Begin at the beginning...and relaaaaxxx!

I have been freshly inspired by watching my Alex Kurland DVDs recently, and am busy adding to my growing collection. I watched her Hip-Shoulder-Shoulder DVD the other day, and was deeply impressed, not only by the groundwork that was done but with the ridden work as well.

I have never paid much attention to the ridden bits before, but AK used them to show how building up the groundwork layer by layer develops into ridden work that is so smooth and fluid, and completely lacking in tension, unlike 99% of the riding you see today. I know there are people who have concerns relating to ridden clicker work, and rightly worry about setting up conflicts in training a horse to do something that might look good, but isn’t necessarily biomechanically correct or healthy. I do understand and sympathise with those concerns. I myself started riding with the clicker without really giving this any thought. However, seeing how AK’s ridden work is built on so many layers of groundwork, that the ridden work just seems to flow so naturally, and as I say, completely without tension. So I do think that with really, really thorough preparation, and the total elimination of tension through the many layers of groundwork, riding with the clicker can be a totally holistic and natural progression for horse and rider.

With this in mind, I decided to work on some of the stuff that AK does in her second DVD called ‘ground manners’. Basically what we were starting to look at was yielding the quarters and the forehand.

Now Faith will back up from a simple gesture to her chest, but she has not really learned to move her quarters or shoulders in response to light pressure. So, for once using the headcollar, and working in the stable, we started on the exercise where AK teaches the horse to back around the stable. The idea is that every time the horse approaches the corner, you gently ask the horse to flex to the outside (i.e. the wall), while still gently encouraging them back with a hand on the chest. The horse will then yield the quarters to the inside and step around. The idea is that this should become a smooth, fluid movement with the absolute minimum of pressure and zero tension on the part of the horse.

Now Faith was a little tense and suspicious at first, and we would get a little stuck on the corner. The idea is not to escalate the pressure, but just to hold the flexion in a relaxed, soft way and let the horse work out for itself that it needs to step around with the quarters. I felt that this relaxed, inert softness was very important, as the last thing I need is Faith to ‘ping’ back at me from a stable wall. So I gave her a slight clue in that her body was angled slightly so she wasn’t straight back into a wall or corner, and when asking for the flexion, I kept my body as soft, relaxed and inert as possible, and kept my eyes down. As soon as she even shifted her weight to the inside hind, I clicked, released the headcollar, stepped back so she had to come towards me, and gave her a treat.

After a couple of attempts going clockwise, she stepped round a full step on the corner, and I left it there, and repeated the lesson anti clockwise. Again, after she had given me one lovely big step around with her quarters, we left it there.

I gave her a couple of minutes to think about all that while I gave her a little brush, then I did little work with a slightly different version of yielding the quarters. This time I stood her up in the middle of the stable, and gently asked her to flex to the right, I then pointed to her hip, directing my energy, and just inertly softly held that position until she stepped through and under with her right hind and moved over. As soon as she gave me that step, I clicked, released the headcollar, stepped back and treated. Same again on the other side, and we were done.
So we will carry on until that single step is relaxed and fluid, and we will build on it bit, by bit, by bit. Always in the back of my head is AK saying “Tension is your horse’s enemy”. Not a bad mantra to bear in mind I think.