Solene - june 18, 2015

Empty covered large arena. Started with walk, with variations of speed, halts and reining back. Solene was not really forward, so I worked him on circles of various diameters, looking for bringing him low and long. When a horse retains himself, working on the circle is a great remedy. After 10', I chose to put him into canter rather than trot. I thereby applied an interesting point made by Le Rolland, viz. that it is often easier to put a horse forward at canter than in trot at the beginning of the session: when there is stiffness in the horse, canter is more comfortable for him than trot, because walk and canter have more in common than walk and trot.
It worked fine and we did a number of rounds on the large track, both leads, trying to increase impulsion with the seat, not the legs, going into circles each time the faintest resistance seemed to pop up and varying the speed until the canter became steady in pace and cadence showed up. We then interspersed canter with halts, transition to walk and back to canter on the four strides basis I mentioned earlier. This canter session took 15'. A rest followed at walk, loose reins but active strides.
We went then into a trot session, and I could verify that Solene felt easier, both at posted and sitting trot. We went into a corner and worked on small circles (a horse's length diameter) changing hands, going on figures of eight, ending by getting out on the large track and asking increased speed with longer strides. The impulsion piled up in the corner work frees itself out in a lovely way.
After a new rest at walk, we worked on the circle with shoulder-ins and haunches in or out, at walk. We then went into cadenced trot, low and long to get more elasticity in strides. Solene now enjoys working nose 'in the dust' and has acquired a better balance. He now longer stumbles, and knows how to lift his front feet to the level required.
We started a new canter session, and went into the climax of the day, i.e. flying changes on the large side, not on the diagonal. We have been preparing for this for some weeks, mainly with the sequence walk-canter-walk, reducing the number of strides of walk down from four to..zero. It was a great achievement for Solene, and a deep satisfaction for me when we successfully performed three flying changes on the same large side. I felt this unique sense of rhythm that the horse will give you when being able to achieve this performance: it becomes wonderfully easy, just need to move slightly your weight from on ischion to the other, together with small rotation of shoulders and a slight sliding of the legs in opposite directions from each others at each change. Just delightful. I had in my mind at that time the superb videos of Oliveira chaining up flying changes; and I could understand why he did not attempt making his own body movements invisible, which of course he could have done, like most great Masters (Le Rolland was stunning in this respect): he surely wanted to enjoy dancing with his horse!
We ended right there, with lots of compliments and pats to Solene, and a quiet minute or two sitting at rest before dismounting and enjoying a good grooming in the stables.