Andeut

Finding relaxation is often a trying task. Andie, as she is affectionately called, has not had the most relaxing life. From what I have been able to gather, she had been trained using methods to bring her into hyperflexion prior to my purchase of her. My primary interest was only for breeding when I was looking at Andeut, so this did not bother me. I figured if she was much of a handful under saddle not a big deal. So now with the end of my breeding program and my desire to give her some solid training to ensure that if she does have to find a new home it will be a greater possibility of a lifetime home, we are once again stepping hoof in the arena.

A mare who jumps at the slightest of whispers, so far Andie has made large progress. Over the years with inconsistent training I have managed to remedy a handful of the big issues plaguing her from previous training. Her complete inability to stand still for mounting, to walk a single step (her preference was to jig, that is something between a walk and a trot), halt without spinning around in circles, spook and snort at every hint of danger or not, and explode at the trot when asked for the gait. So now I reassess her current issues. In the scope of things they are fairly minor, they are issues I encounter every day when I look at traditionally trained horses, be they mine or others.

We are taking things back to the lunge and in-hand work for now, taking advantage of the cold weather that keeps me from wanting to depart from my warm snow-pants in order to get into the saddle. So leading, we begin. Forward, forward, forward. On the left side she is pretty consistent, she moves forwards with only infrequent hints at balking. Once we make one round around the arena she doesn’t hesitate at all, she relaxes and really steps into her walk beautifully. From the right it cannot be expressed in such kind words. Instead she balks frequently, or attempts. Works to change the bend, often attempts to lose contact and therefore cut off communication with me. When she does move forwards it is awkwardly explosive and then instantaneously halted. She is either on or off, there is no sliding scale. So I work for the sliding scale, I work for the calm and patient response from her to my request.

We do find some scale, some slide, some calm and patience. It is that small window that I praise her highly and move to work on the lunge. Again, we find she loses her sliding scale. She goes so light to the touch that there is no communication, so I move in closer and closer until my presence is enough to send her into the lunge line, to reestablish the communication with my hand. I slowly relinquish the line giving her more space from me as long as she is willing to take it from me. She wants to jig, to jump forwards when I encourage her forwards, and then to stop dead when I attempt a half halt. She overreacts to the movements of my hands, perhaps sensing that they will be large actions on her face or with the whip? They are actions without touch, only visual, and her overreaction causes me to once again reestablish the connection with the hand on the lunge line, and use the whip more in a visual manner - moving it more frequently and consistently without touching her. She settles and begins stepping into a walk, so I train my eyes on her feet, I ignore the rest of her basing my half halts or the use of the whip solely on the action of her hooves between one another.

An interesting observation today, taking her to the left she tracks relatively evenly between left and right hind hooves. To the right however, she tracks up nicely with the left hind, and not at all with the right hind. In my encouragement they both evenly increase in how much tracking they do, but they do not even between the two. Now… given the unevenness of her front hooves this can certainly have a bearing. I am curious to see if this changes at all as she becomes more supple and stronger.

Overall she worked very well, this was one of the calmest sessions I’ve had with her in the 6 years I’ve owned her. She is very nervous in her day to day demeanor, but I will go out on a limb and guess that much of it is the way in which she has been trained and handled through her life. When she arrived she was an almost constant wind-sucker, which has come to an end completely. She would do it out in the pasture, in a stall, when in cross ties, when riding even… I haven’t seen an attempt from her in a couple years. She still lips around by your hand/arm when doing in-hand work, another outlet for her nervousness, and she has a tendency to shove with her head or just dull you out with it when she is nervous. Watching the horizon!