Karen Rohlf: Starting Young Horses
August 1st, 2007 by KateFeatured in Karen’s August 2007 Newsletter
What is your general outline for starting young horses? If you would please include such thoughts/ideas on any exercises you avoid until a certain age, guidelines for when the young horse is ready to start collection and how you develop fitness without excessive circling.
Karen, we realize that this is a pretty loaded question, and if you feel that you could give a more complete answer by breaking the question down to answer over a couple months, please feel welcome to!! We are looking forward to your book!!
Thanks SO MUCH!!
-Natural Dressage Forum
It seems I can always expect big question from you guys! Excellent! The top priority with starting horses is that your partnership is healthy and clear…They feel safe with you and they understand the ‘ground rules’. I must also remind myself that this is their first time at this…to not get frustrated because I am assuming they are like my advanced horses. I need to remember that they are giving me pure feedback on how they feel/think about what I am saying to them and about what they think they can do. It is up to me to create situations where they understand what I mean. This goes in the category of good partnership/foundation/colt starting. I will list a few concepts that I for sure want the newly started horse to have, of course in addition to just a great foundation:
• Look to me and you will be fine.
• Respect my space.
• Whenever there is pressure, there is always something you can do to take the pressure off.
• Game over, you’re perfect, relax!
This is, of course a very simplified list…but let’s shoot forward and pick things up at the stage where the horse is started and rideable, he can go on a trail ride and understands the basic yields and responsibilities of: act like a partner, don’t change gait, don’t change direction, watch where you put your feet…This is where my particular specialty kicks in, and the stage to which, I believe, your question refers.
You asked if there are certain exercises I avoid until a certain age. That really depends on the horse, and feeling what their natural abilities are. For some horses ‘lateral work’ is difficult and it will be a while before I ride around in a shoulder-in. Other horses may show me it is easy for them so it is OK accept their offer and play with it. Also keep in mind that some warm bloods keep growing until they are 6, and will go through stages of awkwardness where it is best just to let some things go and during those periods play with trailer loading, clipping, liberty, etc. In general I am careful to not drill anything. But this can be challenging when we are practicing and things don’t just magically work the first time around! I use the idea of ‘only sustain that which the horse can offer easily’ and ‘don’t keep doing something until the horse wishes he hadn’t offered it’. I think we run into trouble when we start doing too much repetition. There are times we need to be consistent, but ‘drilling’ to me means just doing something over and over. If it isn’t working, go back and figure out why, and if it is…it’s a young horse! don’t make them wish they hadn’t done it and put undo strain on their bodies. If we keep practicing something that is difficult for them, they will contort themselves and set up patterns of bad biomechanics.
So if the horse has trouble picking up a balanced canter, I won’t insist he sustains that unbalanced canter. I would do a lot of dancing around the subject, preparing what he will need to make that canter more balanced and easier for him. I may do more jumping on line, especially trotting into a jump (this is like a trot-canter transition), or point to point exercises where I am not particular about lead or gait, just building up motivation to hurry up and get somewhere. I may also go to a longer line sooner with this horse. I also check that he knows that when I say ‘go’ I mean ‘go’ and he can be bold. Usually you will see the horse begin to offer more (they will canter on after the jump, they will depart into a canter on the point to point exercise, they will choose to canter on their own when you say ‘go’). Many warm bloods and larger horses are slow in developing at the canter because their gait is so big…I have learned to give them time rather than decide ‘today is the day you must sustain the canter’ on the length of line I choose. If you insist too soon and force the issue you risk them doing some strange, strained version of what you are asking. To continue with the example of the horse with the big, awkward canter: if your communication and leadership is strong you may get him to ‘be a good boy’ and canter on a 12 foot line, but he may have to shorten his stride and get choppy and stilted in order to do it. You may very effectively teach him to do a four beat canter. It will feel bad to him and will be hard to correct later. You gained obedience, but lost freedom of movement.
With young horses it is really important to tune into whether they are: not understanding something, not really paying attention to you, or whether they are unable to do what you are asking based on their level of coordination or strength. This is especially true while riding. I think often we underestimate the adjustments the horse must make in order to accommodate our weight. You can only make one first impression so I do my best to choose wisely the hard lessons I may have with my young horse. Some are necessary, but some can be better prepared and waited out.
If you only sustain that which they readily can offer, then when you are increasing their fitness (which requires sustaining things) in movements they already think are easy and therefore you are preserving their good attitude. The work in dressage will get intense soon enough. I don’t want them to be thinking ‘wow, this is hard’ I want them to be thinking ‘wow, I can do this!’ and somehow over time they end up strong and fit.
I do a lot of setting up the reflexes I want in there for later…quick initiations of responses to go, stop, turn, bring the weight back and mobilize the hindquarters, forequarters. I am thinking: ‘if I ask, would you do this’ and I am looking for my horse to say: ‘sure, that’s easy!’ I will practice their ability to boldly offer responses because they know the better they respond, the easier it gets for them. All those are responses that I know I will need later for more complex movements and in the near future to make small adjustments to help them find their best balance. I establish them, then check on them often…keeping them in my back pocket where I know they will be easy to find when i need them. once established I may walk or trot around the property and intermittently check: ‘hey I wonder if you could back up?’ ‘Hey, I wonder if we still have that hindquarter yield’. It is a great way to let the horse be relaxed, keep important yields sensitized and not have to drill.
Once they are at the stage where they can carry me around at the walk, trot and canter in their own balance without impulsiveness and I can transition easily to any of the basic yields, then I start paying attention to their biomechanics, searching for the place where they can move online and carry me without crookedness and with a free, swinging top line. Some horses are ‘impulsive’ because of lack of balance, and some are out of balance because of impulsiveness…you’ll have to play around to see what you need to address first.
As far as ‘collection’, first let me say that term is thrown around too loosely. Collection is an advanced balanced state with a prerequisite of what is called the ‘working gait’. The term collection is often used as a synonym for ‘riding in connection with the reins’, ‘finesse’ or being ‘on the bit’. But collection requires a lowering of the haunches, greater degree of engagement and a clear uphill balance. In competitive dressage collection isn’t asked for until Second Level. Some young horses have been bred to have natural tendencies for collection and if they offer it I certainly won’t tell them they are wrong, but for most young horses I am careful to make sure they have the ingredients for collection and most importantly they have relaxation and a freedom of movement, as these are the easiest qualities to lose in collection; that they are not just shortening their stride with a tight back and high neck.
So, when do I begin to ride them in connection with the reins thinking of their posture? Depends on the horse, but when I have eliminated any reasons why they may lean on my reins if the reins were there. I ride with the reins when I am sure I am not needing them to control the horse and they can accept a soft touch (contact without asking for flexion). I have a horse now that has a natural tendency to lean on the reins, especially the left one. From the first moment he was plucked out of the field, if you pick up the line or rein, his reflex is to add pressure to it. Fascinating! He also has preferred head carriage of his nose sticking out. As much as part of me would love to reel in that nose and make a more attractive picture, I also know that he is crooked, and not easily mobile in his body…he is telling me that is the comfortable place for him based on his entire body. Until his body is developed more, he for sure will lean on that rein if I give it to him. Here are the ingredients I am focusing on with him:
• That he is highly mobile with suggestions to forehand, hind quarters and sideways yields, anytime, anywhere…just one step is fine but do it without hesitation. This will help him find a better alignment.
• That he listens to my body for weight back and all transitions. Bridle-less riding…prove that WE don’t need the reins.
• Obstacles, jumps, hilly terrain. This will increase his coordination in general.
• Transitions. Immediate responses to and from all gaits. I know this will increase his engagement and strength.
• Roads and Tracks. I go out for long walks and trots in fun places like farm roads or around my big fields to increase his aerobic fitness.
• I make sure when I lift my rein up, he follows the feel up with his neck, changing his reflex to lean down on it.
At this point, his trot is getting really nice and when I shorten my reins he is finding a beautiful place to put his neck without me even asking for flexion. He gives immediate powerful and more balanced transitions to the canter and is beginning to be able to mobilize his body and so is finding a better balanced canter where he can be in self carriage. Now that he can do that, he is also starting to feel freer and not leaning on the reins when I shorten them.
The neck is a meter of the rest of the body, so I tend to leave the neck alone for longer than many dressage riders. It is worth it though, because in the end the horse will find the best place on his own if I ride well.
I think with young horses, each lesson is so meaningful. I do my best not to throw too much at them at once. I tend to have a theme for the day and one theme is enough. I have a good experience, make sure they go home with a clear positive thought and then give them time to absorb it. I have 2 horses that are just 4 and I do ‘official training sessions’ with them 3-4 times a week maximum. I err on the side of less, and make sure I balance my time with them with games they like to play and non-demanding time.
The more confidence you have in your foundation and in your ability to clearly communicate a concept so your horse understands it, the less you will need to drill. To answer your question about too many circles…Circles have a purpose (suppleness, easy to find a balance as the line of direction is consistent, settling into a rhythm). Do the circles to achieve those benefits. If you find yourself drilling circles, then maybe there is a missing piece you can add in in some other way. I have a horse who was always falling in on the circle with his shoulder in one direction (yes, the same horse with the big opposition reflex!). It felt like it was time to address it, but in doing so I started to feel I was going around way too many circles to do it and was losing his attentiveness…so I went to a spot where I have lots of trees and posts sticking up and we wove around those and practiced that coordination from one direction to the other until we figured out how to turn easily in both directions without plopping on that one shoulder. It was fun, he was interested in it and I think he started to feel the difference between the 2 directions because by the third day of this he came out taking care to do it differently. I felt him shift his weight when I suggested the turn. Then I went back to the circling at the trot, he didn’t fall in with the shoulder and I hope he felt: ‘well, that was easy’. I was able to school better circles, not by drilling the circle but by stepping away and helping to improve a missing ingredient in a more obvious, easy, fun way for him.
This works for young horses, but also I dream of being this clever all the time. With young horses it seems even more important because we are installing their first impressions of what this is all about. If I do it well now, life just gets easier and easier because if you create a positive attitude with your horse, he will offer so much.