Circles of Joy aka Achieving Natural Collection

I used to struggle with getting my horse to collect.  It felt like a battleground with me pulling him into a collected frame with my hands and upper body while trying to push him forward into that frame with my legs and seat. All of this while my horse tried everything he could to avoid these conflicting cues.   Talk about a pushmepullme!

Needless to say my horse and I weren’t exactly poetry in motion.  He braced his neck and jaw against my hands which made if  feel like I was holding up my horse’s entire front end with no help at all.  The result was usually either a jackhammer of a trot which made my teeth feel like they were about to go through the top of my head, or a dragging, flat trot with as much energy as most of us are without coffee on a Monday morning. 

Today, though, a whole new world of collection opened to me in my lesson.  Instead of using force, leverage and every muscle in my body to try to get my horse to collect, I learned how to use gravity and circles to get my horse to collect on his own.  Here’s how we did it:

I started out at the walk, keeping him light and soft and bending on a very large circle (about 25 meters diameter).  Once he was warmed up on that - all nice and light in my hands and moving off my knees and legs (shoulder in, haunches in, shoulder in  to check this) I started spiraling him in onto smaller and smaller cirlces. As the circle got smaller and smaller he started stepping under himself more and more with his inside hind - the beginnings of collection!  My job was to keep him light and moving forward while paying attention to his level of resistance.  At about fifteen meters he started getting resistant and sticky so I spiraled out just a few feet and then started doing shoulder in, and then haunches in, then shoulder in to really encourage him to stand up through his shoulders rather than lugging on my legs and not moving off of them.  This lateral work helped him step under himself and hold himself in self carriage. 

Once he was solid doing this in the walk, I asked him to move it up to the trot, again on the small circle.  This was really really hard for him (he’s out of shape after a month off because of saddle fitting issues). He did great though! Whenever he’d feel like he was lugging in my hands I’d ask him to bring his shoulders or haunches in and then back out -causing him to step under himself and hold himself up - voila self carriage and collection all without me having any fight with him! If he really struggled I’d bring him onto a slightly bigger and bigger circle until he felt more comfortable and then bring him in just a bit and repeat the lateral work.  Through all of this work I encouraged him to stretch down through the neck while bringing up his entire front end through self carriage and collection.  This is great horsey muscle building.

He couldn’t hold it for long - just a couple circles each direction at a time. But what fantastic circles they were! He was light in my hands while he was stepping under himself with his hind legs so nicely in natural collection.  The big bonus was that I never fought with him, or felt like I was pulling him into a frame or anything - the spirals did all the work for me - so he was relaxed and light and wonderful. Behold! Natural Collection!

How Sewing Thread Can Make You A Better Rider

So I’ve been working with my big Westaphlian Gelding Sparky for almost a year now.  When I got him, he was a bit of a mess undersaddle.  He spent a lot of time ducking under the bit (nose behind the vertical), or bullishly moving through my inside leg to get away from the evil things (chairs, standards, strange looking plants, invisible monsters, or bolting (particularly at the canter).  After a year of steady, often creative work, he’s pretty much through all that.  But through it all I’ve developed a bad bad habit of allowing him to lean lean lean on my hands.  It happened gradually so I didn’t really realize it was happening until I rode my trainers horse who was very insulted that I was attacking his mouth so horribly! 

It took me a little while to really understand what was upsetting him so much - he kept tossing his head around and getting very upset - nothing dangerous but it was very obvious he was upset.  My trainer kept coaching me to lighten up on the pressure and when I did and just did teeny tiny light half halts he was much happier.  It felt so weird though! Like I had no contact at all! I was kinda resistant to riding like that until I remembered a clinic with Susan Derr Drake I rode in almost 15 years ago.  She tied heavy sewing thread to everyone’s bits and had us ride around using the thread as reins.  Of course all the horses were very well trained, relatively relaxed beasties and we had the reins still available - they were just tied in a knot to keep them safely out of the way.  

The exercise taught two things. The first was how a horse can feel a very light contact and respond beautifully to it - if you broke a thread you were using too much contact.  The second was that most people, unwittingly,  put much more pressure on their left rein than their right reins.  This was proven to be true in the clinic as I saw left “reins” snapping all around me and barely a right one snapping at all!

Once I finished my first abysmal ride on my trainers horse, I started thinking about this clinic again, realizing that I had gotten into a very bad habit of having very heavy hands! Depressing, but fixable.  The next morning I saddle up my very patient Mustang Dusty who is trained through first level and very easy to ride.   I rode him for about half an hour with the words “Don’t break the thread! Don’t break the thread” repeating over and over in my head.  I wasn’t riding with threads, but I was trying to keep my contact so light that if I were I wouldn’t break them.  Dusty responded SO well! He LOVED it.  He was light and airy and soooo easy! His right canter transition which is usually our buggaboo was amazing! He never threw up his head in the transition, always got the correct lead and was up and moving through his back!  It taught me to use my legs and seat MUCH more than I have been to affect his way of going - instead of using heavy pressure on the reins to get him to soften when he threw his head up I’d use my inside leg to move his barrel into the right “shape” or bend along with light light half halts and his head would come down and his back would go up and he’d bend beautifully! He was truly in self carriage! I still had light contact but it was really and truly LIGHT!

Trying this on Sparky didn’t go nearly as well - apparently he’s very attached to me lugging his big ol’ head around for him! I have a lesson tomorrow on him and hopefully we’ll be able to figure out how to get him to be in self carriage instead of leaning on my hands….. My goal? To eventually be able to successfully ride him in contact, walk trot canter with thread reins….

Weekend Link RoundUp - Saddle Fitting

Here are some of my favourite articles on Saddlefitting - enjoy!

On fitting the horse:

• Saddle fitting: the basics and beyond
• Fitting Horse and Rider
• Does Your Dressage Saddle Fit? A British Master Saddler’s checklist for making sure your current dressage saddle (or a new one you might be trying) isn’t causing your horse problems.
• The Nine Points of Saddle Fitting
• Hands on Saddle Fitting by Joyce Harman
• Saddle Fitting For Smarties
• The Importance of Saddle Fit
• Evaluating Saddle Fit: Gullet Width

On fitting the rider:

• Fitting the Saddle to the Rider
• Leg Length – How it influences your Position!
• The Feminine Mystique - Saddlefitting as it Relates to Women!
• Does This Saddle Make My Butt Look Big?

And for just a ton of fantastic saddlefit related articles:

• Schleese Saddlery Service Articles

Happy (and comfortable) Riding!

The Importance of Saddle Fitting

Three years ago I bought a top of line custom fit saddle for my horse. From the very beginning I had problems with it. Bad ones. Not for my horses as the saddle company has done an absolutely AMAZING job fitting my very difficult to fit horses. No, the problems were for me. First the saddle seemed really really hard on my poor seat bones. I mentioned it the very first time I sat in it and the saddle fitter said the saddle just needed to break in. So I rode in it for 3 months. If anything, I swear it got harder. So I paid for another fitting, where the fitter added some extra seat foam (very expensive seat foam might I add - $250!). This helped slightly but still, the saddle never felt quite comfortable. Then I noticed that try as I might, I couldn’t seem to get my legs underneath me. I seemed to constantly be sitting in a “chairseat” with my legs out in front of me. Needless to say this didn’t help my riding. So I paid for another fitting - they adjusted the saddle saying the flocking had just settled. Ok that seems reasonable. I ride another few months in it - constantly struggling in the sitting trot to stay upright instead of leaning WAY back (oh my gosh you should see the video of me doing Third Level Test 3! It’s embarrasing how far I’m leaning back. I’ll try to put up some clips). I then pay for ANOTHER saddle fitting. This time they raised the back of the saddle up to try to address it. I rode around the arena at the fitting site a few minutes and it seemed better, so they sent me on my not-so-merry way. Not so merry because the next day I went out to ride my horse and after 30 minutes my feet started falling asleep! It got worse every day as the saddle cut off the circulation in both legs! It got so bad I could really only ride 15 minutes before the pain was so bad I had to stop!

Then a funny thing happened. I was up working at Juniors (I volunteer at alot of the local shows) and I ran into the trainer who organizes the saddle fitting clinics. I chatted with her about what was going on with the pain and lack of circulation. She took one look at the saddle model and told me that there was a manufacturing defect with that model’s tree. It was a known issue and that the company needed to replace the tree in order to fix this! I was floored! I had complained about the hard seat for well, years at this point and they kept just charging me for fitting after fitting without ever telling me abut this known issue!

I called the company, they were very apologetic and helped me ship my saddle off to them. Then the fun really began. My saddle was gone for nearly a month. I don’t have a back up saddle cuz Sparky is so hard to fit! I was stuck with just a bareback pad for schooling poor Sparky who I’m trying to get ready for Prix St. Georges. Needless to say we did a lot of lunging and trail.

Towards the end of this saddleless month, I read a great blog post from BehindTheBit on long legs and saddle fitting (I’m six feet tall with a true 36 inch inseam. Long legs? I got ‘em.) In the post is an article written by my saddle fitter about how many people over 5′9″ need their stirrup bars moved back in order to be in the right position rather than in a chairseat. I immediately and excitedly called them to ask about moving my stirrup bars back for me. They were resistant first asking why I hadn’t asked about the “chairseat” before. Then they looked at my records and saw the multiple fittings for this problem. Then they checked my leg measurements and confirmed that I probably needed it done to fix the problem. The bad news though, was that my saddle was in transit so if this needed to be done, I’d have to send my saddle back again to them. AAAAAAAAAAAH!
When my much missed saddle arrived (second day air) I tested to see if moving the stirrup bars would help by putting thick hair rubber bands around the existing stirrup bars towards the front so the stirrup leathers were pushed back. Voila! My legs! They were under me! I could sit the trot without leaning back!

And away my saddle went again. They tried to charge me for the change but I pointed out that they had charged me for seat foam that was only needed because of a defective tree. They backed down and agreed to make the change for free. Phew!

So a week goes by. No news. I call in. They say the shop is running behind and it will be yet another week. That week goes by. No News. I call in. Oh it looks like it will be done by Monday! Fine. I call Monday. They can’t find the order. After searching and searching they find it. Bad news. They sent it ground instead of second day air - oops! Their mistake. Doh! So I have to wait another week before my saddle arrives. At this point I’m over two months without a saddle for my poor now out of shape horse. Finally it arrives.

I run out to the barn. Slap that puppy up on Sparky. Leap hopefully on to his back and go for my usual walk warm up in the hills. By the end of my 20 minute warmup my inner thighs were KILLING me and my feet were going to sleep. again. AAAAAARGH!

That was Monday of this week. Since then I’ve ridden in it daily and it still hurts me. It looks like the new saddle bars are pushing into my thighs, and hard! They’re metal, so I really don’t think they are going to break in… My position though is fabulous! No chair seat! I can sit the trot easily! Well not easily, it’s a huge trot, but easier! 

Tomorrow, I call the company to talk to them about replacing the whole darn thing cuz I’m tired of messing about with this defective model! 

I’ll let you know what happens! At least it still fits Sparky beautifully…..