Riding Freya

Now that Freya is settled in with her new herd and most of the kinks in their relationships have been worked out, I decided that it is time to start Freya on a regular riding schedule where we work on schooling and conditioning.  I'm hoping to eventually get to the point where Gemma and I can ride her 5-6 times a week and she gets a variety of activities, with schooling in the arena, hacks around the farm, an occasional horse show, and some trail riding at the many places Nimo and I used to ride.  But that will take some time.

To start with, Gemma and I are alternating riding her.  So Gemma rides her one day and I ride her the next.  I'm keeping the rides short and low-key for now mostly because we are in the middle of what I do not affectionately call The Seventh Level of Hell.  July and August in Virginia are like a death march in terms of heat and humidity, and I have no interest in bringing a horse into fitness during this time period.  Freya seems to tolerate the heat well, and she is energetic and enthusiastic about her rides, but I am not up for anything longer than 20-30 minutes at a time.  So that is what we are doing.

What I discovered is that when Freya is left to her own devices on a long straightaway or just on the perimeter of the big area, she has a tendency to get quick and not think about where she is going or what she is doing.  She doesn't do anything bad or scary and neither Gemma or I have any trouble asking her to slow down or halt or turn.  But it doesn't serve any purpose.  So what I asked Gemma to do and what I do is constantly work on patterns or circles or changes in direction.  We are doing that at the walk and the trot.  It's already made a huge difference in her walk.  She is now quite happy to walk more slowly, even on the perimeter of the arena.  

Here is an example of some work with cones that Gemma tried yesterday (you may need to switch to the Desktop version of this blog to view the video):

 

What I love about this work is that it is helping Gemma learn how to maneuver Freya and it keeps Freya's brain occupied.  They did so well that we headed out to the field next to the arena to try something similar.  This time, Gemma used a couple of jumps that were set up in place of cones.  Here is a video of what they did:

 

You'll also notice that Gemma is riding in western tack.  Ever since she became a fan of the show, Heartland, she has been desperate to ride in a western saddle.  I bought an inexpensive used saddle at a local tack store, and it seems to fit Freya well.  In fact, pretty much every saddle I put on her fits well.  She apparently possesses the shape that most saddles are made for, and I have to admit that it is a refreshing change.  Nimo's back conformation was really challenging to fit, and out of the countless saddles I tried with him, I only found a couple that seemed to fit reasonably well.  So I'm really appreciative of Freya's conformation right now!

It took me awhile to figure out the correct girth size, and I had to order an off-billet for the saddle.  (I should have bought one at the store, but it never occurred to me that the saddle would actually fit!  I figured I would be trying saddle after saddle!)  We still need to punch a couple of holes in the stirrup leathers to get them to a length that works for Gemma, but I had already reached my melting point just getting the saddle on the horse yesterday.  

Anyway, Gemma is in heaven now that she has a western style bridle and saddle for Freya, and I think that I may enter the pair in the little schooling show that my barn hosts each month.  Gemma is already scheduled to show Star this month, but I'm thinking she can show Freya next month.  Instead of the traditional dressage test, though, I'll see how they do in western dressage.

I've been riding Freya a little as well.  My focus for our rides is a bit different than what Gemma does.  When Gemma rides, my goal is just to get the two of them communicating with each other and working quietly.  For my rides, I'm focusing on helping Freya learn to balance herself better.  To that end, I did some experimenting during my most recent ride.

My first step to finding balance with Freya was to find softness.  I'm a huge fan of Mark Rashid, and I love his concept of softness.  I think it is quite similar to the dressage idea of submission, except that I think he frames the concept in a much better way.  The use of the term submission brings the ideas of dominance and leadership and all sorts of other things that I think are often counter to the end result, which is a horse that is open to communication with the rider and can respond to aids without tension and stress.  Whereas thinking about it as softness brings in ideas of gentleness and quietness, which I think are much more positive and effective concepts when it comes to the way I want to work with horses.

Freya feels very stiff to me under saddle.  She is responsive to aids, but she has trouble truly bending through her body and yielding at the poll.  Both of those are pretty important for better balance, but achieving them is easier said than done.  I spent four years with my current instructor working with Nimo to achieve balance, and it was very rarely easy.

So I started the ride trying to find an opening to start communicating about bending and yielding at the poll.  I went through a variety of techniques that I've learned over the years.  The first one I tried was riding on a 15-meter square.  This technique is super effective with Star.  The reason it works for her is that she has to bend at each corner to do a quarter pirouette.  Usually 2-3 squares is all it takes for her to start to soften her body and yield at the poll.  But Freya was really resistant to the pirouette, so the square didn't help her.  I also discovered that if I used much pressure on the bit, to try to set the boundary for where I wanted her head and neck to be, she would happily back herself all the way across the arena rather than yield her poll in the slightest way.

Next I tried a diamond exercise.  This is an exercise that I found to be effective with Nimo.  It comes from Jec Ballou's 101 Western Dressage Exercises for Horse & Rider (#3).  If you are in a dressage arena, you use letters A, B, C, and E as anchor points for the diamond shape.  You start at A, ride a straight line to B, ride one stride straight, then turn to C.  You proceed around the arena, going straight to the next letter in the pattern, riding one stride straight, and then turning to ride straight to the next letter.  I thought this pattern would ease the turns a little, and it allows alternating between more shallow turns on the long sides of the arena and deeper turns on the short sides.  But again, it was a no go.

Then I decided to try shoulder-in down the long side.  Freya absolutely very mechanically performed shoulder-in.  But there was no softening in her body, even when I held the shoulder-in through the corner.

Hmmm...I had one more idea.  Both my instructor and Jean Luc Cornille have told me that sometimes certain horses really need the impulsion from the trot to help them find their ability to bend.  I had been doing everything in walk so far, so I thought I would try trot.  At first, Freya decided she would trot as fast as she could and she zipped around the arena at a speed that would have given Nimo's super Friesian trot a run for its money.  So I added circles to slow her without pulling on her because I already knew she wouldn't respond well to pressure on the bit.

And finally!  It was just a few strides at first, but her trot completely changed.  It went from a wooden, mechanical feel to the softest, most comfortable, slow jog I have ever ridden.  I'm not sure what it looked like, but based on how it felt, that trot should be the standard for all western jogs.  I felt like I could ride it all day.  I'll have to confirm it with my instructor at our next lesson, but I suspect we might have found Freya's Pignot jog, which is a term from Science of Motion used to refer to a slow, sustainable trot that allows the horse to work in balance without the additional challenge of collection.  (You can read more about it here: Quolibet Z Part 2)  It is different for every horse, and it is basically their own personal frequency that works for their body.  It isn't a collected trot.  It is a conditioning trot.  It is named after the gentleman that Jean Luc Cornille learned it from.  The man used it as a way to condition his eventers.  It is also a great warm-up trot and achieving it forms the foundation for collected work.

I was super excited, and I worked with Freya a little more to see if we could find that trot again.  And we did.  So the key to unlocking softness for her was trotting smaller circles.  Now that I have figured that out, I'm hoping I can use that feeling to help her learn how she can move in balance at all gaits.

I suspect that because Freya's natural temperament is reasonably compliant, she has learned to do the things people ask her to do.  But she does them without putting her mind and body into how she does the things.  Whether it is a protection she has developed because her riders weren't as skilled as they should have been or because she was asked to do things without proper preparation or some other reason, I don't know.  But now that she has given me an opening, I'm hopeful that she can learn that her involvement in what we do matters.  That she can move her body in new ways that will help keep her sound and athletic for many years to come.

And so the work of peeling back the layers of her protections has begun.  I'm looking forward to sharing our progress!:)