Pacha - july 11, 2010

I have been away from horses over some weeks, and resumed training Pacha with much pleasure.During my absence, he was essentially trained to jumping where he made good progress with his young owner.
I have been training Pacha everyday for the last ten days. This work included both lungeing and mounted sessions. The main objective focussed on improving the canter.
The lungeing is now under our belt so to speak. Pacha obeys very well to the voice, and understands walk, trot, canter and halt quite well. He also accepts exercising on the right handside without reluctance, and the extra effort he must produce to get over his stiffness on this side is almost invisible now. I enjoy spending those minutes with him, alone in the deserted outdoor arena, early in the morning or late at night to cope with the heat wave we have here currently. He has no fear at all for the lungeing whip, and I especially like when I ask him to halt on the circle and let me come with the whip quite visible, and give him a friendly pat with my hand which he seems to enjoy.
As for the mounted work, we train on the large outdoor arena which is often empty because of the holiday season. After the usual preparation at walk and trot, we work on canter along the large side of the arena, turning round at half little side and coming back via the middle line. I focus on speed variations, while asking him to remain in horizontal placer (long and low?).Nuno Oliveira wrote that 'With some horses, one has to ask for extended canter in order to calm them down'. It is absolutely verified with Pacha, whose hot temper and tendancy to boil up at canter I already mentionned.This is therefore a little breakthrough that I am very happy to have found in order to improve his canter overall. After a few speed changes including acceleration on the large side, Pacha falls into a relaxed and pretty round canter that he can sustain for as long as I want without raising his head, increasing his speed, loosing neither his cadence nor his position, on a light hand.
This is the type of 'finding' which is one of the true joy of dressage.