Aiken Part 5

Day 12: Friday - Dressage Lesson with Julie Zapapas
Very interesting dressage lesson with Julie. She was focused on correcting the rider's position first, before correcting the horse's response to the rider. She was adamant that most problems lie in our position. Julie went on to explain that when riding young horses, we too often compromise our position to get a desired response - largely because the horse responds slowly and we are impatient as riders. Her #1 rule was to never compromise your position, regardless of the horse's greenness. "Come to me" is the approach she takes with horses. So what did I learn?

• I am crooked. I place too much weight on my left seat bone - whether I am going to the left or the right. I need to be more centered.
  
• I am getting my aides confused because I am crooked. My inside leg needs to come forward at the girth. When my horse falls into the inside, I need to maintain my inside leg position at the girth - not move my leg backwards in a ineffective attempt to get him to move off my leg. It's the shoulder I can't control, but the inside leg at the girth will help this. Julie would often say "step into the inside stirrup". On each post up, I was to place my weight into my inside stirrup. This helped elongate my leg and taught me to keep it in the correct position.
  
• I over use my inside rein. It's the outside rein that needs more contact. Julie looks for straightness first - the horse needs to be in the outside rein. If that means they are counter bent she doesn't care. She believes in the order of priority, the horse needs to be connected on the outside rein first, then the bend can be added. This is different than the approach I currently use, which is to achieve straightness thru bending. To correct the over use of the inside rein, Julie had me watch my hands "watch the tunnel." My outside rein and hand were to be next to the neck (maybe 2 inches off the neck), while my inside rein as 4 inches or more away from the neck and forward. My inside hand has to be forward - either in front of my outside rein or with my outside rein. It was so hard not to grab the inside rein to correct the counter bend! But Julie wanted my inside leg to create the bend.
  
• Focus on the quality of the walk. We practiced a lot at the walk. Julie said there are no soft hands, only soft elbows. And I did not have soft elbows. At the walk, I was required to exaggerate the movement of my hands with the horse's walk (my hands - not my seat). This focus on moving the elbows with the movement of the horse's head was to help with transitions, as well as encouraging connection with the bit. Any time we walked, Julie wanted me to pay attention to it, raise my standards for it.
  
• Use my seat and legs more during the down (and up) transitions. I was to imagine a beach ball between my legs and I was to squeeze it (alternating on and off) as I asked for a down transition to walk. Along with sponging on the outside rein (and keeping my inside leg at the girth, shoulders back, and inside rein soft -so much to think about!) For the transition to canter, I was to prepare for walk (using the same beach ball scenario) and then ask for canter. This actually produced a couple of really nice canter departs over the course of the lesson.
  

Day 13: Saturday - Pine Top Horse Trials
Leo was CRAZY at Pine Top despite my use of a calming paste. He could not be left at the trailer by himself and when I got on for dressage, he only got worse. He was beyond tense in the dressage warm-up. I couldn't go in a straight line for the life of me and he was jumping around, and dancing sideways. I couldn't walk - or I what ever attention I had captured was lost again and I had to start all over. I rode for an hour and when they were ready for me, I trotted from the warm-up ring to the dressage ring without bothering to stop for a break. We had what was probably the best test of Leo's career to date. We still only scored a 42.9, but I was really pleased!

Leo was much better in the stadium warm-up. He was jumping really well. We had a rail and time faults in stadium, but over all he did well there. I forgot about the importance of time limits at recognized events. It got me thinking about xc....

Day 14: Sunday - Pine Top Horse Trials
Leo was worse than the day before in cross country warm-up. I could barely get him moving forward at some points in time and he would hop up and down like he wanted to rear. Stressful for sure. I trotted him for 30 minutes. Like the day before, I couldn't stop or else he would lose it. So frustrating! I'm not sure if the atmosphere and announcers at Pine Top pushed him to his limit or what, but this was definitely not the behavior I was hoping for. The good news is once he was galloping on cross country he was fine. In fact he was better than fine, everything was easy. And his speed was perfect - he settled into a nice canter and we came in nearly at the optimal time. In the end, we placed 8th out of 14.



Day 15: Monday - Drive back to PA
Ugh. This drive is not something you look forward to, but the horses were fine and it was great to be home!