Eole - january 28, 2009

Cold, wintery day (-2°C). Large indoor arena, with a few riders exercising. Today, our weekly course was given by S., an international class show jumper and now breeder. We were two students, Coquin's owner, and myself with Eole. S. started first with a good warm-up session with stretching the horse back through descente d'encolure at walk first, then trot, combined with a few lateral flexions. He insisted on the horse putting some (albeit light) weight on the hand, and on asking the neck lowering with the snaffle only, even with high hands if necessary. Worked well with Eole, who was quite warm and spooked once because of someone popping up suddenly through the arena gate - but no adverse consequence. Then, work on circles at trot with haunches in and out and lots of speed changes at trot going down to very slow trot and ramping up to working trot (not higher), all this with constant search for maximum relaxation. After that, somme collected work at trot with shoulder-ins, counter shoulder-ins and travers, in search of legerete. Eole responded very well, with soft, elastic cadence. Then came the best part of this very interesting 'clinic', viz. canter session where we studied flying change. Eole is not fully proficient on flying change, or rather should I say, I had so far not been able to obtain them 100% right from him. As he is very fine to the aids, it happens now and then that a leg slightly too far back, or not light enough, can induce disorder. S. proposed an exercise which worked amazingly well with him: slow canter on say left lead on the quarter line near the H-K large side , with some collection, a slight 'pli' (head bend) on the left and of course legerete. Rider's seat as deep and relaxed as possible. When arriving at the level of K, without changing anything in the seat nor in the legs position, ask a turn to the right (with a minute rotation of the rider's shoulders) in order to come back on the large side K-H in reverse direction, and only once the change has occured, adjust the seat appropriate for the new lead. I had never heard of that before, and was slightly apprehensive that this narrow half circle would create problem to Eole. But it did not at all, and Eole gave smooth flying changes on both feet in this way (using of course the quarter line relative to M-F for changing from right to left lead). S. is not only a top-class show jumper, but had studied 10 years with Cdt de Padirac when younger. So this method cannot be taxed of a 'show-jumper trick', and has given me a new insight in the flying change training.
This is the beauty of horsemanship: you never end learning, and having the opportunity of getting expert advice from a great rider is always a new gift.
Eole was dry and relaxed after this great session, and we went back to stables in high spirits.