Give Your Horse a Chance Parts Four and Five
I have finally finished reading "Give Your Horse a Chance by Lt. Col. A. L. d'Endrödy. At over 500 pages it was quite the beast to get through and it is quite the technical manual on horsemanship.
Part One: Fundamental Objects of Riding
Part Two: Methods of Communication with the Horse
Part Three: Schooling the Rider and Horse in Jumping
Part Four: The Three-Day Event and Part Five: Show Jumping are reviewed below.
The bulk of the book is dedicated to the basic schooling of horse and rider, including the introduction of jumping in Parts One through Three. The final 120-odd pages of the 530 page beast address building the "finished" performance horse in Three-Day Eventing and Show Jumping.
In part four he goes over the requirements of the event in great detail starting with the Dressage phase, including tips for how to best prepare for the test and common trouble spots. He explains all of the paces required, including rein-back and each movement and figure.
He then covers "The Speed and Endurance Tests and Its Component Parts."
Nowadays the second phase is simply referred to as "cross-country," but it used to be way more than the single phase we see now in the "short format" of eventing. This section was really interesting to me as he discussed each of the phases, their purpose, and how to strategically tackle them all.
Roads and Tracks occurs twice during the second day and is the introduction to what d'Endrödy refers to as the "endurance tests." Roads and Tracks occurs primarily at the trot. In the first instance it serves as a "warm-up" for the rest of the day and the second occurance is between the steeplechase and cross-country and serves as a "rest" between these two intense phases.
The second phase, the Steeplechase, is performed at speed and he discusses how to prepare the horse for the speed demands as well as teaching the horse how to take jumps at this accelerated pace. The jumps are predominantly brush-types and inviting. He suggests riding with shorter stirrups and a position similar to that of a racing jockey, which makes sense considering the rate!
The final phase of the endurance test is the one most people are familiar with: Cross-Country. He introduces this phase with "this phase of the endurance test demands a high degree of intelligence, intensive training and great ability on the part of the horse," and it holds true. Since the other three phases were cut for the "short format" i.e. making it easier for TV coverage the cross-country has become much more technical. Some obstacles are also different. One of the pictures shows a horse sliding down a 70° slope 23' long, something I've never seen at an event and is certainly a test of rider and horse grit!
Lastly he talks about the Show Jumping phase before talking about the importance of proper fitness and conditioning before going into detail about preparing the horse over the course of the year, and considerations for what to do during the actual performance of the three-day event.
There are more calculations and tables with a lot of math. For a sport that is so much about "feel" you certainly can use math to take out some of the guesswork out of riding a certain line. Of course there is also something to be said about being able to keep all of these numbers in one's head for a full course after you figure them out on paper! He also briefly covers one-day events.
Part Five of the book covers show jumping and the special skills and consitioning required to do well.
He mentions rapping, which is something I hadn't heard of and am pretty glad is not widely practiced at this point so far as I am aware. Essentially one uses a long, stiff object (rod, pole, whatever, even the top rail of the jump itself) to rap the horse's legs as it jumps to encourage it to be more careful. For example a horse who tends to hang a leg would get a rap to encourage it to tuck up tigher as it goes over. He had a lot of caveats and precautions and emphasized the importance of the one doing the rapping being both out of sight of the horse and having exceptional skill and timing. He also mentions self-rapping by having the horse jump a single rail so that there is no ground line to help the horse judge or having a thin hollow metal pipe just above the top rail of the fence so that if it isn't careful it hits the pipe having the double effect of a hard knock and the hollow sound.
Following the show jumping section is a large collection of tables laying out (re)conditioning plans, show and competition schedules.
In conclusion I did enjoy the book, but wouldn't recommend it to your average horse person. It is extremely technical and the writing can get a bit dense in places as it does in any academic work. It is VERY thorough and I would love to read it again taking the time to follow all of his little cross-references. It does have a thorough index to help look up specific topics with ease. I do think it is a good book for anyone wanting to really dig into riding theory. I did find the first half more useful than the second, but my focus isn't on jumping or eventing (though some day a long format low-level event would be cool). I didn't highlight much of anything in these final parts, but I guess as you get to higher level competition all of the really hard work was in laying the foundation and while it is still work and certainly not easy getting a horse to the fitness and training to perform at the highest levels, it is much less about the theory and correction once that basic communication is established.
I've been reading this book slowly for over two years. I almost don't know what to do next!
Part One: Fundamental Objects of Riding
Part Two: Methods of Communication with the Horse
Part Three: Schooling the Rider and Horse in Jumping
Part Four: The Three-Day Event and Part Five: Show Jumping are reviewed below.
The bulk of the book is dedicated to the basic schooling of horse and rider, including the introduction of jumping in Parts One through Three. The final 120-odd pages of the 530 page beast address building the "finished" performance horse in Three-Day Eventing and Show Jumping.
In part four he goes over the requirements of the event in great detail starting with the Dressage phase, including tips for how to best prepare for the test and common trouble spots. He explains all of the paces required, including rein-back and each movement and figure.
He then covers "The Speed and Endurance Tests and Its Component Parts."
Nowadays the second phase is simply referred to as "cross-country," but it used to be way more than the single phase we see now in the "short format" of eventing. This section was really interesting to me as he discussed each of the phases, their purpose, and how to strategically tackle them all.
Roads and Tracks occurs twice during the second day and is the introduction to what d'Endrödy refers to as the "endurance tests." Roads and Tracks occurs primarily at the trot. In the first instance it serves as a "warm-up" for the rest of the day and the second occurance is between the steeplechase and cross-country and serves as a "rest" between these two intense phases.
The second phase, the Steeplechase, is performed at speed and he discusses how to prepare the horse for the speed demands as well as teaching the horse how to take jumps at this accelerated pace. The jumps are predominantly brush-types and inviting. He suggests riding with shorter stirrups and a position similar to that of a racing jockey, which makes sense considering the rate!
The final phase of the endurance test is the one most people are familiar with: Cross-Country. He introduces this phase with "this phase of the endurance test demands a high degree of intelligence, intensive training and great ability on the part of the horse," and it holds true. Since the other three phases were cut for the "short format" i.e. making it easier for TV coverage the cross-country has become much more technical. Some obstacles are also different. One of the pictures shows a horse sliding down a 70° slope 23' long, something I've never seen at an event and is certainly a test of rider and horse grit!
Lastly he talks about the Show Jumping phase before talking about the importance of proper fitness and conditioning before going into detail about preparing the horse over the course of the year, and considerations for what to do during the actual performance of the three-day event.
There are more calculations and tables with a lot of math. For a sport that is so much about "feel" you certainly can use math to take out some of the guesswork out of riding a certain line. Of course there is also something to be said about being able to keep all of these numbers in one's head for a full course after you figure them out on paper! He also briefly covers one-day events.
Part Five of the book covers show jumping and the special skills and consitioning required to do well.
He mentions rapping, which is something I hadn't heard of and am pretty glad is not widely practiced at this point so far as I am aware. Essentially one uses a long, stiff object (rod, pole, whatever, even the top rail of the jump itself) to rap the horse's legs as it jumps to encourage it to be more careful. For example a horse who tends to hang a leg would get a rap to encourage it to tuck up tigher as it goes over. He had a lot of caveats and precautions and emphasized the importance of the one doing the rapping being both out of sight of the horse and having exceptional skill and timing. He also mentions self-rapping by having the horse jump a single rail so that there is no ground line to help the horse judge or having a thin hollow metal pipe just above the top rail of the fence so that if it isn't careful it hits the pipe having the double effect of a hard knock and the hollow sound.
Following the show jumping section is a large collection of tables laying out (re)conditioning plans, show and competition schedules.
In conclusion I did enjoy the book, but wouldn't recommend it to your average horse person. It is extremely technical and the writing can get a bit dense in places as it does in any academic work. It is VERY thorough and I would love to read it again taking the time to follow all of his little cross-references. It does have a thorough index to help look up specific topics with ease. I do think it is a good book for anyone wanting to really dig into riding theory. I did find the first half more useful than the second, but my focus isn't on jumping or eventing (though some day a long format low-level event would be cool). I didn't highlight much of anything in these final parts, but I guess as you get to higher level competition all of the really hard work was in laying the foundation and while it is still work and certainly not easy getting a horse to the fitness and training to perform at the highest levels, it is much less about the theory and correction once that basic communication is established.
I've been reading this book slowly for over two years. I almost don't know what to do next!