Argue – Pin ears, hollow out her back, front knees brace – resulting in lateral gait. We don’t like a lateral gait. It feels off balance. It makes the rider grumpy. Fancy is insulted at something. She doesn’t like leg pressure on her body. Susan forgets that.
Fancy goes faster at the lateral gait. We have no slow down cue in the beginning bracy ride.
At exactly the same spot on the wall of the arena, Fancy throws her shoulder to the inside. Her head is pointed at the wall and her shoulder is headed towards the middle of the arena. He body moves to the middle. Outside rein makes her body point more at the wall except she is moving into the middle. Susan tries to use the inside indirect rein to ask for leg yield toward the wall. It might work going to the right. It doesn’t work going to the left. She braces against the bit. This is not good horsemanship!
This struggle is between Fancy and I. Her trainers have won the fight. Susan, the Fancy novice, is not winning. After much studying of the Parelli Savvy club educational content, Susan decides to try what Pat Parelli advised.
I started using the carrot stick to convince that shoulder not to move to the inside. Pat advised the method of asking Fancy to speed up. Pat explained to look up and squeeze all four cheeks. Squeezing my cheeks has never worked for me. I tried looking up. That made me seat adjust to the right position and when the cheeks squeezed, Fancy goes forward. Sometimes, without arguing.
Carrot stick discourages her from going to the middle. We also follow patterns. Patterns fix 99% of all problems people cause with horses.
I’m going to follow Pat Parelli’s advice to find the slow-down. I use the inside direct rein and ask for small circles. This causes her to slow down. Amazing, it also causes her to get back into balance. Very small circles at speed get rid of the brace! Who knew. I play the corner game with barrels in the corner. We circle the barrels maybe more than once. We circle until the slow down comes. I just started winning the slow down and get balance game this past week!
The last time we were in the arena, we played the million transition game. We walked, flat foot walked, fox trotted and cantered. I actually got a slight inside head bend at the canter. That is huge!
OMG! I was in control. Fancy was in balance. When she gets exhausted, we practice sidepassing down the wall and leg yielding through the arena.
1% improvement each ride. Fancy is a every step challenge. Every step she takes, you have to be thinking. There can be rider unfocus and when that happens Fancy is glad to take control.