Lordano with Jody

I’ve been back riding for about a month. I am soo happy just to be riding period. However I still see that I have the same problem I have had over the last year….for some reason my Lordi and I werent’ communicating when I asked for canter and he is the wiggliest animal I have ever seen. For almost a year we have been dealing with this. Other professionals can USUALLY get the canter and straighten through forward, but for me…it was definitely sporadic.

Enter Jody…here for the summer, preparing to compete in WEG 2010…we happened to meet, she mentioned her training methodologies, largely focused on Operant Learning, (Australian Equestrian Behavioral Center, led by Andrew McLean). Alas, today I worked with her for the 3rd time, and voila, her theory worked. I can get canter pretty reliably off a cluck. We taught him to canter off a completely different aid, step by step, in 3 sessions. I will gradually re-introduce a more classic aid. I am sooooo excited, were not confirmed for sure, but for the first time, in a long time, I left the barn elated. My horse and I really communicated, I taught him something from scratch and it WORKED! All I can say is, Jody Hartstone rocks!! One step at a time…we are relearning together, some completely different things. I will keep updating, but I was at the place, where I was feeling defeat and ready to accept it. But I love this horse…he has such a personality, very sweet, he has fantastic gaits, admittedly complicated, but fantastic, he is sensitive yet forgiving, quite interesting. I am hoping so much that this leads us to total communication and harmony like I used to dare to think about.

Some of the major learning’s that are quite different than what I have always been taught are that I ONLY use my leg to ask for forward and yield laterally. I use my rein to control the front legs and everything in front of that. Yup, my reins. I have learned that it is scientifically proven that the brain primarily talks to the front legs and to control the horse you must control the front legs. It is really pretty simple. Broken down into a few key things, everything else stems from there. I’m not saying I’m going to completely throw away everything I have learned, I am saying I am willing to research other avenues that can effectively get me to where I want to go.

What I believe is that every living being is unique and individual and what typically works with most animals may not work with some and therefore sometimes you have to be willing to step out of the box and try something new. You never know….it just might work.

The three questions I have are:
1) In every corner of dressage, dressage masters talk about straightness, but I have never seen an absolute straight dressage horse! The definition of straightness that has been explained to me was that a horse needs to tracking straight from withers to croup with a straight spine (not travel crooked), but how can you have straightness if the ribcage is bent around the inside leg and using the outside rein? A good example of this is in lateral movements like Half-pass. If straightness is important, why is the frame of the horse bent in the direction of travel? At this level of training, they have full control of shoulders and haunches, would it not be more of a challenge to keep absolute straightness?

If they only bend the neck and not the ribcage, then the outside shoulder leaks out to the outside (now they need outside rein to fix it) and then horse is not tracking straight. I have heard two definitions of straightness: cylindrical and absolute. Even in the upper levels I have not seen absolute straightness because in a turn they turn the nose in the corner, they pull the horse through the turn with the inside rein. I just don’t understand how dressage defines straightness, it seems elusive to me. Can you clarify straightness? with regards to lateral movements?

2) The training scale is the foundation of how we train a horse, and rhythm is the foundation of that foundation. When we hear music, it has rhythm and tempo because the instruments are playing. Once the instruments are playing we can now adjust the tempo.

With regards to training a horse, if we need to adjust the rhythm, we need to use contact to balance the tempo. It seems odd to have rhythm first on the training scale when it requires two other elements to teach true tempo. You can not have true rhythm without movement (impulsion) to work on trueness of rhythm. It has been said that rhythm can only be achieved when the horse is straight and in balance, but we need to teach a horse to be straight through implosion, contact, and collection. In order to teach collection we need the horse to except contact with aids. It seems to me that impulsion should be first followed by contact, collection, straightness, rhythm, suppleness. It seems to me that rhythm and suppleness is a result of a well balanced, forward, collected horse.

Suppleness is second on the scale, but you can not teach suppleness without contact and impulsion. A horse can not be supple until he is balanced, straight and has impulsion. So how can you get these two components (rhythm/suppleness) when we need first impulsion and contact to achieve them?

3) It is a standard concept to move the outside leg back to the number 3 position to move the haunches for a tranvers movement, but they also instruct to sit on the outside seat bone. Balance is top of the list of good equitation, by moving the leg back puts the rider out of balance. I see no reason to sit on the outside seat bone and move the leg back, just do one or the other. I know this is a personal preference, but it is widely taught. Should the leg stay in a more natural neutral position and just shift weight to the outside seat bone to move haunches in?

Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions.

Randy Byers