Scott Hassler stayed after the show to spend Monday morning at the farm to teach. We were all pretty beat, but Scott was his high-energy self, and we had a great clinic.
I started by riding Landon, a CUTE, cute, cute client horse who I’ve been riding for about three weeks. Landon’s a recovering show hunter, and so when he came to me he was very thick with the kind of tight, short muscle that gets in the way of elasticity. That’s been the theme for him—squishy, squishy, squishy, instead of choppy, choppy, choppy. He’s such a lovely creature between his ears and has made a ton of progress, but Scott was helpful in helping me identify where to go from here.
I’d been doing some leg yielding on a circle with him; Scott encouraged me to also leg yield down the long side, and not just to do long sets of leg yield, but rather short bursts, focusing on his response to the aid, not just the leg yield itself. I’d also been struggling with varying his outline—up, down, out, in. Scott helped me discover that if I let him down first, he’s much easier to bring up. Of course he’s still not as strong as I’d like (in a dressage way!) or as flexible, but if I can start to ask him those questions, he’ll start to be able to answer them. Great.
I also rode Fender who, as I’ve shared with you all, has been in a boundary-testing teenage snotrag stage, but for the clinic he was all business. Scott was very encouraging about how much Fender has improved since he saw him in Florida, which was good for me to hear—I’d really been stressing out about what felt to me like a plateau. We talked about Fender’s struggle to keep his balance when going sideways, and Scott felt it was in his back, his still-developing strength and coordination. He had me work the shoulder-in in a similar way to Landon’s leg yields—focus on the first step, on his reaction to the aid, not just on whether or not he ended up in nice shoulder-in.
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Mostly, Scott was very happy with how I was working him. He liked the adjustability of his body and how I approached the canter, focusing on keeping it quick instead of letting Fender’s big, floaty, beautiful canter lure me into allowing it to stay slow. We talked about the canter-walk transition, something he’s still struggling with, and how to approach it on the right hand versus the left (his right lead is much stronger). So all good things on the Fender front, too.
As usual, we couldn’t have a clinic where everything was smooth sailing. We had a ton of auditors, which was exciting, but I was totally unprepared, and as I realized I didn’t have enough food I had to send my friends Sue and Jeff, who brought their wonderful 4-year-old stallion to the clinic, out for fried chicken. Good rule of thumb: When all else fails, bring fried chicken. So lunch was not a disaster, and next time I’ll have some frozen pizzas on hand, just in case.
