The development of Filly's responsibilities continues. We now have a pretty good maintain gait and maintain direction. Her "look where you are going" is very good as well, except for one lapse yesterday. Now I am adding in some athleticism for her. In this case I am referring to "fowardness" in the gaits.
First a definition of fowardness in the walk. The walk is forward when the hind hoof lands at least in the hoof print that was just made by the front hoof. Ideally we want the hind to land 4 hoof prints in front, but that is only achieved by lots of practise. I was at James Roberts again a few days ago and witnessed a very talented event horse with about 5 or 6 over track ! This is an important trait as it means that the horse has to engage it's hind quarters to achieve the over track. Engagement of the hind quarters is important as it is the power house of the horse. If the hinds are not engaged then the horse is just pulling itself along by it's front legs.
So how to achieve this ideal. I put Filly on the circle as usual and ensured that she was maintaining her responsibilities. Then I started looking at her gait and noticed that she had the minimum requirement of forwardness. To improve on this I just asked her to walk on three tracks for a step or two, then back to two tracks. Quick explanation of tracks. Walking straight a horse is on 2 tracks with the hind foot tracking the same side front foot. On three tracks we have the inside front on the inside track, the inside hind tracking the outside front on the second track, then the outside hind on the third and outside track. To ask for this I just have to focus on her hind quarters and walk into her zone 4 pushing her hind quarters over. Once she has managed a step or two of 3 track the reward is to return to two tracks. This causes her to really think about and engage her hind quarters. The result of 15 minutes was a two print over track which is not bad at all.
I also worked on the responsibilities at trot which were pretty good so we moved onto canter. This caused problems. She did not want to canter! I had to put lots of pressure on her to get her to canter at all. Snag is that I don't want to canter her on too small a circle as that is hard work on her joints which is undesirable for a young horse. But on a big circle she knows I can't get to her with the stick and string. The solution was to only send her back a short distance from me and then send her on the circle from a distance where I could tag her with the string if needed. As she starts the circle I can let the rope run through my hand until she gets to the end and can start circling at the full rope distance. I did have to tag her with the string twice, but after that she rapidly made the change to commencing the canter at a very early phase of the ask.
For a while though she would not maintain gait at canter and I had to correct her several times a lap. One of the big differences between the circling game and longeing is that with the circling game I do not continuosly ask for canter to get her to maintain gait. I just send her at canter then go into neutral in the centre of the circle until she breaks gait. It is important to let her make the mistake and then only use the phase that is needed to get her to canter again. The game for her is to find what it takes to keep me at neutral. Thus I am not just working her body but making her use her brain as well to puzzle out what she needs to do to keep me quiet in the middle.
To start with I would reward her by bringing her into me for a rest after she had managed one lap without breaking gait. We slowly built this up to two laps. Thus her responsibility to maintian gait was established, but her maintain direction was poor. She was leaning out on the line putting quite a lot of pressure on my arm. It was difficult to stay in neutral to teach maintain gait whilst she pulled hard on me ! The responsibilities are put in a specific order for a reason. The maintain direction cannot be practised if the horse won't maintain gait and keeps stopping. Thus I was not too concerned about the maintain direction as this can be established once we have maintain gait really sorted out. In fact I suspect that it will all come together at the same time. Once I have her doing 5 laps at canter she will have figured out that pulling on the rope is too tiring to canter for long periods and she will find relaxation on the circle at canter with a nice loose rope.
It was interesting that her last responsibility "Look where you are going" was very poor when she was not keeping the other reponsibilities first. On one circle she suddenly came across a cone in the way. Her reaction showed that she saw it at the last moment and jumped out of her skin. "Who the hell put that there" was the look on her face. This just serves to emphasise that the order of the responsibilities is very important and it would be a mistake to try and teach them in any other way.
First a definition of fowardness in the walk. The walk is forward when the hind hoof lands at least in the hoof print that was just made by the front hoof. Ideally we want the hind to land 4 hoof prints in front, but that is only achieved by lots of practise. I was at James Roberts again a few days ago and witnessed a very talented event horse with about 5 or 6 over track ! This is an important trait as it means that the horse has to engage it's hind quarters to achieve the over track. Engagement of the hind quarters is important as it is the power house of the horse. If the hinds are not engaged then the horse is just pulling itself along by it's front legs.
So how to achieve this ideal. I put Filly on the circle as usual and ensured that she was maintaining her responsibilities. Then I started looking at her gait and noticed that she had the minimum requirement of forwardness. To improve on this I just asked her to walk on three tracks for a step or two, then back to two tracks. Quick explanation of tracks. Walking straight a horse is on 2 tracks with the hind foot tracking the same side front foot. On three tracks we have the inside front on the inside track, the inside hind tracking the outside front on the second track, then the outside hind on the third and outside track. To ask for this I just have to focus on her hind quarters and walk into her zone 4 pushing her hind quarters over. Once she has managed a step or two of 3 track the reward is to return to two tracks. This causes her to really think about and engage her hind quarters. The result of 15 minutes was a two print over track which is not bad at all.
I also worked on the responsibilities at trot which were pretty good so we moved onto canter. This caused problems. She did not want to canter! I had to put lots of pressure on her to get her to canter at all. Snag is that I don't want to canter her on too small a circle as that is hard work on her joints which is undesirable for a young horse. But on a big circle she knows I can't get to her with the stick and string. The solution was to only send her back a short distance from me and then send her on the circle from a distance where I could tag her with the string if needed. As she starts the circle I can let the rope run through my hand until she gets to the end and can start circling at the full rope distance. I did have to tag her with the string twice, but after that she rapidly made the change to commencing the canter at a very early phase of the ask.
For a while though she would not maintain gait at canter and I had to correct her several times a lap. One of the big differences between the circling game and longeing is that with the circling game I do not continuosly ask for canter to get her to maintain gait. I just send her at canter then go into neutral in the centre of the circle until she breaks gait. It is important to let her make the mistake and then only use the phase that is needed to get her to canter again. The game for her is to find what it takes to keep me at neutral. Thus I am not just working her body but making her use her brain as well to puzzle out what she needs to do to keep me quiet in the middle.
To start with I would reward her by bringing her into me for a rest after she had managed one lap without breaking gait. We slowly built this up to two laps. Thus her responsibility to maintian gait was established, but her maintain direction was poor. She was leaning out on the line putting quite a lot of pressure on my arm. It was difficult to stay in neutral to teach maintain gait whilst she pulled hard on me ! The responsibilities are put in a specific order for a reason. The maintain direction cannot be practised if the horse won't maintain gait and keeps stopping. Thus I was not too concerned about the maintain direction as this can be established once we have maintain gait really sorted out. In fact I suspect that it will all come together at the same time. Once I have her doing 5 laps at canter she will have figured out that pulling on the rope is too tiring to canter for long periods and she will find relaxation on the circle at canter with a nice loose rope.
It was interesting that her last responsibility "Look where you are going" was very poor when she was not keeping the other reponsibilities first. On one circle she suddenly came across a cone in the way. Her reaction showed that she saw it at the last moment and jumped out of her skin. "Who the hell put that there" was the look on her face. This just serves to emphasise that the order of the responsibilities is very important and it would be a mistake to try and teach them in any other way.
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