Baby Horse Training Scale; Bending & Impulsion for Straightness & Suppling.

Pally demonstrating what we are trying to achieve here.
Gotta miss the spotted princess.

I always hear a lot about the training scale, or pyramid of sorts for horse training. While I think that gives a great visual for us humans, as visual creatures, I find the learning curve slightly less linear. At least when it comes baby horses.

If I was to paint a 'pyramid', I believe I would have two pyramids. A small-baby horse pyramid and then the regular traditional pyramid we see everywhere. Sort of like how you explain subjects to children, seeing as they would have no idea what your talking about if you suddenly started rambling algebra, but instead they learn to add and subtract single digits first. Same subject.... mathematics, but a progressionary scale. I know it sounds linear, but I am a big believer in introducing the foundation of each subject rather than fully detailing one before moving on. 

Anyhow. 

As of late I found found Solo to be jumping around in the training 'scale' a bit. He is starting to have a great rhythm, in short bursts, that he has moved on to becoming supple. However, once you begin to feel the supple you also begin to feel what and where things are, well, not supple. 

While traditionally the next tier would be Connection, and yes, he is slightly touching on connection at some moments but he is no where near this yet. I felt recently that in order to correct a few areas that were not as supple, which left Solo beginning to learn evasions, that I should touch on a bit of Impulsion to drive the haunches and encourage more weight bearing. Because really, from what I feel, his stiffness and shoulder popping are mostly from lack of strength and obviously stiffness too.

I was correcting the issue with outside aids. It helped. However, he wasn't doing much to hold himself. He was learning, I would always catch him. Such a smarty pants!

The biggest thing I had to consider here was how to 'explain' to Solo, that yes legs mean forward, sideways, bend etc but they now also can mean impulsion without completely frying his brain. (Don't worry pony, these are but baby steps). 

If you know me, you know I sit there and hash out every moment of what I felt in my rides and what would help 'me', if I were a horse, to understand and strengthen.

So, there I sat this week pondering.

What I came up with was two exercises. 

Fan poles coming out of a corner, spaced 3.5ft and increasing to 4.5+ft. My idea here, the poles naturally have a straightening and lifting effect in the back, enforcing suppleness. 

Increasing the 'fan' and adding inside leg to encourage that inside hind to lift a bit more would teach Solo to thrust a bit more each time to make the poles work. Self teaching. Plus, he would have a hard time breaking into canter or falling sideways if he confused the aid.

Tracking right was pretty simple, left was a bit of a mess initially but he had a few decent moments. Progress? Okay, pony pats, moving on for the day.

After a good brain break, we then moved on to spiral circles with a bit of bend to the outside so he cannot hang/dump on to my outside aids, very minimal inside rein to turn, almost purely outside leg, which I have introduced from the get go. Just a bit tougher on a circle.

From there I would feel Solo begin to suck back seeing as this wasn't as easier as before and I would give a little giggle of my inside leg, to say nuh-uh remember, use this inside hind. Being Mr. Sensitive, he lurched forward a couple times before he was able to contain himself and simply step deeper and VOILA. We found a few steps of straightness and suppling in an area we do not usually have. 

He obviously couldn't hold it and I don't blame him. Growing up is hard!

I also presented a canter transition a few strides after trying this a couple times. Solo's normally fumbling and delayed canter (tracking left), was instantaneous and lifting. 

Actually, better than his transitions to the right, which I thought were pretty darn decent seeing as we don't work the canter often.

All in all, successful and exciting day of learning for both of us. 

I was left with a smile, repeating how blessed I have been to find this horse and invigorated seeing the dynamics come from my brain into actuality.

X  

Solo ' I am out ma.. must now eat calories'