AEBC Intensive - Day 2

Another great lesson, and a lot learned by watching others - professional and non-professional.

We worked again on poll straightness, but then we worked quite a bit on 'squish'. Squish is a technical term describing the 'switching on' the core, the backs of the inner thighs, the top of the inner calves and essentially turning your body into a solid pillar of rock solid immoveability. The idea of squish is to prepare the horse for the best thing. It is, for all practical purposes, a very well-defined half halt. When squished, the horse must wait for the next cue, "bubbling and boiling," as Manu puts it. Not literally. That would stink.

When squished, Jedi became quite tense, head up, tight through the back, anticipating ang trying to respond to what he thought must be an aid. But within a shirt time of holding the squish and waiting for Jedi to just stand to attention, Manu pointed out his slow squaring up, until he was standing square, on the bit, ready to spring into action.

This translated into walk, then trot, then eventually canter. Bloody awesome. It's quite a useful tool and soon Jedi was feeling quite comfortable that he'd be given enough warning if any changes and started really working through his back with long swinging strides. He was straight, he turned without resistance or fuss, and he even tried to leg yield when asked!  Squish is cool.

Canter was good. Low expectations are really important with young and green horses and I have been too focused on trying to get a strong, balanced, cadenced canter when I should have been focused on getting canter. At all. On the right leg.

One thing I found very helpful was a bit of a sequence in preparing for a transition.  Squish....wait...core on....drop elbows...then...transition when ready. That simple sequence produced some seriously nice turns and transitions and I will be quite conscious of preparing properly in future.  I'm constantly putting "more prep needed" in my judge's comments, so this is a way of ensuring I do it myself!

Jedi has been truly great to partner with and is proving to be a real keeper. Jumping tomorrow with Andrew. Keep you posted!