No Rush - October 3rd

I watched Marijke's videos on how to slow down a rushing horse, because in our last two training sessions Karina started to rush forward instead on moving slowly and with precision, which is so important in the beginnings of ST. That video explained me a lot: now I know that I'm dealing with the strong, straight and pushing hindlegs. My idea to incorporate working on poles and cavalettis in our groundwork seems now to be even better. I must have known instinctively what I'm dealing with, and hence the idea of cavalettis. Last year, when I was riding Karina, I tried to do some work on poles, but Karina, though at first seemed to like it, soon started rebelling against it. At that time I didn't know why, I thought that I've put too much strain on her and that she might be bored (though I changed the configuration of poles and cavalettis pretty often to keep her interested). Now I know that that was not the cause, or at least not the main cause.

Marijke says that we who work with a rushing horse should be prepared to stop him every time we feel that the horse starts to push with his hindlegs instead of carrying himself. That may mean that we'll have to stop after each step, but at this stage precision of every movement is crucial for the further training. We should even be prepared to back the horse up, if stopping doesn't help and the horse starts walking into us. The horse is not being mean or disobedient, he's just trying to deal with his new situation in the only way he knows. And it is up to us to help him find himself. Even if it means stopping him like forty times in our ten minutes' training session. Well, nobody said that it's going to be easy, but they said that it's going to be worth it...

That is just so great that I have found a source of information on any trouble that I may meet while doing groundwork with my horse. Marijke is sharing her knowledge very generously, and very skilfully. For example, Gerd Heuschmann is propagating the same knowledge, but he's often being too hermetic. Well, the fact is that we who are working with the horses really should go through the same sources where he did his research on proper horse training, and perhaps then we would understand him better. But not everybody can get to those resources, as most of the old riding masters' works are written in German or French, and here in Poland they are either totally inavailable or horribly expensive. I know, I know, that is not an excuse. I just know how much I have still to do, to learn, to find out, that I sometimes feel overwhelmed by that and start moaning :) I would love to get down to The Gymnasium of the Horse by Steinbrecht or to works of Pluvinel. And I hope that one day I will, and in the meantime I just have to go through other resources that are available for me at the moment...