Pacha - october 24, 2010

The last ten days were completely devoted to lunge and ground work. The lunge work is improving.We do it both indoors and outdoors. The lunge is going through the near side snaffle ring and clipped to the far side one. I prefer this to either the clipping on the inner ring, which pulls on the bit sideways and outside the mouth, or the 'barnum' manner, where the lunge is clipped to the outside ring, goes across the poll and gets through the inner ring. This latter method has the big drawback that any action on the lunge (vibration, variation in tension) uniformly translates in a traction upon the mouth corners - which is not helpful in terms of encouraging forwardness.
On the lunge, Pacha is fine in the three gaits, both hands. He does not pull on the lunge, and a fine contact can be established between his mouth and my hands (just the lunge weight). Although I do not use side reins or any other reining, he responds to voice order ' get down' in lowering his head at trot almost nose in the dust for a few strides.
He is not afraid of the driving whip and tolerates slight touches on the croup or the hindlegs without disorder, just increasing pace and sometimes moving into canter. He gets to halt at standstill on his track on order, and does transitions from one gait to the next one both upward and downward, on voice order. He also will flex poll to the inner side on small vibrations.
The latest step has been to get him to execute canter strike from walk. It is not perfect but at least he does it without rushing, on voice command combined with a slight cracking of the driving whip. I can repeat this several times in a sequence (walk/canter/walk etc..) without disorder.It is an interesting step forward in his training since it allows working the whole range of transitions in ground work. He also accepts working on small circles for a few rounds (2 m lunge length). The combination of these two factors should allow me, I guess, working on engagement of the hindquarters.
Work in hand, with snaffle bridoon and a stick is less advanced. He gives cession de machoire at halt and in walk. Moving the haunches outside is still difficult on his right (stiff) side. He easily gets unsettled if the request lasts more than a few strides. It is remarkable for me to see how clear the perception of the horse's stiffness by the trainer during hand work is and how usefully it supplements what is felt in the saddle. This is an encouragement to pursue hand work deeper.