Solene - august 29, 2014

Last week session's stiffness aches, due to my body's inactivity, were quickly gone and I was eager to enjoy a new exercise time with Solene again. I was not disappointed indeed. We were alone again in the large arena, and Stephane was there to supervise our work. We started with relaxing at walk: frequent halts, variations of speed looking for extending the pace gradually. Extended walk is not Solene's strongest point, as indeed for many Iberian horses, but I was pleased to notice that he did opened his compasses without hasty or disorderly steps. We also worked some shoulder-ins, taking special precautions on the right hand in order to avoid provoking a resistance. This one is incidentally more apparent when doing the haunches at the same hand. No tension at all on the inside rein is of course necessary. But furthermore, it is good not to ask this lateral work with elevated neck. Starting with neck only slightly above horizontal is helpful. We did some halt followed by reining back. without legs. Good response.
Then the work at trot went well. First posting trot during 10". I applied a recommendation I read in a book by V. Laurent, a reputable instructor who taught in Paris in the early XXth century. A retired 'sous-maître' of the Cadre Noir, he wrote an excellent manual for practical use, without detailed analysis or reflections, but simply aiming at providing simple and efficient tips for riding the French horsemanship. It is both unpretending, and yet full of solid culture: there is clearly a lot of measured Baucherism in the background. This particular recommendation is about swapping the diagonal of the posting trot every four strides as a means for straightening up a horse. It looks sensible and should be helpful I guess after some time. The sitting trot was devoted to circles of various radius length, spirales, changes of speed, transition to walk over three or for strides, halts followed by reining back and rebounding into trot at once. Stephane told me that I was asking too much bending. I reduced the bend and tried to keep it slight, but regular across the whole body. It worked well and I could notice that Solene's shoulders were light, and responded well to neck rein.
The canter session showed a correct three beats tempo, with a tendency to speed up on the left lead. This could be easily controlled by seating deeper in the saddle, and some light demi-arrets.  We did work at both hands on various figures, with circles of small diameters at the end, in the corners. As we were reducing the diameter of the circles, Stephane observed that Solene was probably not far away from the premises to the pirouette. Sequences canter-walk-canter were smooth, and the head carriage was stable and already clearly above the horizontal. Long session at walk followed to come down, very enjoyable with Solene bringing his nose in the dust, on a very light contact with loose reins, and yet keeping a good, energetic pace.
As a now usual bonus, I asked him a short passage sequence, which he offered quite freely - a journey to the sky!
We went back to the stables, where he enjoyed a good rolling on the ground, followed by a careful brushing and caring by me. As he is a stallion, it is not necessarily a good idea to pat him too much, because of the need to keep a 'dominant' rank vs. him. But grooming is a good surrogate for proximity and friendship building, and he likes it!