The last of the purple foxgloves are still in the verges at the top of their stalks. They've been joined by another long-stalk plant with lots of little purple flowers all the way up the stem. The blue-purple harebells are out in huge numbers, my favourite wild flower for their delicacy and beauty. The thistles are in flower in two colours - either pinky purple or raspberry purple. The world has gone purple and it's absolutely beautiful.
I've waited a while to post because I wanted to see how my new way of schooling was going to affect the boys once they were used to me carrying my hands higher, and correcting them by raising them higher still. This is very much the way western riding uses the reins, and Phillipe Karl also uses neck rein aids.
Both the boys have improved dramatically with the new method. Both are lifting in front and really moving. Ace has developed a proper medium trot that he can hold for several strides at a time, much better already than anything that Jazz managed because he can do it so seemingly effortlessly. He has also moved on to 10m trot circles and 15m canter circles. As well as that, I have started changing pace and direction much more frequently with him now, to get him to understand that it's not playtime any more, and big boys listen for new instructions all the time. It shocked him at first, and he had a bit of a strop yesterday that I did smack him for, but today his work was absolutely brilliant.
Radar was a complete eejit to school after galloping around the farm ride. Much as expected! But again, the raised hand aid works really well to calm him and settle him down again, so we had two pretty decent schooling sessions where he has developed a trot to canter transition. Previously I have done walk to canter because his transitions were so wild into canter (OK, gallop :-) that I couldn't control them.
Today I have taken him out for a hack and for almost the entire hour he was loping along with an enormous unhurried and total relaxed and swinging walk. He trotted up all the hills without pulling, running, or leaning on me, in a proper balance that he kept up all by himself. That's a huge improvement over our last hack from home and it was a joy to ride him.
I have entered for an affilated Novice 30, only one test, on Wednesday. It's his first affiliated one and we are going to do just the one so that we can concentrate on a proper warm up and doing one test to the best of our ability. It will be very interesting to see how it goes.
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Good progress, the more I hear about PK's methods the more I'm tempted to learn. I like high hands myself, especially for horses who chose to work too deep.
ReplyDeleteGood luck Wednesday, enjoy yourself.
PK's point about the hands is that the German training method insists on low hands right from the start when many horses are not ready for the rider to hold their hands at that height and where they resist the tongue pressure, causing the rider to increase the pressure to make the horse flex, and then drive with the leg to keep it moving forward. He says it's obvious that if you have your hands holding the reins as the German system says, then the only way you can give a rein aid to a less advanced horse is to pull back the hand, which is just what you are not supposed to do!
DeleteThe alternative of raising the hand takes the pressure off the tongue and transfers it to the corners of the mouth. You keep your hand there until the horse releases its jaw (at which moment with both mine you can feel a pronounced upwards and outwards movement of the shoulders and front legs), then you drop your hand lower, but still not as low as the current training convention would suggest.
Both my boys seem to love it.
All of it makes sense to me, so I'm not too surprised your horses are reacting to positively to the new style.
ReplyDeleteI too will be interested to hear how the show goes.
But, I am most impressed with Radar's demeanor. Won't that be great if it carries out to the hunt field? Might take a while for the initial excitement of the season to calm down, but what a boon it would be to have a relatively relaxed ride on hims in the field.
I'm trying not to hope too much Jean, but it crossed my mind too. Wouldn't it be just wonderful if he would give up pulling my arms out and splitting his own mouth?
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Here's to the "light" Radahhhhhhh
ReplyDeletePS think the other Purple flower might be Comfrey...
ReplyDeleteI am petrified of the opening meet NH, he was a complete maniac last year! Petrified in a good way though :-)
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It wasn't but I have now seen comfrey as well. I didn't know what it was and googled comfrey after your comment and recognised it. I've got two others now as well - little purple flowers in a mass of willow-like greenery about 4 feet high. And little purple flowers down nearer ground level. It's a purple world round here!
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Oh, and clover too! Huge blooms in the verge.
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