Wanted: Long & Low

I've been reading an interesting book about the anatomy of a horse and how Rollkur and other hyperflexion techniques are antithetical to the desired loose swinging back of a well schooled dressage horse. I've never even been tempted to try such a technique on Brego, mainly because he suffers from going behind strongly and really encouraged front to back riding in his early days. The last thing he needs is more front to back.

I am happy to say he is getting much better from behind, and is learning to elevate and support his weight. However, a huge hole in his training is going Long & Low. According to this book, this exercise is critical to allow his back to loosen while strengthening his neck. If he is asked to elevate too quickly, i.e., before his neck is properly built up, he will use his back to carry my weight and will tighten and over strengthen his back muscles. One side effect of this is non-parallel canon bones as the movement through the back is shuttered by the tense muscles. A brawny horse like Brego needs it more than the average horse, because he will bulk up his back and lose some of that elasticity and "shwung" he currently exhibits. In other words, improper strengthening too soon will make him a worse mover. Not something I want to experience!

I have attempted Long & Low a couple of times in my completely uneducated way. I have been pretty unsuccessful, but I think it's so important, it is the one thing I want to work on at the clinic this weekend. We may not get it completely, but I want to understand how to work on it properly by the time I leave.

The clinic will be at Kinswood Farms and I hope it dries out enough to get some good work in. They also have a xc course, but I will ignore that siren song until I learn what I need to keep Brego loose and happy through his back.

Bending in the Rain

It's been a long week of rain and cooler temps. I was able to go out and do some work in hand on Tuesday and we worked on properly backing using his back. I was asking him to drop his croup and take big deliberate diagonal steps back instead of hollowing his back and stepping back, butt high. He did it correctly the second time I asked, so I gave him a cookie and put him away.

Yesterday, I was finally able to ride, but only up to a trot due to wet footing. I was really interested to see if we would have any "bending" discussions or stiffness in the arena. I am happy to report that Brego seems to have learned something from Sunday's exercise and the issue never really came up. He was pretty loose and flexible the entire ride and it was actually very pleasant. No leaning on the inside rein at all. He was not as forward as I would like, but still pretty balanced. I focused a lot of my outside rein connection and not throwing the rein away which is one of my really bad habits. He did occasionally feel uneven behind, but I trotted him out and couldn't see anything. I have decided to get films taken of his hocks when he gets his dental done in January, just to get a baseline, since this year will be a big jump in his training.

His walking shoulder in to the right is getting pretty darn nice, a nice 30% angle for a couple of steps before I ask him to walk on. His shoulder in to the left is still not back, I have to do more corrections to get him to do more than just bend his neck and try to run through. But in general, the shoulder in work was 25% easier and lighter.

He's been stealing some food recently so he looks a little porky. I decided to do two 10 minute trot sets, at a reasonably medium trot, to see if I can burn some calories. It was too dark to leave the arena and too wet to do any canter work. He trotted fine and I even asked for a couple steps of shoulder in at the trot to break up the tedium. He did great to the left, really understood what I was asking. To the right was so poor, I had to bring him back to the walk and reinforce the shoulder in at a more manageable speed.

Most horses are pretty one sided when they are getting started, so his issues are not surprising at all. What might be interesting is I recently underwent some Craniosacral Therapy myself. The therapist said that I was completely blocked on my left side and had limited sacrum movement. Hmmm, just the side Brego is stiff on. Coincidence? The therapist said I had received some blunt force trauma to the left side of my head at some point and it had wedged my skull and spinal column joint so I had limited mobility. She was able to "unstick" me and I have noticed some subtle improvements in the way I walk, comfort while driving and laying on my side. It will be interesting to see if me being more even helps alleviate some of Brego's one sidedness. The only thing I can say so far is our ride was very "pleasant" and non-contentious, even with some advanced (for Brego) lateral work.

I am going to a clinic in Boerne over the weekend and taking two private lessons with a trainer from Louisiana. I have decided to work on dressage for both my sessions, so hopefully we will get some good training to continue us down the path. Also, I can't wait to get back together with my regular dressage instructor and show her some of the things we've been working on. With the holidays, however, that will have to wait until January.

(I know lots of people are interesting in conditioning. I am doing some more reading over the holidays and will come up with a condition schedule to start implementing in the spring. My first event is going to be April 5th, so that gives me plenty of time to get him tuned up once spring hits.)

Counter Flexion

I had some good friends visit Brego today and give me some tips for how to deal with his resistance in corners. My arena is not really fenced and on one corner in particular, Brego would like to run out and visit his buddies in the field next door. So the typical ride involves some minor disagreement about Brego bending softly through the corner, staying forward, and not popping his outside shoulder while singing "La la la, I can't hear you" to my aids. The disagreements have occasionally escalated into more of a pulling contest, not something I am very proud of. Pulling on the inside rein never works, it just causes Brego to stiffen his jaw and neck as a defensive posture and spin out his hind end, shifting his weight forward.

I was at a loss of how to solve this problem, and my dressage instructor has been a little under the weather, so I was talking about it with a good friend of mine and she volunteered to come down and help out. So she rode him through the corner, felt immediately what I did, and started trying to get him to soften his inside jaw, with varying success. She did manage to break through, however, and the magic ingredient to this gourmet meal was "Counter-flexion" through the corner.

It is important to me and Brego's training to fix him from back to front, so I wanted an exercise to do in the corner which would shut down his outside shoulder, and take away his locked inside jaw without disengaging his hind end. I think it's really important to keep that inside hind moving under and working and it allows his weight to come back. Counter flexion was the key, because I could isolate and eliminate his strong inside jaw, by physically shifting his shoulders to the inside, holding it for a couple of steps, then asking for straight, then back to a pure bend. It is sheer genius that my friend was able to show this to me, and really improved Brego's lightness off his forehand and resistance to moving through the corner.


This is where we started. I would like to turn left, but he wants to keep going right. He bends his jaw to a point, but then starts pulling and I pull back. His outside shoulder has popped out and my pulling up and back makes it worse. I am behind vertical. His hind end is flagging out somewhere in Oklahoma. He is overbent and has broken his poll to haunches connection, losing power. His gaping mouth illustrates how much we are not communicating. Gross all around.

I've tried to put together some pictures of this breakthrough. Unfortunately, the video did not come out.

Here's a correct bend to the right, tracking right:
Here we are still tracking right, but now he is bending left. Notice how his left front is almost crossing over his right front. Both his shoulders have been shifted to the inside. For this to be possible, he has to balance back on his haunches and stop leaning on my hands to resist through the corner. It's not just about bending his head to the outside, it's about relocating his front end and asking for a bend, keeping the haunches to poll connection.
When he would stiffen his jaw in the circle, I would ask for a counter bend for a couple steps and then shift him back to a pure bend, again through a couple of steps. It was a deliberate shift in his balance back and forth and I would also briefly move my inside bend hand forward and drop contact for a fraction of a second to ensure he was not leaning. It was amazing how much he self carried when I took the hand away in the bend. I would then reestablish contact and ask for him to straighten and then pure bend again. And here we have a much nicer walk as a result. He is more elevated and lighter on the front, not to mention more responsive and engaging that inside hind to push off.
Next we moved on to the trot. He found it much harder to counter bend at the trot, understandably, but it had the same lifting and lightening effect when he did. Both the pictures below are counter bending.



And then working back into the pure bend. A nice forward trot where his jaw is supple and his hind end is engaged. Not bad for 20 minutes of (hard) work.

Lesson learned: Work smarter, not harder. I cannot win a pulling contest, but I can change his bend and move his shoulders. I am so thankful to my friends who helped me to crystallize my thoughts on how Brego was moving and for giving me another useful tool for my tool box.

Updated: I've done some reading and it appears I've made a couple of errors today which I wanted to illustrate. First, in a counter bend, your former inside rein becomes your outside rein and you should not diminish contact with your outside rein through the bend. That allows the horse to pop the outside shoulder, albeit, the new outside shoulder. So my misguided thinking that it was keeping him from leaning on the outside hand was not correct. Secondly, in a head-on photograph above, his head is tilted and this is also a fault. If he were correctly counter bent, then his head would be vertical and gently flexed to the outside.

Which begs the question: How did this counter bend work? Since I believe it was the movement of his shoulders which affected the most good, and proper counter bending does nothing but flex the neck to the outside, was I doing an incorrect left shoulder-in while tracking right? It would appear so, and in doing so, letting his (former) inside hind leg off the hook, so to speak. So the next time I ride, I am going to see if it is the counter bending or the shoulder movement which he respects and makes him rock back. I suspect it is the shoulder movement, since this is the same "trick" I used with my dressage instructor to improve his canter. If I am correct, then doing a properly bent shoulder-in on the circle will have the desired effect.

In other words, is his stiffness the result of a stiff neck, or resistance to bending through the turn because his weight is not balanced back and he doesn't want to work the inside hind? Hopefully, I will be able to figure it out without resorting to more classical errors!

The good news though is that I am going to a clinic in San Antonio next weekend where one of the session will be dressage, so maybe I can get my questions answered there. I don't know if I will be able to ride with my regular instructor this week before I go.

A Hot Day's Fun

It was another 85 degree day here on Saturday (yes, in December), so I spent the morning body clipping Brego yet again. He has been sweating in the field. Then we hit the trails and had a relaxing ride through the baking Texas Hill Country.

At the end of the trail ride is the much anticipated gallop track. I had Brego going at a pretty good clip, but as we rounded for home, we both lost some steam and he dropped back into a canter just in time for the photographer. So the pictures were not nearly as exciting as I had hoped, but they're still fun! He may not look like he is going fast, but please note the excess reins flying back. Also, I look terrified in the pictures, but I wasn't. The only thing scary about that ride was how out of shape I am, my quads were burning.

The results from the poll so far show that readers want more pictures and video and I am happy to oblige. One limiting factor though is that I work a full time job and by the time I go out to ride during the week, it's too dark for capturing images. I do ride in a lighted arena, but sometimes I wonder if a full moon might illuminate things better. So I will try hard to get some good pictures and video on the weekends, when I can ride under the full blazing sun.

Since it is winter and I am limited on what I can work on during the week, I am not going to try to push Brego's fitness up a notch and just hope to keep him at this baseline and work on suppling instead. He galloped fine, but we both were more tired than we should have been afterwards. So there's a wakeup call for the spring. Over the next couple of months, I will hope to ride 4 times a week, where 3 rides will be dressage for 45 minutes or so and then one trail ride or schooling. I hope to spend one night a week working Brego in hand to up his responsiveness. So from a conditioning perspective, he's not getting much work. The dressage is working his topline right now, but not his heart and lungs. That will have to come when I can ride for longer in the spring.

I am also going to try to take better pictures of Brego's feet to chronicle his trimming progress. He is doing really well barefoot, traveling miles over rocky trails without a problem. But we still have flares to fight and some unevenness in his heels. It is one area of his care that I have not detailed a lot on this blog, mainly because I am not the primary person who trims Brego. I will get some pictures (and perhaps a guest blogger!) to start including hoof care into the blog.

Winter Training

Although the weather indicates otherwise, the lack of shows on the horizon signals the beginning of winter. Since I am currently enjoying how lateral schooling is elevating Brego's canter, I am planning on focusing on dressage through the winter. I would also like to save Brego's legs and only jump as a refresher until about mid-February.

Brego's calendar of activities looks a little thin for the next couple of months, with maybe an odd clinic, dressage lesson, or schooling day here or there. I am taking the boy camping for a week in the Ozark mountains over the holiday break to get back to our rustic roots. So that is something to look forward to, at least.

Then the mid term goal is to go to our first recognized event at Pine Hill on April 5. Hopefully, a schooling show will pop up before then to serve as a pipe cleaner.

In the meantime though, I have put up a poll to see what people are interested in seeing more of on this blog. It's been up for 6 months now, with a little over 50 posts, and I would like to refine the content to stuff people are more interested in. I started this blog as a journal for myself, to keep track of training, and to also chronicle things I get asked about a lot on online forums, like feed. Since there are a couple of regular readers however, I would love to actually provide more information that is useful instead of whatever rambling subject about Brego that comes to mind (and there are many). So feel free to vote in the poll and comment if you have more specific suggestions. Without the excitement of shows and other activities, I can try to fulfill all requests over this winter.

Cross Training is a Good Thing

This post is all about why it's a good thing to leave the arena and enjoy your horse. We had another unseasonably warm day, up to 84 degrees here. We decided to head out to a local park to just go for a nice walk instead of schooling lateral moves in the arena. I've been focusing a lot on dressage recently, and I admit, I tend to obsess. So it's good to remind myself why exactly I bought this big boy to begin with: him and me on the open trail.

We had a good 5 mile ride, across some pretty steep terrain. It was good to see that all the arena work has not made Brego go soft. He now has the fitness to really tackle hills and loved being outdoors. His Thoroughbred hunter-princess companion, however, seemed slightly insulted that she had to trod upon an unmanicured surface for so long.

Anyway, it was a great ride on a warm sunny day and really nice to take a break from the tough stuff, mentally and physically. We did have a little too much fun at the end, however.

At the trailer parking there is a field which has a mowed 1/2 mile track around the perimeter. I decided to just canter Brego around it, you know, to work on that lovely balance. As we got started, the strides just got bigger and bigger. Brego saw the open field and just begged to be let go. (This is the same horse who just "outgrew" his winter blankets) Well I let him go a bit and we go galloping down the track. Somewhere in the middle of the long side is a railroad timber jump, about 2' high. We were going at a good clip, so I opened my chest and sat up a bit to steady him and he listened and took the little jump in perfect stride. Ah, bliss! This is what cross country is about!!

We kept going on the track and as we turned for home, I really let him go. I think foxhunting has taught Brego the meaning of speed. He tore down this track with no urging, just loving his own power and speed. He definitely gave me incentive to keep him fit so he can manage such speeds without risking his legs over much. This track has excellent footing, even more reason to leave the arena more regularly.

Some drafts love to plow. Some drafts love to run. I am glad I got a runner.

Bulging Out At The Seams

Brego is starting to mature into his hefty self at a ripe ol' age of 7. I don't have any papers on him to know his birthday, but I was lucky enough to get him accurately aged at 4.5 and have thankfully kept track as time goes on. I am not thrilled about him bulking up, because I will get to make some tough decision about his jumping career. On the other hand, though, I am glad Brego is growing into his genetic potential. I can throw an eventing saddle on him, but at the end of the day, he's a draft horse, and he should never look like a Thoroughbred.

So good for porky Brego.

However, his blankets have started to look like some pop diva, way past her youthful prime, at her unfortunate return to the stage. In other words, a little tight. No one wants to see that. And since his body clip is almost grown out, and it's a balmy 70 degrees here in Texas in December, he will get clipped again and will need to be blanketed on the off chance we get some winter weather here.

Last winter, I bought him an 84" WeatherBeeta Arion (now discontinued) in medium weight, an excellent blanket with lots of features I enjoy. This year, the blanket has started to look a little, er, tight across the chest. Also, since he is clipped, I wanted to get a plain turnout sheet as well, for milder days. And maybe a heavyweight. Oh, and I need a cooler because he is still an active sweater. You can see where this is going.

Turns out, it's really hard to find a blanket much bigger than 84" off the shelf in all the popular brands, and those that you do find are cut for some mammoth Thoroughbred who is long and skinny, not broad through the chest, barrel, and butt like my guy.

Enter, Schneider's "Big Fella" line of blankets. It still makes me giggle to type "Big Fella". They've got sizes that go up to "Elephant" and they are cut to be broad. I bought a turnout sheet for my "Big Fella" and it is backordered, so I couldn't check the fit. I then ordered a heavyweight and hoody in 84", and it came in yesterday (very fast shipping). It's really well built, has some nice features, and an excellent price point. I am happy to say, it was made to fit Brego. So, unless he grows more (please, don't grow more), I will not need to venture into scary 87"-90" land.

I also bought an 84" Rambo Newmarket cooler so Brego wouldn't feel left out from the Cool Event Horse clique. It's what all the hipsters are wearing this season. Unfortunately, Schneider's doesn't make a "Big Fella" (hee hee) fleece cooler. The Rambo fits adequately, but it's too snug in the chest (and non adjustable, duh!) for long term use due to rubbing. Since I have the heavyweight "Big Fella" though, I should not need to double its use as a liner and it's fine for just cooling him out. Somewhere along the way, I also bought an 84" non-"Big Fella" fleece cooler from Schneiders and that didn't come close to fitting Brego. It now dwarfs Hobby who looks like a little sister waiting to grow into her big girl clothes.

Someday soon, I will replace the WeatherBeeta medium weight with another "Big Fella". It's time to stop denying Brego needs to shop at the Big & Tall store. That's ok, there's just more of him to love.