Training Indeed

Just wanted to let you know that there is now a forum available to discuss ideas, questions, and successes related to posts on this blog, and the content from my books and DVD. Membership in the forum will also allow you to stay updated on the latest news and events related to clinics and get together. In fact, it’s quite possible that this blog will be moved or joined with that forum, so joining that will be the most certain way to keep up with Indeed’s progress.

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It’s been over a year since I’ve posted a tape, so it’s also been over a year since I’ve seen what Indeed looks like under saddle.  I have to say,  I’m very pleased with his progress.  He not only looks generally better, he’s a much happier camper – and a lot more fun to ride. I’m sure he’s having much more fun being ridden too.

This is not to say he’s competition ready and perfect. He is still very much a work in progress. The progress that I care about is that he is learning to move loosely and freely forward under the rider. He still has to perfect his balance moving this way – because it’s so different than when he was trying to balance by bracing against the hands. But, he’s on the learning curve.
There are many who will look at this and think it’s not “classical” because his poll isn’t at the highest point. I suggest you read LDR and Article 401 before watching this. It will greatly enhance your knowledge and reduce your blood pressure.

Please also keep in mind, that if looking at a stretching horse you fixate on the distance from his nose to his chest, most of the time you will have a false impression. Part of the reason is that you’re viewing this through a zoom lens, and it is the function of a zoom lens to compress distance which means you can only see this distance in the occasional moment the horse is exactly perpendicular to your line of sight. So, if you think you see his “nose on his chest” and then a few seconds later you see it is clearly many inches away from it, the long distance is the actual distance.

This is a very long tape – 30 minutes – so long that I’ve had to divide it into two parts “a” and “b”.   I haven’t commented any of it. You can decide what you want about it.  I will say that I’m aware the changes from left to right are not what I want them to be, but that will get sorted out in short order.

This tape is fairly complete. It starts a few minutes after I got on. I took out boring stuff, and a fair amount that got buried in the dust.  But the rest is a fair representation of a typical day of schooling.  I warm up in a rising trot and canter. I do ride without stirrups for most of the ride now.  And I do spend all that time doing walk exercises with lots of releases and allowing him to stretch.

So, sit back, get comfortable, enjoy the show.  Here are the links:

Indeed – May 2010 part “A”

Indeed – May 2010 part “B”

OK – it’s been over a year since my last video, but it’s not for lack of progress.

The really important thing is he’s on my side now.  He’s finally figured out that this rider is not his adversary.  That started happening for real late last fall and I can honestly say I haven’t had a bad day on him since!

Virtually all of the old nonsense and head tossing is gone. There are still some stopping issues at the start of the ride, but now it seems more like he’s just doing it to see if it might “work” today.

He’s working on his flying changes and I couldn’t be happier with them. No, not every one is perfect, but more and more of them are. Most important he never gets upset of tries to rush off after a change.  His rhythm is rock solid so it’s only a matter of time.  We even did a line of 4 tempis the other day.  Well, I think we did.  I came across the diagonal and did a change, then when he felt ready I changed back, and there was room for another so I did that too.  Coming around the short side of the arena it occurred to me that I had just done a line of 4’s. So, I’m pretty sure we did.

We’ve been working on some other very cool stuff too.  I promise I’ll get another video up asap – I want to show off a bit!

In the meantime, check out my new book, Riding in the Moment – The Hidden Language of Dressage.  I’m so sure you will find this book incredibly useful in your training that I’ll give you your money back if you don’t agree it’s worth a lot more than the $19.95 it cost.  There’s a picture of it just to the right of this post – click on that or here to find out more,

Mike

Hi all,

It’s been quite a while since I’ve put up an Indeed training tape.  The reason for this is I was away so much doing clinics October through November and the weather has been pretty cold since then.  However, I’ve been making good progress with Indeed lately, so it’s just a matter of getting some decent weather and a camera person on the same day.

In the meantime, check out some of the short articles I’ve been putting up on the Dressage Process blog, and keep those cards and letters coming in!

By the way, if you have sent me an email and did NOT get a response, it’s possible it was mistakenly blocked by the spam filtering system.  If you think this is possible, please send me another message at

mikeschaffer1@netscape.net

That spam filter doesn’t seem to be as aggressive.

More later.

Mike

AS he begins to elevate...

Amazing – I actually managed to get two tapes up exactly the way I wanted to at the outset – one month apart!  Not only that, but I’m pleased with the one month change in Indeed.  He’s really starting to feel like one of “my” horses.

In this months tape, I not only didn’t bother with ongoing commentary as I taped, but I haven’t even put in any visual remarks either. I think if you’ve been following from the earlier tapes you’ll be able to see what I’m doing just from watching.  If I’m wrong you can ask using the Blog format that I’ve switched to.

Regarding the blog, several people (only a very small percent of those who watched the tapes) made comments and I hope more do this time.  Since last month I learned that I can answer comments directly by fiddling with the date and time that I post my answers – in other words,  I can cheat and make it look like I answer your remarks almost as soon as you’ve posted them.  I’ll probably do that just because I think it’s easier to follow the conversation if it’s one after another.

Getting back to the tape, you might notice that the better he goes, the quieter my hands are.  However, when I think it’s necessary to move my hands, I don’t hesitate to do so.  I’m perfectly happy with that – in fact, I think it’s an absolute prerequisite to know how and when to use your hands appropriately if you’re going to train a horse.  This idea that you’re never supposed to move your hands is just nonsense – every capable trainer I’ve ever known has always used his hands to make a point whenever he felt the need.

Sure,  I could have edited out every occurrence of me lifting the reins or bracing strongly but than what’s the point of these tapes?  To make it appear that I’m all knowing and perfect and I can and you can’t?  What a waste!  I’m much happier with a student that knows how to use the aids and make corrections in a way that is appropriate for the horse they are on “at the moment” than with a rider that’s so inhibited about moving or doing anything they end up just sitting there stiffly.  Yes, it may take a couple of weeks to quiet down a rider that’s too busy, but it can take years to loosen up a stiff rider.

Another cool thing to notice  – as Deedle’s poll comes up, he begins to approach the vertical.  Yet, when his poll is out and down, he’s behind the vertical.  Further, about 99.9% of the time his mouth is closed and the contact is very steady and pleasant. Yet on the (now) very rare occasions that he stiffens into the bridle his mouth opens.

Well, for those who have been hyper-ventilating over “hyper-flexion” it’s time to find yourselves a brown paper bag and breathe deeply into it.  It is obvious now that a horse stretching out into long, low frame  is behind for a very different reason and in a very different way than a horse that is being pulled behind the vertical.

OK – here’s the tape: Indeed 9-8-2008.

I finally put up a new Indeed tape. I know, it’s been quite a while. He and I had some rough sledding for a bit, but we’re back on track. I’m very pleased because he seems to have figured out he doesn’t have to stiffen against the bit. In fact “most” of the time he’s being very good. Actually, I’m having more fun riding him now than any other horse I’ve been on in quite a while.

This tape was shot on August 8, 2008. There’s no talking in this tape. I didn’t expect it to be on the web when we did it, I just wanted to see him for myself. This was just me riding my horse on a regular day. I did add some text in places editing the hour long session down to a few minutes and I will say I think I prefer to shoot video this way – it lets me concentrate on what I’m doing and gives a more realistic picture of the process. Let me know how you like the format.

We just moved to the facility in this video and I really enjoy riding in this ring. It’s flat, the footing isn’t too deep, there are almost no distractions and it has a wonderful view. It’s an ideal training environment.

I like that Indeed is staying soft and round most of the time, and that he’s much lighter to the leg as well. I’d rather he was not as curled up as he is, but I think he’ll start to “un-furl” as we go on. I just wrote about why I have him in the double in my last post (I’d give the link to that here but I haven’t figured that out yet – just go read my last post).

Speaking of posts, this is a blog. I’ve gone with this format so that viewers could comment, ask questions, whatever else it is that people do on blogs. So, blog away.

Ok – enough talk. Here’s the link to the8-8-08 tape.

Last night I was speaking to a friend and fellow trainer from California.  He had called to talk about the clinic I’m scheduled to do out there soon and of course the conversation worked it’s way around to Indeed.

I told him I was finally getting happy with the way he is going.  For the first time he starting to feel the way I want a horse to feel – no tension or stiffness in his body as he reaches out to my hand and just follows the bit. Not perfect yet, but getting there. I mentioned I was sort of amazed it had taken me so long to get this far and he very wisely told me, “Hey Mike, it takes what it takes.”

Well, you can’t argue with that.

So, the fact is it has taken me just a little over 2 years to get Indeed to the point where I feel we can start to move on.  That’s about 18 months longer than I’m used to taking to get a horse to this point, but, it takes what it takes.

While I’m on the subject, I’m riding him almost exclusively in the double bridle.  Yes, back in December of 06 I tried him in it, but then I went back to the snaffle for another year before going back to the double.  Now I ride him in the double because with it my corrections are “clear, effective, and over with”.  In just the snaffle, they are simply not as effective and tend to become more arguments.  In the double I can ride him very lightly and spend most of my time encouraging him to reach more into my hand.  In the snaffle, he spends most of his time trying to run through my hand.  For me there is no question – I’ll ride him in the double, press on with the training, and from time to time try him again in the snaffle and see what of he thinks of it.

Interestingly, the bridoon I use in his double is the exact same bit as his regular snaffle.  Well, whoever invented the curb bit was probably a lot more of a horseman than I’ll ever get to be, and he figured out that device  a long time before I arrived.

Oh well, enough about me.  Here’s something you may find useful in your work with your horse.

Today, almost near the end of  a wonderful ride, we came cantering across the diagonal about to do a simple change when he noticed there was something in his favorite spook corner that was not just right.  In fact someone had left a manure fork leaning on the rail.

I immediately decided it wasn’t important that he had been going past it without incident for the previous 40 or so minutes.  My recollection was that we were just starting simple changes back in the late fall of 06 when his great “melt down” began.  When that happened something went off in his mind and he started tossing his head straight up and bolting. (He was so fast and practiced at that maneuver it that took me months to figure out a way to deal with it!)   So, my intuition was the simple change had more to do with what he was upset about than the silly fork.

The above is specific to him, but here’s the single issue that’s generic to every one of us when dealing with these issues regardless of whether they’re spooking at the corner, stopping at a jump, or refusing to walk through a  puddle.  Each of us has to decide whether we want our horse to go into that corner, over that fence, or through that silly puddle because he’s more afraid of us than the corner, fence or puddle, or, because he’s learned to trust us completely when we tell him he’s safe doing what we ask.

I made my decision many years ago – I want my horse to perform because he trusts me.

I’ll talk about how to accomplish this goal in another post – “Attitude trumps technique” soon.  I’ll also be putting up some clips of Indeed schooling at home very soon.

Mike

Here are excerpts from the December 15′th video.  Indeed (Deedles) is really getting the hang of this
dressage stuff and is working off my seat a lot better than the last tape.

Here’s the link to it.

****NOTICE*****

Snapshot.com is linking to this 2 year old video by error. To get to the latest videos and see how Indeed is doing now, please click here.

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In this video I have Indeed in a double to try to deal with him throwing his head straight up. I knew he had a history of that, in fact, that’s the only reason I ended up with him.  However, I hadn’t experienced it with him until shortly before this taping. So, in this video I tried using double bridle which did help for a while but didn’t solve the issue.  Actually, I had to try several different approaches both in tack and technique over the next year before I came to a solution that has worked for long enough that I think it’s real.

So, in this tape I’m riding him a bit tentatively, but I set out to show an honest history of my work with him and this was part of it.

Here’s the link:  Indeed, September 20, 2006&

7/29/06.

If you’ve been following our progress you’ll probably notice that this tape is
late in coming and that Indeed and I are in a different ring for this session.
We’re back in New Jersey vacationing while our search for more permanent
training facility continues.

Although late, this tape deals with several
very common training and riding problems – how to deal with a horse’s stiff and
hollow side, a horse that wants to run out the gate, and the “give and go”
exercise in some detail.

I’ve briefly dealt with the give and go in an earlier tape – but perhaps
because it was hot and buggy when we did this video, I had to spend a good bit
more time with it here.
So, you get a much better feel for how often it is used in typical training
situations. What I did show in the tape but didn’t explain is that every
time my horse does “give” to me, I give back to him – I soften the contact
slightly as I ask him to go on.

Indeed 7-29-06

Another point that I didn’t make strongly enough in the tape is that the “give and go” eventually becomes a “half-halt”. In the give and go the horse
softens to the hand and then is asked to go by the riders leg. As the horse begins to understand that he will always be asked to “go” as soon as he gives,
the two become almost simultaneous, and then, he begins to “give” to the hand in response to the riders leg asking him to go. Indeed actually does this once
in this tape. When a horse consistently “gives” to  the hand as he steps up in response to the leg, the horse has a “half-halt” and the rest of dressage
falls in to place.

Finally we end up with a little canter in each direction. Generally I’m very
pleased with his progress – especially when you consider we’re only 3 months
into ourtraining program. Here’s the link:

JULY 29, 2006 tape