Cavalli Connections » The lifelong pursuit of classical riding.

Trainer Becomes Trainee

Trixie is as smart as they come, did I mention that before?

Since the little girl that rides her has been riding more lately, our rides have been less frequent. In fact, besides two trail rides, I hadn’t ridden her in about 3-4 weeks. However, Trixie loves trail rides – she’s one of those horses who is just thrilled to be “out” so it’s an excellent time to work on stuff without her really thinking she’s “working”. Lots of halts, leg yields, a little bending. As long as she can enjoy the view, she is happy-go-lucky.

Another thing I’ve been doing with Trixie is carrying 8-10 sugar cubes in my pocket on our rides. Every once in awhile, at halt, I’ll give her one (leaning forward as I do). The main point here is that it helps her remember to keep mouthing the bit and to relax her jaw. (Long story short, Trixie has had some awful bits in her mouth…so I’m s l o w l y trying to teach her to trust my hands/the contact. When she becomes mine I’ll be able to do a lot more with her…for now, this is what I have to work with.) As you can probably guess, she lives for those sugar moments. It has helped our halts tremendously.

One thing I didn’t plan on happening was that I trained her, completely by accident, to associate me leaning slightly forward and lightening my seat with sugar…and stopping. So we were on the trail to the arena the other day and I was just adjusting myself and stood in my stirrups slighty, leaned forward, and BAM. Stop. “Sugar?”

And several more times. It got to be a bit funny. My first thought was “Uh oh…that’s the exact opposite of what she should do!” BUT…then I realized that it was perfect!! Now Trixie would train ME to stay sitting deep! Aha!

Once I put a positive spin on it, it really helped me as I became much more aware of my position. There were times my shoulders came slightly forward or I lightened my seat, and even at trot Trixie would immediately slow down and think she was stopping. And so I fixed it, got myself back deep in the saddle, kept going. The heightened awareness was just awesome.

Have you trained your horse to train you?