Back to basics

[glenatron]

I was working with Cash this evening, helping him to figure out back-up under saddle. He's doing so great now- we're approaching the point where the main thing he will need is just miles on the clock

Comments

[joycemocha]

First of all, cool! Good progress. And so cool for you that you stopped the session at just the right point! Your rationale is entirely correct, especially since you're retraining. I might suggest that this is something to work on from the ground. I don't know if you've been trained to use cluck when you ask for transitions, but that's something my trainer is very firm about--and he starts patterning a whoa, then back very early from the ground. It's part of how you can get a good reining stop. The horse anticipates that it is very likely to be asked to back up, so G does a "whoa," then cluck back from the ground, until it's almost a reflex based on the horse's observation of whether you're turning to face him or not

[glenatron]

I don't like to ground drive because I don't have a sidepull and I don't think you can get a decent amount of feel on a horse's mouth through long lines, so you end up teaching them things you'll need to unteach later. I would prefer to do that the way I want it to feel right from the start. One of the things that I got from learning with Martin, who does everything from the saddle, is that you can do everything from the saddle if you are so inclined

[joycemocha]

To be honest, I think you're overworried about the teaching wrong things from the ground. I do use a sidepull when I'm driving but I do that only with Mocha, who's already learned how to give to pressure. If you set it up right then it's no problem driving with a snaffle, especially a fat smooth snaffle. I also don't strive to have a direct contact at all times, necessarily. There is a comfort level in a sidepull that allows work at all three gaits, but it's perfectly acceptable to do it in a bit. And heck, those Spanish Riding School guys follow so close that it scares the crap out of me! Still, if you're not comfortable with it, it's probably not the thing to do. He'll pick up on your tension and respond poorly

[glenatron]

I want things in my hand to be fairly subtle and I just don't think you get that subtlety on a long rein. I mean yes, you can craft that in later, but why go too far one way just to come back? It's not a question of tension, I've just watched the people I've learned with who used to teach it moving away and listened to their explanations and found what they had to say was coherent with my experience. Also for me timing is easier in the saddle because I can feel all the feet, so I don't have to know where they are.

The thing about control of the feet is that it allows you to get with the horse's mind a whole lot- you can do amazing things if the horse will let you into their mind and on the start one way to do that is by getting down to their feet. If you ever saw Ray Hunt ride, in person or on video, he was always talking about the relationship between the mind and the feet. I feel that if you can achieve the level of subtlety and willing compliance that he did, why would you not want to? By being in time with the feet and only

[joycemocha]

Hey, also just wanted to thank you for this discussion. It's been very good for me and I hope it is for you as well (my yoga class got cancelled so I didn't need to rush out like I did in my last response). Gave you a shout out in my last post because an animal behavior comment in an article about the eradication of rinderpest jumped out at me so starkly--and I don't think it would have if we hadn't been discussing this.