Onward & Upward

Now that I am back home, after a fabulous educational opportunity working with Jan Brons in Florida daily for two months, I am fortunate to have a wide variety of horses and students in the barn. It makes each day interesting as I approach each training ride with a plan based on yesterday’s ride and the road ahead.

Lucky for me, Jan comes monthly to the farm for clinics. His last visit in May was a great clinic. I rode three horses: Tai, my own horse who is schooling 4th/PSG; Qandel, a training horse, PSG; Pfuchs, six-year-old schooling 1st/2nd. All three horses went really well.

Tai is continuing to build strength and get the idea for piaffe/passage. His ability to sit more in the canter continues to improve the lightness and self carriage working toward schooling the pirouette. He had me warm him up a bit deeper and the feeling in Tai’s back was fantastic. He was right in front of my seat, up and soft at the wither and all through his neck and just rolling along in the warm up. When I went to bring the frame up in the second set of work, it was effortless. These are the days and feelings that make you come back day in and day out.

Qandel showed much improvement since the April clinic in his throughness. He is horse that wants to carry himself too high in the neck - at the expense of his back. Jan has me work him in a long/lower frame to gain access to his back. I can bring him up after I feel I have the back swinging but am always careful that I have control over the position of his neck and can relax him down at any time. I school the piaffe and passage (which he does quite well) to get him to engage his hind legs and give me a correct, supple higher frame. He can compress himself nicely and when the back is swinging it is the most wonderful feeling on this horse. I do so love him!

Pfuchs was a trooper. He has been in training with me for two months - when he first came the canter was the weakest gait as the owner had not been able to work him consistently in the past year and had not cantered very much. So this was the first time Jan saw him as I wanted to have the basic gaits and go button in place before we did a clinic with him. The horse was great! Jan had me start the Canter-Trot-Canter transitions in the warmup to get him really fluid and using his back. We were able to balance the trot and canter nicely, use small collecting steps in all gaits to balance him back on the hind legs. We got him to really move out of his shoulder in the trot - so he starts to realize he has more gears in there. This horse just gets better and better and gives such a nice feeling when he is working well. He will be a fun one to continue bringing along!