The Magic Button

I found “the magic button” this past Saturday during a group lesson with Jenny Vaught.  It’s just not every day that you find a magic button on a horse that you’ve been riding for four years!

Nova is a gaited horse.  She’s a Missouri Fox Trotter. Finding the right speed in the right gear is like owning a corvette with 6 forward gear-shifting speeds. There is one place for the flat foot walk and one place for the fox trot where everything is perfect. It’s one of those 6 forward gears on a Corvette.  We want to find that speed where her head nods in rhythm with her body…where her tail waves like a flag and where there is smoothness.  We try to find that speed where I can drink some of that Ozark fabled moonshine while I’m speeding along the trail.  It’s a very happy place to be.

Not that I would ever drink while I’m riding and Ozark moonshine has never been anything I’ve ever wanted to drink.  I just mentioned it because these great fox trotting horses were first fully assembled in the Missouri Ozarks.  Missouri is still producing these smooth riding, great minded horses.  OK, this is just a commercial. Let’s get back to the magic button.

Nova and I are far enough along now that I can recognize the perfect spot in both gaited gears.  Nova is a slow-down kind of horse.  I get her going in a perfect speed (in the zone) and in the next 3-5 seconds, she slows down. She might slow down just a tiny fraction of a mile-per-hour, but then we drop out of the perfect rhythm.  She’s still doing the required gait, but it’s not perfect.  We have dropped “out of the zone”.This happens about a 50 times in one spin around the arena. We are constantly adjusting her speed.  Not many can see the slightest bit of speeding up and slowing down.  Not many can feel the difference in the slightest of gait speed change.  It takes a good eye to spot this on the ground and an educated seat to feel it in the saddle.

Permit me to explain that I have short legs and horses wear a girth to keep the saddle on.  It just so happens, Jenny has explained to me for years, that my communication heels press against the girth.  My slightest bit of heel pressure goes into the girth and fails to fully come out the other side-to Nova’s body.  My communication is muffled.  Muffled!

Jenny experimented last Saturday. She told me to bend my legs just a bit and move my feet back when I wanted to tell Nova to speed up just the slightest amount.

I did so, and Nova immediately sped up and stayed in the perfect “zone”.  Instead of a Chevy Corsair, I have my 6 gears of Corvette underneath me now.  It worked!  I yelled in exultation at Jenny, “Wow where did that come from?”  Jenny responded, “It’s a magic button!”

With the magic button concept, my heels are now pressing on a spot about an inch from where they naturally hang.  An inch makes a huge difference in communication!  This is finesse!

Jenny Vaught is a great horse-master and a great teacher!