Manu Clinic I of 2015 - Day One

It's been a weird week of weather around Canberra! More like autumn or spring than the height of summer! Mild days with a cool wind and downright cold nights! I've even had a rug on Annie and Jedi overnight....darn climate change.

The first day of Manu's clinic was supposed to be a rare jumping lesson with Manu but my lovely lesson-mate (not a seasoned jumper, by any means!) didn't have an appropriate horse to ride so we decided to just make it a dressage lesson after all. Turns out to have been a really good idea.

The main issue I've had with Annie has been her head position and bit acceptance. A lot of the bit acceptance has improved, but she still wants to throw her head up at the first change in anything - speed, gait, direction, length of stride. Manu had two very important things to work on for the whole of our lesson. Warning, we didn't make it out of trot!

The first thing Manu wanted me to focus on was the length of Annie's stride in walk. Her walk is big and long, naturally, but she is really too big and long right now and this unbalances her, causing her to raise her head to balance. Because I've been fighting that rather than fixing the length of her stride, tension has established its nasty self and cemented a hollow way of going.

So, lesson one, creeping. Lots and lots of creeping walk. I'll come back to that.

The second big focus was my hands. Manu wanted me to shorten my reins and put my hands down at the base of Annie's crest, essentially cementing them there. I have quite a range of motion in that position - opening my fingers, right up to cocking my wrist down and even putting my little fingers inside the reins to shorten my reins quickly. So, the idea is to provide a real anchor for Annie to work off and a consistency of contact despite her head tossing.

The creeping walk is literally, at least to begin with, as slow and short as I can get Annie to go. Manu didn't want me to pull or move my hands. The idea was to, instead, pretend I'm lifting a bag of feed, switching on my core rather than using my back to pull back. Additionally, when Annie slowed and creeped I released with my fingers to reward her, then closed them when she inevitably got faster at the release of bit pressure.

After about 15 minutes, Annie was doing a very nice creep and had dropped her head, rounding and blowing with relaxation. Manu had me 'dream' longer strides (Annie can be a bit reactive to my legs) every time Annie dropped her head and soon she was doing a lovely 'gooey' medium walk. Time to trot.

There was a lot of tension initially as Annie trotted. Lots of head chucking, trying to run through my reins and really resisting the creeping trot. It was obviously very hard for her as she almost groaned with effort! Every time she got a bit too extreme with the head tossing and resisting I brought her back to the creeping walk by lifting my bag of feed. Then, when she dropped her head and relaxed, asked her to trot. Soon enough, she was wanting to reach down and out, blowing, really swinging through the back and working properly.

Manu had me coming up the centreline and using indirect turns to move her across to the outside track, similar to a leg yield but from the rein rather than the leg. It has the benefit of encouraging straightness and really solidifying the indirect turn. Annie was smashing it (Manu did several of her famous and very cute 'yey's). Got all proud.

Frankly, Annie wasn't the only one absolutely stuffed at the end of this lesson. The hand position does mean I'm leaning more forward than I'd like and using my core to slow and stop is quite hard! I thought I had a good core but, as with all things, there's always room for improvement! I was concerned with my body position as I've been working so hard on NOT leaning forward for so long, but Manu said two good things: 1. My position is a lot better than I seem to think. 2. I'm not riding a Grand Prix horse so I can't ride like a Grand Prix rider! Yet. :)

Annie got a lot of compliments from my mates at the clinic and I'm really looking forward to this year with her. Her hooves coped great with the arena (woodchip and mulch) but she's still very sensitive over anything with rocks, meaning her soles have a lot of building up to do.

Day II installment tomorrow!