intrinsic improvement in their forward intention when they are out in the open, and the terrain of Vermont would also provide some assistance. Denny hoped that by adding in these variables, Anna would begin to better ‘self-motivate’ in her approach to the fences.

OneStrideBank — Working on a similar exercise at Tamarack in the summer of 2014, we had jumped up a bank and then were looking for a bounce to this vertical. I must be trying to pick her up off the ground here!

The exercise seemed simple—pick up a positive canter at the bottom of a slope, kick on up the hill, then ride a gradual turn over the crest of the hill and allow the momentum of the descent to carry us forward down to a tire jump at the bottom. The objective? To maintain the positive, forward energy up to and across the fence, with no change in step.

It was really, really hard to not “check” Anna on the descent down the hill. The tire fence we were tackling at the base was small, and so no matter where we came to, Anna would be more than able to cope with getting us up and over. In spite of that, it took everything in my power to not try to come to a specific take off point. For the first several attempts, I did pretty well at the roll down the hill but when Anna began her typical slow down at the base, I did little to prevent it. It was truly amazing how effortlessly she could check all of that forward energy and then insert her little microstrides in before the jump.

I ended up having to channel that inner ten year old girl again, and basically kick and flail and feel like we just galloped down the hill, before Anna FINALLY jumped the tire fence directly out of stride.

Left to my own devices, I don’t think I would ever have been brave enough to ride Anna so aggressively. I still have hunter equitation roots, where aids such as visible kicking or moving out of harmony with the horse are certainly frowned upon. I think I would also have worried too much about getting her out of balance and causing her to make a dangerous mistake. But Denny made two comments regarding these thoughts: 1) The fences MUST be kept low and straightforward, so that jumping them is a given almost regardless of the horse’s balance and 2) he almost never ever coaches riders to ride like this either. Anna is just that lazy!

THFAug5 — Finally getting it right! Photos by Denny Emerson.

My major take home from this session was that no matter what, I NEED to practice remaining assertive and positive with the forward driving aids up to and away from each and every fence. I don’t think that I have been passive with my aids at all; it is just clear that in some circumstances with some horses, it is possible to be even bigger and louder with your aids than you might think is appropriate!

I would really to thank the members of the Area I Scholarship for choosing me as one of the 2015 recipients. I feel that I definitely benefitted from the instruction I gained from the scholarship, and I hope that through these blogs, other riders with lazy horses might gain some additional ideas or insights into techniques which can help them, too!

Clinic Reports, Training Tips and Techniques

(Another) Clinic with Nancy Guyotte: Keeping your horse in front of the leg

May 26, 2015 christinakeim Leave a comment

Blogger’s Note: I am grateful to be a recipient of a 2015 Area I USEA eventing scholarship. In my application, I indicated that this year may be one in which I focus more on training than on competing in the sport, and I asked for funds to help cover the expenses of training sessions with both eventing and dressage experts. My recent ride with Nancy Guyotte was included as one of these training sessions. I would like to thank the scholarship committee for awarding me with this funding and I hope that this blog will help to share some of my experience with others who are interested.

I recently had the opportunity to ride once again with Nancy Guyotte, an alumna of the University of New Hampshire Animal Science program, who returned to give a clinic for the UNH Equine Program at the end of the spring semester, 2015. After working on my own for most of the winter, I welcomed the opportunity for some feedback and fine tuning from such an experienced coach.

One of Anna’s qualities, which can be simultaneously both helpful and frustrating, is that she is by and large “ho-hum” about most things. New events and activities are not necessarily worthy of great energy or reaction. This is a wonderful attribute in that you can be confident that most of the time she will remain sane and sensible. However, she has never been one who has had a strong response to any of the forward aids, meaning that it can be incredibly difficult to get and to keep her in front of the leg.

None of us want to be “that rider”, the one who goes around kicking and thumping ineffectively on their horse’s sides, nor do we want to have to use the whip constantly. We all know that, theoretically at least, we are supposed to use “light” and “invisible” aids. But doing this is only possible when the horse has been properly conditioned to respond to these cues, which means that we as riders must be able to administer our aids precisely and accurately and then release them immediately, without nagging or holding too long. Here is where riding well is simultaneously a skill and an art.

I think Nancy might be "helping" us off the ground here! — I think Nancy might be “helping” us off the ground here!

I asked to ride privately with Nancy this time because I have found that in clinic settings I am often riding with people whose horses have the opposite problem of mine—they need to be slowed or steadied, as opposed to moved forward. The clinician then spends most of the session working on exercises which bring the horse back to the rider. With Anna, the response to “whoa” is pretty good, especially when she is already behind the leg. So when you do exercises such as, for example, halting in between two fences in a line, Anna only becomes more and more sucked back, and usually she begins to stop. What I needed in this session were exercises that asked my horse to go forward and which improved the timing and accuracy of my “go” aids. I know that I am not alone in this, so if you ride a sometimes lazy and unmotivated horse, perhaps some of Nancy’s exercises will help you, too!

In watching Anna warm up, Nancy immediately noticed that she lacked suppleness and was reluctant to stretch through her topline and to let those muscles swing. These issues can be difficult to improve on when the horse is reluctant to move forward. Nancy suggested that there are two ways to help motivate a lazy horse during the warm up: first, go into a canter in two point sooner rather than later and do many forward and back transitions within the gait; second, do lots of transitions between slower gaits (like walk and trot), asking once and if the response is lackluster, using the aids really strongly and then immediately letting them go. It is important to remember in either of these exercises that the response to the downward aids must also be immediate. The goal is that the horse responds quickly to either the “go” or to the “whoa” aids. Further, one’s application of these aids ideally becomes less and less yet creates a greater response.

We tried each of these approaches with Anna, and the improvement was excellent. One of the most critical pieces of guidance Nancy offered was to not worry so much about the position of the horse’s neck during the transitions. At this point, being above the bit is acceptable. As the horse becomes more forward thinking and their suppleness increases, they will also become softer in the topline and more willing to seek the contact. This then creates the roundness in the transitions. In general, I needed to keep Anna’s neck straighter and to use more outside leg on the turns in order to keep the connection correct.

I admit that I was a bit skeptical of the’ transitions between slower gaits’ exercise. It has always been counterintuitive to me to come all the way to the walk and then to ask the horse to go forward, since the walk by definition lacks impulsion. The other thing with Anna which has been challenging is her utter lack of concern regarding the whip. Most young horses that I have worked with are aware of the whip and most respond to its presence alone by increasing their speed; it is only over time and use that they become desensitized to it, hopefully in a positive way, one which results in their appropriate response to its use. To say that Anna is unimpressed by a whip is an understatement; even the very first session that I carried one with her resulted in a minimal response. It takes a significant amount of application before its use elicits any response at all; to “tickle” her with the whip is not a useful technique. So when you decide to use the whip to back up your leg aid, the timing of its use is critical, and you have to commit to getting a response. Years ago, when I was a working student for Lendon Gray, she said it was far more humane to make your point once and be done than to nag a horse with your aids. This is certainly the case with Anna and the dressage whip.

So what Nancy really had me work on improving through the use of the transitions exercise is the timing of my aids in the transitions. No sooner had the transition been made than we were working on the next one. For the first several transitions, Nancy had me take both reins into one hand and use the whip strongly behind the leg, but then immediately let go. It is the letting go that is the hardest part of the transition, I think. I find that I want to keep supporting or squeezing with the leg aids, even if the response was good, instead of expecting Anna to carry me forward. But the other place in which it is possible to hold for too long, and therefore dull the horse’s response, is in the downward transition. This might be in the use of the rein aids, which would seem fairly obvious, but also in the use of the seat. If you want your horse to maintain their energy through the downward transition, be sure that you aren’t inadvertently holding too much with the seat. Check to see that your hips and lower back still flow and that you aren’t gripping with any muscles that need to stay soft. I know all of these things, and I thought I was doing a pretty good job in executing them, but Nancy reminded me that we are always working to be even better and even faster. The trick for me was figuring out how to be faster at releasing without releasing so much that I was dropping the aids all together.

Anna took great offense to these fake flowers at first!

We also worked on a variation within the warm up, taking advantage of Anna’s ability to do clean flying changes. After doing some forward and backs in the canter, we then started riding a half circle back to the track with a flying change at the end, followed by a transition forward and back within the canter to another half circle to the rail and flying change in the other direction. The half circles were smallish, between 12 and 15 meters. The purpose of this exercise was twofold: first, to get Anna thinking faster by making a series of changes in gait, direction and balance and second, to improve the turning from the outside aids.

Once we began the actual jumping work, Anna was staying reliably in front of my leg and therefore the exercises felt easy and do-able. As always, it is impossible to adjust a canter that is not forward thinking, so any attempts to manage timing at the fences are futile without a forward thinking canter. I think this session was a good reminder of the fact that horses don’t usually have jumping problems so much as they have canter problems. When you improve the quality of the canter, you then improve the quality of your performance over fences.

At one point, Anna had become so forward that she was starting to motorcycle a bit around corners and turns. To address this, Nancy had me work on another exercise which combined turning, transitions and improving the responsiveness to the aids. Starting on the long side in the canter, I rode a transition to the walk and then immediately rode a turn on the haunches followed by a canter transition in the new direction. Again, the purpose at this time was not to execute a flawless, round, dressage test worthy turn on the haunches but rather to improve the responsiveness to the outside aids as well as increase the suppleness through the inside rib cage. We progressed to riding the whole exercise in the canter, so the half turn on the haunches became a small circle around the inside leg with a flying change at the rail.

This exercise clearly showed me that Anna is stronger on her left hind than her right, as the turns flowed more easily with the left hind as the strike off phase of the canter stride. I would never have thought of using this kind of exercise to improve her jumping work, even though I am familiar with it. I would have assumed that because she isn’t reliably in front of the leg and that the quality of her gaits and connection while doing this exercise would not be good, that it wouldn’t be an appropriate exercise for her at this time.

I was reminded, yet again, that sometimes you have to use the exercises and movements themselves to help to teach the horse how to do them. Even if the execution is not perfect, or the horse isn’t “round enough”, sometimes it is helpful to use the exercise as a tool and then you can improve the details later. I remember working with another clinician, Verne Batchelder, with Lee some time ago. Lee has always struggled with connection issues, and he said that there were many trainers who would just keep her on a 20 meter circle until the connection improved. His philosophy was to use movements, and to allow the connection to develop as it would through the use of those movements. Verne said that otherwise what you end up with is a fifteen year old training level dressage horse who can only do twenty meter circles. His point was that sometimes to get to where you want to go, you have to take another way around.

This particular session left me with new ideas and new inspiration to take back to the laboratory to experiment with. I will definitely be working to discipline myself to do less with the leg and to be quicker in the timing with my aids.