Gaby 3/28

Gaby is a coming 6 y.o. friesian mare who has the basics of w/t/sometimes canter. She has the impulsion of a snail, but when motivated, can REALLY move. She has trouble getting her left lead and has weak stifles. Her owner has not been able to get a left lead on her for some time and has since stopped asking for the canter. Her left stifle locks during extended gaits or when it gets "left behind". Because of this, she is protective of it and loathe to step fully on it or stretch across the left side. She also drops her left shoulder in many of her gaits and puts her balance heavily on the left side.

We worked on a LOT of things. I have not ridden Gaby in a training environment for a couple years (pretty much rode her for her first canter at 4). Jill has been her "person", and is also pregnant and will need some on-the-ground things to work on with Gaby soon. To that end, and because Gaby desperately needs some hind end conditioning, I started by working her in hand and introducing lateral movement to her. We started with turns on the fore, and moved to shoulder-in, renvers and a little playing with leg yield and half pass. Knowing Gaby has been off for the winter, (and knowing that aggrivates her stifle condition) I took it easy on the in-hand portion of her warmup and just introduced the concepts to her.

Her owner has not done much lateral work at all with her, but has educated her well to the use of the outside rein. So, the concept of lateral work came easily to Gaby. Jill's current problems are the lack of ability to canter on the left lead and Gaby's raising of her head in walk/trot transitions.

After playing with Gaby and feeling her out, I deduced that her coming up out of frame in her walk-trot transition was coming from tension/apprehension/anticipation of movement/rebalancing on her back on her part. I broke the "frame" cue down into smaller parts, asking her to JUST put her head down (on a long rein, long and low work) and also figured out that the rider's lack of balance/adjustment of balance on the first post of a posting trot was throwing Gaby off. By sitting her trot and keeping a more consistant seat, along with giving her a positive reward of "throwing the rein away" if she kept her head low and level during the transition, Gaby's tension/apprehension disappeared. Then, to get her back on the vertical, I slowly began to take up the rein and gave her a different cue for "nose in", while giving her leg to ask her hindquarter to step under (so it's not just a headset, but a whole body frame). I asked on circles, as it's easier to get frame there. Breaking it down to two different signals made the transitions happy and tension-free. I was able to more quickly ask for her return to frame once she was trotting after she was warmed up as well. (note: need to double-check saddle fit) I also began to teach her how to pick up her shoulder and support herself while circling by applying flexion to the inside rein.

I introduced the idea of shoulder-in under saddle, and then travers. I schooled a little bit of leg yield and introduced the IDEA of half-pass as well and she was really responsive to the idea. Lastly, after I had her reliably moving her shoulders and hindquarters where I wanted her to and had really warmed up her hind and got her bearing more weight on it, I set her up in travers on the left rein, half-halted the inside rein, asked her to leg yield a step to the outside and asked for a walk/canter transition on the left lead and got it. Not that I want her to have her hindquarters to the inside when she does her canter transition, but it helped to "hold" her left shoulder and transfer the weight to the outside hind easier.

Overall, a BIG learning day for Gaby with lots of "firsts". She'd never been worked in hand before, she never had done a shoulder-in, renver, travers, or a half-pass before.