“I shoulda been a dancer,” I said to the two-year-old Andalusian filly.
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This tall, willowy, long-legged ballerina had everything right to be one herself. She and I practiced a lot of things together, one part being groundwork which seemed more like dance steps. Well, step-on-my-foot-steps at first. Some days, I have to admit though, I felt like she and I were playing something more like the game Twister. “Step here with your left front leg, now there with the right hind…” You get the idea.
Aside from controlling movement and adding a momentous degree of safety, there is something very special and satisfying about learning where each leg is stepping. And that is the pathway to experiencing great movement—which gives us a feeling of accomplishment. Things like the first successful leg yield, or a smooth turn on the forehand, a jog that sweeps us around the arena like a dance partner, that perfectly balanced lope, are all movements that create a memory for us and whet our appetite for more. For the rest of our lives we yip like coyotes over those movements as we have been able to accomplish them. The other side of the coin means we struggled with those same things too.
To complicate things further, we live in a world of competition. It is easy to lose sight of the fact that we practice these movements, not so much to score well on a test but for what they can do for the horse. To be able to reward the “try” of both horse and rider—to focus on that as an accomplishment—will create something in you as a horse person, and thusly it will help your horse. (Is “thusly” a word?)
Like skunk stink to the skunk, what is so alluring to me is that I get to see and affect where horses begin their lives as riding horses. It is exciting to see potential, but it is more exciting to see and experience Frankensteinella turn into a beautiful butterfly.
What you need to know is that each movement we practice creates a change in the horse’s body. Each movement should be engineered with a purpose to give us access into the horse’s body in different ways. When we begin to ride the horse, we should be able to choose a movement that will free the blockage, or stiffness that is present in the horse at that moment. Let me put it another way, a lack of suppleness is the explosive ingredient that lockups and blowups are made of, Partner.
Rein Photography