Michael came down to us this weekend for a last clinic before Team Barisone heads to Florida next month. He came with a special guest—his wonderful wife Vera, also a very experienced Grand Prix rider, not to mention an absolute riot. So it was not a clinic As Usual.
Moreover, all of my horses—who were all GENIUSES last week—felt like absolute crap all of this week. Fiero felt pretty good, actually, so that’s not entirely true, but Johnny, Dorian and especially Danny spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday giving me complete heart failure.
My logical brain expects this. They’re young horses. They do this. Plus it’s a change of seasons; it monsooned here for a week, so we couldn’t turn out for more than a short period of time instead of our usual 10-12 hours a day. They’re having to dedicate some energy to growing coat. The grass has changed, and doesn’t have the same nutrition it does in May and June, so we sometimes have to tweak their food. Johnny looks like he’s growing again (good grief, he’s grown almost a HAND this year—how much more is in there?!)
My logical brain also knows that clinics are just that—riding lessons. A lesson where everything is going brilliantly isn’t helpful. I take lessons to address the things that aren’t going perfectly, and as such, the more that isn’t brilliant, the more I have to work on in said lesson.
The rest of my brain says: screw that, I want to look like a genius.
Fiero made me look pretty smart. We remain in Second And Third Level Purgatory for another two weeks, but we did a tour of all the movements from those tests (yawn), and then formulated a plan for what we’re going to do over the winter to start nudging towards Prix St. Georges. We played with very collected canter, where Fiero teases me with 4-or-so steps per ride of OHMYGOD! big boy canter, from which he immediately proceeds to fall apart, and then I can’t find it again until the next day. But it fills me with hope and excitement for the future, and that is swell.
So Fiero is going in the right direction. But Michael redirected my efforts on everything else I ride. I clearly needed a kick in the butt!
Dorian is a little bit of a long, gangly thing, and has this gorgeous long neck topline that I’ve been trying to figure out how to shorten. For as many times as we all get “neck too short!” as a comment on dressage tests, “neck too long” is an equally big challenge, as when the neck is too long and flat it’s much harder for the developing horse to really gather himself together from hind legs to withers. So we spent his clinic lessons working on up and short, mostly on a 20 meter circle just picking away at walk and trot and canter transitions with my hand at the mouth, not letting him snake out of a meaningful contact. It was WORK, let me tell you, but in the end, he felt like the Big Time Horse we all hope he will one day be.
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The theme of “imprint FEI on him now” comes up in all of my lessons on all of the young horses I’ve developed over the years I’ve worked with Michael, and this weekend’s clinic was no exception. Danny is so elastic and supple and swingy that he ends up being a little “everywhere in every direction,” and that’s been what I’ve been focused on since he arrived in July – channeling him into a more organized unit, instead of body-part-schrapnel flying about. But I’ve done so letting him be a little low and curly in the neck, as it made both our lives easier in the beginning. Michael said that it’s time to start riding him up and out most, if not all, of the time now, to start making that the norm instead of the exception. He’s strong enough now to hold himself upright in a young-horse kind of way, so this weekend was Graduation: poll the highest point; nose out; still supple and elastic, of course, but thinking more like a PhD program and less like Remedial Algebra. He felt amazing, although also totally wrecked after two days of that, so we’ll see if he feels good next week—my money is on not-so-much!
Johnny’s been my challenge this year. He’s SUCH a good dude, so eager and cheerful and willing, but also SO big and SO powerful and strong, strong, strong. He’s strong in a different way from Midgey, who was, hands-down, the strongest thing I’d ever ridden when he was Johnny’s age, but Johnny takes a close second. Midgey was so hard at five because he was so short coupled and powerful; Johnny’s not quite as powerful and also much longer, but has that same big, upright neck that can get away from me.
I’d solved that problem the same way I’d solved Danny’s: by putting the neck quite low. Michael called me out on it this weekend, and correctly noted that while it was keeping him rideable, it was avoiding the issue—he needed to learn how to balance with his neck up. So up I put it, and while it was a little terrifying at first, in the end he actually felt the most amazing.
It’s really a contest at this point to see which of them is going to turn out better! I’m in a heckofa great place with all these nice kids.
Almost all the other riders were students of mine, which was pretty great. Working student Ferris had a terrific lesson with her young horse, and Allison and clients Kristin and Liza also had great rides on developing horses they ride. And we finished with my two Junior riders, Kristin and Hannah, who are both riding so beautifully and look like strong candidates for next year’s NAJYRC. As if it weren’t enough to have such nice horses to ride myself, I get to coach excellent folks like these.
In all, almost all of us got a valuable butt kicking about neck position. While it’s really important to be able to ride our horses everywhere we want—a little too high, a little too low, a little too round, a little too open—keeping the neck a little low is a short-term tool to help horses get strong, not a long-term solution. So onward and upward, in all things!
