Ahhh contact, how I despise thee. Trying to get an ex ranch horse to take a true contact on the bit may be the most challenging thing I've ever attempted in my life. I know that this is done all the time and that cross-trained horses are very common among the competitive scene, however, it's proving to be quite elusive to my amateur training skills. Luckily, I have a wonderful trainer that is helping me to decipher the minute discrepancies in my horse's performance. Here's where we're at:
Roanie went around wonderfully in the dressage arena last year in a nice long, low, relaxed frame. We scored well and placed respectably at our numerous shows. So now it's time to step up the level of work and start pushing Roanie to collect herself, sit, and push into a more upper level frame. It's tedious work and is incredibly frustrating at times. It has involved a lot of lateral work, tempo changes, temper tantrums (from both me and the horse,) and lots and lots of lessons about riding my horse into the contact from the hind end to the front end in order to get the proper weight in my hands.
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| Long and low frame August 2014 |
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| Starting to come up in the front January 2015 |
Here's the challenging part: Roanie is an 11 year old mare and has the attitude of a grounded teenage girl. She over-reacts to everything, which is incredibly helpful jumping XC and is the source of her 'go get em' attitude, but also means she's incredibly unforgiving in the dressage arena. She doesn't like to change her frame, bend, tempo, or gait. It offends her and leads to the recurrence of our dear old friend the llama (not to be confused with her raising her head up so that she can shift her weight back.) So most of our work has just been establishing with her that these changes are necessary and she hasn't done anything wrong and she just has to keep working through them. Her ability to stay engaged and relaxed through these changes has made a world of difference in her ability and the desire to lean on the bit and take contact. It's a slow process but everyday we get a little bit further!
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| Taking MUCH more contact now. |
