Today was another amazing day at the EDAP Courtney King-Dye Horsemastership Clinic! We started off the morning again with barn chores and yoga. My lesson was at 8:00 today with Scott Hassler. The main theme of my lesson today was to “take more risks.” Don’t be afraid to make mistakes sometimes. We worked a lot on the quality of the canter and going forward for 5 strides and collecting the canter for five strides. That exercise helped Fiero have more self-carriage. Scott says that he needs to be in the quality canter that we got today when we are doing the changes and since that canter is not as easy for him at this stage of his training, that is probably why it is harder for me to get the flying changes on him. Scott said in order to get clean and prompt flying changes, we need to ride this quality canter.
We also worked on adjusting the trot. We would move the trot forward and back, bend more or less, or adjust the angle in lateral work. Doing that made me “own the movement” instead of just riding the movement. We would also use halts as a rebalancing aid. Scott told me to not have my leg on constantly, but to just remind him every once a while, because that will make him more alert to my aids and allow him to move more freely. At the end of the lesson I had an INCREDIBLE trot, it was super light, very expressive, quick off the ground, but also floaty. I was amazed!
I was super happy with my lesson today!
After lunch Michael Barisone talked to us about how to train the piaffe. He said to never start training the piaffe before the horse is 6 years old, and to always have somebody else on the ground to watch. (He also said a lot more, but that will take up a lot of room on here! 🙂 After that we went to the Fairhill Therapy Training Center where we got to see many different healing and training options for sport horses (mainly racehorses.)They had an aqua pacer, hyperbaric chamber, a cold therapy machine, and a vibrating plate that the horses stand on. It was very cool! Today was another great day!