My last post talked about how I use long lining (double longe) to help Corny out with his misconception about how to respond to pressure in the bridle. Corny was under the impression that he should raise his head and lower his back when he feels pressure on the bridle. This led to a bad ride for me that I had emotional difficulties with. Given that my back isn’t doing that great right now, I decided to enlist the help of one of my students.
Kate Little is an eventing trainer a couple of towns over. She has taken a couple lessons with me, and I see her at the horse shows. I’ve been looking for an assistant to replace the one I lost 3 years ago, and while she isn’t interested in the job, she has told me that she would be happy to help me out in the short term. She also says that she will ride anything, which is a policy that is dramatically different from mine!
Anyway, Kate came out and did a fantastic job with Corny. I started him in the long lines to remind him about the concept of yielding to pressure in the bridle and going forward at the same time. Kate was able to duplicate this response under saddle with better timing than I was able to produce in my Ride with Corny.
Kate noticed that Corny didn’t understand that using the leg means go faster. She worked on creating that response with him, then added some intermittent pressure in the bridle to encourage him to lower his neck.
I had a good time watching Corny try hard and process this information. I took some (wretched) photos in burst mode to see how he processed pressure on the bridle.
This sequence is from the beginning of the ride
Corny still reacted to pressure by lifting his head at first. Then he remembered what he learned on the long lines and lowered his neck and brought his back up slightly.
We are off to a good start! Corny is a good guy. This next sequence is how he reacted to pressure 10 minutes later at the end of his ride:
This end result makes me very happy. Kate and I were both congratulating Corny for how good and how clever he is. He’s elongating his neck, lifting his back more and learning how to keep going all at the same time!
We are going to continue in this vein for Corny, alternating between riding and long lining. My goal right now is to get him to understand that the rider’s leg means go, and the rider’s hand means follow. I’m hoping this will relax him enough so that he can keep his tongue in his damn mouth!