They both love their jobs even though they show it in different ways. Raven's training and progress so far has been fairly straightforward in an upward linear progression. Highboy's training has not only gone through hills and valleys, but also around in circles and catapulting through the air.
Highboy and I got some very valuable advice from the Centered Riding clinic this summer when we rode with Susan Harris and Carol Wilson. They both recognized that Highboy doesn't intend to be "bad", he just likes to celebrate a little too much. As I tell people, his personality is that of a frat boy who is perpetually on spring break. I detest that sort of mindset in a human, but I get great joy from it in my horse.
Currently I'm approaching his training with a different perspective. He gets to jump if he's being well behaved, but if he has touchdown celebrations when he's jumping he must go back to cantering in boring twenty meter circles until he is quiet again. Once he's behaving, his reward is that he gets to go over a jump. If he's being REALLY good, I let him go over a larger fence.
This mentality is working fantastically well. Even when he's left on his own in the arena for turnout he will jump fences just for fun. He finds such joy in flying through the air that it never occurs to him I might not stay aboard. Now that he's realized good behavior earns him bigger jumps he is much more focused and calm. As a reward yesterday at the end of a nice 3' course I let him do an oxer we had set at 3'10". That horse was so happy. I stayed out of his way and let him pick his impulsion and distance to the fence, and he sailed over like it was nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q2ajkuUwPA&index=27&list=PLSz03UJfRRFTnLfP8yDq7B8VrlWgtUWHc
Raven is much more business-like about her training. She is brilliant, one of the smartest horses I've worked with and she figures out complex concepts incredibly quickly. For example, this weekend I worked on walking over jumps with her. This is an exercise I do with my horses that I expect to move up the levels in eventing. It gives them confidence and teaches them to really rock back on their haunches, pushing from the hind end instead of relying on speed to clear bigger fences.
I set it up as one jump in the middle of the arena, as either ground poles or a small vertical set on the lowest height. It's best done with a jump crew since there are lots of height alterations. I walk the horse over the jump once in each direction, and then the jump crew raises it one hole. I usually do this with my short standards that have six inches between holes so the horse can get the idea without belaboring the issue every three inches.
Once the rail has gone up, I walk the horse up to the jump again and send them over it from the walk each direction. Then the rail goes up again. Eventually the horse realizes that they can walk over jumps that are quite large, as long as they shift their weight back and really push from the hind end. Raven figured out what we were doing incredibly quickly, and it only took five minutes of the exercise before she was jumping over a 3'6" fence out of the walk. This is a great way to avoid refusals on course if the horse hesitates to take a hard look at a fence. If the horse knows she can jump just about anything out of a walk, getting over a fence after a pause to look is no big deal.
Video from the whole five minute exercise with Raven can be seen here, with some jumping out of the trot and canter at the end:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIcVQM2eJ_Y
No comments:
Post a Comment