Pacha - september 30, 2010

Now that Pacha has acquired some roundness, and good regularity in the three gaits, it is time to focus more about lightness. Following the wise suggestion of a friend and distinguished horseman , I have to work more on 'cession de machoire' with Pacha. Strangely enough, being an admirer of Baucher, I realize that I have let this crucial aspect of the Master's method aside so far in Pacha's training. I was so eager to get Pacha settled in his gaits, especially canter, that I concentrated on cadence, connection and simply said control. And I wrongly postponed lightness into the later stages of his training.

Today, we therefore devoted half of the session to jaw yielding, at halt and at walk. The large indoor arena was empty and quiet, an ideal situation for what I wanted to do. The difficulty with Pacha is to obtain these jaw yielding without change in head carriage. He had the usual plain, broken steel snaffle. I let the draw reins loose. Before mounting, I asked him a few jaw yielding. The best were obtained by bringing his nose to the ground. I found on the opposite quite difficult to get results by raising his neck high. Being quite a timorous horse, he was getting restless and fought to bring his nose away from the horizontal. I suppose this was because his eyesight in that position unsettled him. Then, mounted, we worked at halt. After a few trials, he yielded on a fixed hand and chewed his bit briefly. This was a first small success. So far, he did yield in his poll, but mostly on a mute mouth. At walk, on an horizontal placer with long neck, I asked him very gently with a fixed hand combined with small vibrations. It did work, and he gave some clear cession, with the typical noise of the bit moving on his bars. I found it quite useful to act on each rein separately often. After 30' of this work, I tried a few canter strikes from walk, for three or four strides only. These were done without rushing and the downward transition to walk was not perfect, but not jerked though.

We did 15' of sitting trot mainly on a small circle in a corner with lots of hand changes. He did it in calmness, without resistance.

We ended the session by going outside in the open arena. Pacha canter was cadenced, and I could bring down his speed to a slow pace, although not in lightness.

The overall exercise was encouraging, and I will continue on this line, aiming at getting him to have this lovely 'bit tasting' response to any tiny hand's request that is the hallmark of lightness

It will take time, but horsemanship is about challenges!