The Natural Dressage Forum

Rave has been giving me more collection then ever. More then anything it finally occured to me that he can and I quit riding him like a 3 year old!!!

We are starting FLC but they are admittedly a mess. I have taught numerous other horses, but they were almost all TB or Warmbloods and it came fairly natural to them. I only taught one horse that truely did not "get it" and he eventually did great changes.

Our piaffe is really coming along. I would love to have a GP rider get on him and tell me which way to go about developing it at this point, but it is definitly there ( I have seen GP horses do worse!!!)

Most recent is starting pirouettes, which I think is going to be his forte by next year. He seems very natural at it. (Better then his spin work which is slow and stompy) His walk pirouettes really rodk when I don't think too hard about them.

So I decided to put FLC to the side and work on every aspect of them- working more on the canter, keeping the simple changes through ad calm (very difficult now that we started Flying Changes)

One out of every 20 changes is actually correct. About 50% of the time he swaps up front then changes behind two-four strides later, 40% he does a stutter step to get the change, and the other 10% is a mixture of trying to capriole and landing on opposite lead, doing them correct, and doing some other creative things which make me wonder what he just did.

So, going back to just nice nice canter, nice simple changes, and lots of half pass, counter canter, transitinos within the canter (a big one I think)and work on pirouettes since he finds that easier.

We have been playing with "spanish trot" online all summer and finally got to where he can do two steps and know what I want, so maybe we can now extend that and help turn it into a passage some day.

Now if only I could get even a first level quality lengthened trot!!! Rolling Eyes

Oh well, can't have it all (yet Wink

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Great!! It has had it's ups and downs, hasn't it!? We love to hear your progress.

It is amazing what I can accomplish when I ride him on an even semi regular basis!!!

Have you tried PKs way of teaching FLC?

I know nothing at all about PK when it comes to lead changes. Feel free to elaborate. :-)

It's a progression. I'll just paraphrase the vids I have, if that's okay.

Set up, inside lead canter on a 20m. Change to a counter bend, putting the horse on the inside shoulder, sit inside. Walk, renvers in walk, counter canter continuing renvers 20m. Halt and reward repeating until this is good.

Once that works you try it changing to canter renvers without returning to walk, and this sets him up and cues the change. The horse must remain on the circle or else he'll rush through the shoulder and only change in front.

If you have difficulty wait to ask for the change until you pass the centerline and are around the 1/4 line heading back to the wall. The wall will back him off and you'll already be committed to the turn, so he'll be less likely to try to duck out and rush it.

He says horses will always try to rush and you'll have difficulty when you turn into the side you want to change to, so he always teaches it changing to the outside lead this way. It also makes for a big change because the horse changes to counter canter on a 20m.

Haven't had a chance to try this myself, yet. But I want to give it a shot once my new mare is at that level. :-)

At first this was sounding stupid- to change to the counter canter. (but I am in a rather bad mood at the moment, so that could be it too Rolling Eyes

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But this makes sense...

So, Rave has been, if anything, over collecting to where his canter especially starts to lose cadence and rythm, so I told myself today, no frills, just nice gaits and whatever I can do without losing the nice gait is okay.

So we warmed up very basic, then moved onto lots of trot canter transitions on a circle. I usually will mostly trot, then pick up a canter for about four steps and back to trot, or other way around (mostly canter, trot three steps, canter again) but today i did 3/4 circle canter, 1/2 circle trot keeping everything round and calm. I dont usually ride by the letter- I do a transition where I think it will be nice, not at a pre choosen point, so even that part of the exercise was differnt from my norm. It got really nice, so I started doing a full circle of true canter, then a full circle of trot renver. During this exercise I realized HOW MUCH we bend during a canter. Getting to renver was difficult, so I started to really straighten the canter the whole way around the circle. Wah-lah! HUGE improvement (Thank you Blueskies!!!) After doing that both ways it felt great- round an relaxed. So we added in the counter canter. BUTTER. Smooth as butter. Talk about feeling hte FLC RIGHT THERE!!! I had to really hold myself back from asking for it. Last time I felt a possiblity of a change I got carried away. I want to feel that consitantly for a few weeks and then try (patience- what a concept!!)

Anyways- awesome awesome ride tonight. I needed one. Guess I can come here for my jump off the page great riding advice and save money on the disapointing books :-)

Excellent! I'm so glad it seems to be working for you! Very Happy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCpT_4bHoY0&feature=channel

Good FLC exercise from Jane Savoie

Basically, in counter canter bend to the inside (away from lead)
Once solid, change back and forth from this position (counter canter, bending to inside) to renver (still in cc).

She said if you can go from counter canter in renver so bending to the inside with great outside leg to inside rein connection, you can then ask for the change.

Right now with Rave I feel like we could definitly work on changes again, but I hate to be impulsive and do it before he is ready. But I also hate to practice too much counter canter before getting onto FLC. So many horses get confused if counter canter is TOO solid.

Got some great changes today! YIPPEE!!!!

Now it's time to go back to basics and get his neck longer and mouth quiet again Rolling Eyes

Opps