Eole - june 4, 2009

Small outdoor arena, fair weather Alone with Coquin, her owner and the coach. I was curious to see whether the disturbed behaviour I reported recently about Eole would show with me, and was delighted to retrieve 'my' Eole as good as ever, including on SI at trot which had been problematic with the lady I mentionned before. After the usual warm-up at walk, then trot, on the bit with nice lipstick showing, we concentrated on transition from walk to canter and back. We would walk from F to A, then canter strike at A on right lead, canter until a few strides before E, walk (3 strides) at E and canter strike on left lead, counter canter til near C and transition to walk in C. Then we did the same sequence on the other hand (MCEA). Quite interesting, because it requires a delicate balance of aids from the rider, as well as a lot of concentration from the horse. The most difficult step was of course the double transition with change of lead. But also, keeping the counter canter in calmness, until the point aimed at was challenging. At the beginning, my downward transitions were blurred with a few strides at trot. Then, the opposite problem occurred i.e. almost a halt in lieu of smooth walk. This happened with a head slightly behind the vertical, pushing Eole on the shoulders. The solution was to ask a neck elevation at walk and when it had be obtained correctly, to start the exercise again with his nose a little 'to the front', almost no change in hands, and instead just the chest moving slightly backward (I thought of Oliveira's quote: 'I want to see chests on horseback'). Eole did quite well in this way.
After this enjoyable session, we worked some more neck elevation à la Beudant, i.e. high hands and almost horizontal head. Eole had not been exposed to this before, but reacted well and chewed his bit quickly in that way, with a jaw yielding up there. We came back to normal placer, and I was pleased to see that the neck and head position were better, higher with nose before the vertical, and was self sustained.
Eole was dry when going back to stables, while I was happily reflecting on today's learnings.