Tag Archives: dressage training

The Soul of the Horse

December 3, 2020 christinakeim 2 Comments

On an unseasonably warm day in mid-October, I hauled JEF Anna Rose to beautiful Linden Woods Farm in Durham, N.H., for one final educational outing of the season—a clinic with Jeremy Steinberg. Anna and I rode with Jeremy earlier this summer, and the experience was both positive and helpful. But this fall, most of my arena sets with Anna had left me frustrated. We have a decade-long partnership, but yet it feels as if we are always dealing with the same fundamental issue, namely, generating positive forward energy. This fall, every ride was a struggle, and I found myself losing enthusiasm for doing much in the arena with her at all. I think she felt exactly the same way.

As I attempted to get the earpiece sorted out at the start of my ride, I told Jeremy a bit of what I had been experiencing with her: The lackluster response to any forward driving aid. The blocked right jaw. The dull and non-adjustable feeling in the contact, because without energy and thrust from the hindquarters, there wasn’t anything to actually adjust. I told him that I didn’t feel like very much of a horse trainer, that Anna didn’t even feel like a Training Level horse (never mind a Third Level horse) and that I really hated having to ride so aggressively for such a minimal response. He nodded along with my comments, listening thoughtfully before he replied.

“Remove your emotion from this—it is not you. Some horses are this way. It is just the soul of this horse,” Jeremy said kindly.

I am sure I subconsciously chose an all dark outfit for a reason….

As I blinked away unexpected tears, Jeremy proceeded to tell me about several horses from his past, horses who like Anna had many wonderful qualities—temperament, genetics, beauty— but who didn’t have much ‘get up and go’, who lacked the inner fire that would allow them to easily climb the ladder in dressage.

The thing of it is, to the external viewer, it looks as if these horses should be able to do the work. The viewer concludes it is the rider who is simply not doing enough, or perhaps not riding well enough, to get the horse to perform to his full potential.

Jeremy recalled a time when he was working with one of these horses under the tutelage of his mentor. His mentor kept offering feedback but nothing seemed to be improving the horse’s performance. Not wanting to be disrespectful but also becoming increasingly frustrated, Jeremy finally asked the mentor to get on and feel for himself.

“And then he understood it!” Jeremy explained triumphantly. Even the mentor couldn’t get the horse to perform.

At the clinic that day, we spent the entire ride simply focused on sending Anna forward. It was not pretty, and it was not fun. Jeremy advised that I establish in my own mind a ‘minimum tempo’, and if she dropped below that pace even a whisker, I was to firmly, forcefully, apply all of my driving aids. Hard. Even if we ended up in a gallop (which admittedly still took a few solid kicks with the spur and a strong whack with the wand). The emphasis was all on the upward transition.

Even Anna’s “gallop” is really just a somewhat faster canter.

In the moments where the energy was better, I tried to stay quiet and still while maintaining a steady contact, even if only for one stride. The perpetual issues I experience with Anna’s poll and jaw stem from her stalled engine; get the engine moving again, and the connection issues usually take care of themselves.

“Leave your brain out of the ring—be instinctive,” Jeremy offered by way of explaining the reaction time required. “When she dies in the tempo, then she must go, even if it is up to the gallop.”

For forty-five minutes or so, this is what we did. Me, kicking and using the dressage whip assertively, until I felt as if I were back on a cross country course desperately trying to make time. Anna, offering a few strides of a positive gait. The inevitable slow down. And repeat. Over and over and over.

I think this is one of those nicer moments.

Eventually, when Anna did offer a few consistent strides in minimum tempo, we added in a little shoulder in or a ten meter circle. Inevitably, I had to ride out of the movement with assertive aids yet again. There were a few nicer moments, but mostly it felt like one of us was working a whole lot harder than the other. And also, as if I had taken this exact lesson so very many times before.

While I rode, I kept hearing Jeremy’s voice on repeat: Some horses are just this way. It is the soul of this horse.

After our lesson, I stayed to watch a few more riders. In particular I wanted to see Leslie Ann McGowan, Linden Wood’s resident trainer, schooling the warmblood gelding Belfast, because this horse just makes me smile. I first saw this talented duo at a clinic with Jan Ebeling in 2017; the gelding was perhaps 6 years old then, new to Leslie Ann and quite green, yet everything he did looked easy. Effortless. Joyful. Now showing at the FEI levels, Belfast and Leslie Ann spent the day’s set working on canter pirouettes. Even when the pressure increased and the work became a little more demanding, the horse never quit or backed down.

The difference between his effort and Anna’s hit me like a fist. The soul of this horse was dancing. He was happy being an elite dressage horse. She is not.

I bought Anna from her breeder as a green broke 6-year-old who had never even been cantered under saddle. The breeder described the mare’s personality by saying she “was pretty content to just watch”. Over the years, I have repeatedly been reminded of her breeder’s insight whenever I have challenged Anna to increase her performance level. Anna has always done whatever it is I have asked of her. But I have often had to ask with emphasis.

As a team, we have done and seen and accomplished a lot. She took me around my first (and only) Groton House Horse Trials and to two double clean cross country trips at the Fitch’s Corner Area I Eventing championships. She spent three months with me at Denny Emerson’s Tamarack Hill Farm, where we solidified our partnership over fences and hacked in the Vermont countryside. She received my first (and only) high score of the day at a dressage competition (back at Training Level) and she has earned scores over 60% all the way to Third Level Test 3. This fall, she and I completed the Ranger 100 Mile Challenge, tackling those miles in bite sized pieces along the trails in our backyard.

Anna with her Ranger 100 Mile Challenge Medal.

When I started concentrating on dressage with her, I had hoped that maybe she would make it to FEI. Perhaps that was too lofty of a goal; I knew she would never be a high scorer there but I hoped to finally have a chance to canter down centerline in tails, on a horse I trained myself. A few years ago, I could imagine riding Anna to what would be a pinnacle in my equestrian career.

But more recently, I have downgraded my goals for her—from FEI to Fourth. From Fourth to really solid Third. Most recently, I hoped to collect the last two scores I need for the USDF Bronze Bar in the Third Level Musical Freestyle. We spent a whole season chasing them. The closest we came was still two points too low.

It would mean so much to me to finish that long-term project with this horse, and then call it a day for her dressage career. But not if the cost is having to ride Anna so hard that she is completely miserable, and all the joy has left her. Not at the cost of her soul.

When we got home from the clinic, I put up her dressage saddle and haven’t taken it off the rack since. Instead, we have hit the trails, and I have let her mane grow long and coat thick and fuzzy. Anna will stay home this winter and once the weather turns, for the first time since the age of 6, she will have a few months off to just be a horse.

It is a fine line we tread sometimes, as stewards of these magnificent animals, to know when to push them through resistance in their training and when they have given us enough. It is equally difficult to come so close to your destination and then choose to turn back. But ultimately riding requires a partnership; two hearts working together as a team.

I do not know what is next for Anna and I. But whatever comes, I must honor the soul of this special horse, and not force her to be someone she is not.

Personal Stories, Training Tips and Techniques

Totally Transitions: A Clinic with Jeremy Steinberg

August 18, 2020 christinakeim 4 Comments

On what was possibly the hottest and most humid weekend of July, Anna and I visited the lovely Linden Woods Farm in Durham, N.H., to clinic with USEF High Performance rider and former Dressage Youth Coach Jeremy Steinberg.

I enjoy reading Steinberg’s column in The Chronicle of the Horse and have the impression that, although a successful competitor, he also truly enjoys training horses to become the best version of themselves. To me, this is an important distinction, because I have found that when you simply enjoy being around horses, taking the time to solve their riddles is handled with a great deal more compassion than when their resistance is perceived as an impediment to reaching a goal. It also challenges you to be more creative in finding solutions, rather than insisting that each horse conform to a set formula. Steinberg’s mentors, Dietrich von Hopffgarten and Paul Belasik, are both regarded as dressage philosophers and advocates for humane, classical dressage training. Finally, Steinberg’s first Grand Prix horse was an OTTB whom he developed himself. As someone who favors riding non-traditional breeds in the dressage arena, I was excited for the opportunity to work with him directly.

For me, the pandemic has been an important period of resetting, reassessing and simply improving the bond with my horses. I wasn’t sure that Anna and I were truly ready for a clinic, particularly with someone of Steinberg’s caliber, but I assumed that if he was as horse-friendly in practice as he seemed to be in his writing, we would get something positive out of the ride.

Anna and I have been doing a lot more hacking than usual this summer…but that will be for another blog!

I wasn’t disappointed!

Steinberg spends a good chunk of his time on the road—his website says that he gives an average of 48 clinics per year—and he explained that the first thing he always considers while watching a horse warm up is their conformation, and how it will impact their work.

Anna is flat in the poll, making it easy for her to lock both there and in her lower jaw when asked to connect. Steinberg’s (simple but not so simple) solution? Transitions. So many transitions.

Anna is quite experienced at bracing in her poll and jaw. In this moment I am trying to just be steady without manipulating her neck. So much easier said than done!

After a basic warm up (during which Steinberg encouraged me to use my fingers and wrists quite actively to massage the bit but to keep Anna’s neck completely still), we started riding trot-halt-trot transitions. Steinberg had me hold my elbows to my sides to stabilize the contact into and out of the transition, and to ride a bit of medium trot into the halt. This is not your show ring halt, but instead a training tool to help encourage the horse to start rounding their back, while yielding the poll and croup. These trot-halt-trot transitions are, intentionally, a bit abrupt.

“Resist the urge in the halt to supple her,” Steinberg coached. “Make the hand and elbow more fixed, so that the contact is less negotiable, and when she comes to the halt the contact is solid.”

Not shockingly, at first Anna braced in her poll and jaw, particularly into the downward transition. Overall, the transitions were somewhat…ugly.

There were plenty of moments like these….

…interspersed with rounder moments like this. Anna has always struggled with lifting her back in the canter!

“You are trying to get the horse’s lower back to tip in the hip and pelvis,” says Steinberg. “Think more like a sliding stop. You want the horse to tuck under a bit.”

It was important to not allow walk steps in or out of the transitions (as this will cause the horse to avoid tucking the hip), and for a horse such as Anna (who is not always the most prompt to the driving aids), you cannot be afraid to really pop the whip if she is not responsive.

But roundness with no bracing IS an option!

“Let the horse make mistakes,” says Steinberg. “Let them learn that you are not going to carry them along, and if they make a mistake, be corrective.”

The more transitions I did, focusing on promptness and really rooting my elbows to my sides, the hotter Anna became to my leg and the softer and rounder she became in the connection. By staying steady and tolerating Anna’s tendency to brace (for now), I was increasing the pressure on her to become rounder. The idea is that you are giving the horse a choice—they can continue to resist, which is uncomfortable, or they can choose to become rounder in their back and relieve the pressure.

Lateral movements such as shoulder fore, shoulder in, travers and renvers are all allowed– just so long as you don’t wrestle with the neck.

“Do fifteen of them,” says Steinberg of the transitions. “If the horse braces, do three more.”

This work is meant to be done in many short bursts; we worked trot-halt-trot transitions on each rein, and then moved on to canter-walk-canter. I applied the same concepts to these latter transitions, with the aim of taking no more than one or two steps of walk in between each stretch of canter.

During the walk strides of the canter-walk-canter transition, Steinberg wanted me to stabilize my elbows (holding onto the mane if necessary) and resist the urge to ask Anna to give. He wanted her to make the connection softer by sitting more behind, rather than lowering the poll. It is much harder than you would think to tolerate the resistance until the horse figures it out!

“Almost as soon as you walk, you want to go back to the canter,” says Steinberg. “It is the difference between doing a sit up and a crunch.”

The canter-walk-canter transitions help the horse to lower the croup and lighten the forehand. Steinberg compared the horse to an imperfectly balanced teeter totter—one that has a boulder (the forehand) in front of its fulcrum (the withers), with a rider sitting behind them both.

Progress is made in fractions of an inch, not feet.

“As soon as you get on, you can feel this weight,” says Steinberg. “If you can raise the front end, the boulder will roll back. But if the forehand goes down, you have to pull on the reins to stop the boulder from rolling forward more.”

All of these prompt transitions help to create greater activity in the hindquarters, by putting a certain degree of pressure on the horse’s body and not giving them much choice in how to respond to that pressure. In Anna’s case, she needed to hit the wall of the rider’s hand. The true origin of her bracing is not in her jaw, it is in her back– but because I feel the weight in my hands, I (like most riders on similar horses) try to manipulate her back by positioning her neck.

I love this moment. She looks so proud of herself.

“I want to manipulate the back with transition work,” says Steinberg. “The bracing is [the horse] wanting to stay tight in the back. But if I give in to the brace or try to soften the brace, I never give the horse the opportunity to soften the back.”

What I found quite remarkable was that despite the heat, the humidity, and the pressure, Anna really stepped up to the exercise. The sets were short but intense; Steinberg counseled to ignore the things which were not perfect, and after one or two quality transitions, give the horse a break. Many times throughout the day, after a period of increased pressure for the horse, I heard Steinberg tell the rider to reassure the horse that “mom still loves them”. During a walk break in a later set, Steinberg had this to say about adding pressure for the horse:

“When you are fairly confident that the horse is capable of doing the work—they are a correct mover, appropriate conformation, etcetera—you can put the pressure on,” says Steinberg. “You will sometimes need to be intentional like this, to help the horse really understand how to use their body.”

Jeremy Steinberg watching Leslie Ann McGowan warm up her own Woody.

As the horse begins to understand stepping into the downward transitions with roundness and softness, Steinberg will add a driving aid—perhaps just a tap of the whip—to teach the horse that the roundness comes from the hind end.

“You must take a leap of faith and know that you will have some of those bad transitions,” says Steinberg. “This is how you can offer a correction, and how they can learn. There is a consequence for making the mistake, and this consequence can be just the feeling of the horse hitting the rider’s aids.”

This was by far one of the most productive and positive clinics I have had with Anna, and I have incorporated this exercise into my regular routine with great success. I am so grateful to facility owner Karen Bishop and her daughter Leslie Ann McGowan for coordinating the clinic and opening their property to outside riders despite the pandemic, and to Steinberg for making the trip up from Aiken, S.C.! Thanks, too, to Fay Morrison for coming by to help me with Anna and taking such great pictures of our ride.