Flatwork - a labour of love

We have improved quite a lot in our flat work over the last 4+ years, and in this entry I attempt to capture the progression.

The first two pictures in the top row were taken at a dressage competition in 2008 and the third at Oldencraig in 2010. The bottom three pictures were taken in 2012 at Mark Butler Dressage and in 2013 at home (middle)

When JJ and I first met, I tried him out on a ride around Farthing Downs. JJ was soooo quiet and slow and that was just what I wanted. An easy life with a lovely horse.

JJ came home and on his first day I lunged him which was a little painful as he would barely put one foot in front of the other. 

Over the next few days I took him in the school to start to train him in his flatwork and it was soon apparent then when on his own he was very very uncomfortable. He would start shouting at any horse he could see and was spooky and not easy to ride forward at all. Clearly he was nervous and very uncomfortable when on his own. As soon as his pal Eric joined him in the school he was fine, so for the first few times I rode him in the sand school I made sure there was another horse around.

From the get go, JJ was difficult to ride forward, he just seemed to not want to listen to any aids and had to be kicked to move forwards rather than aided gently. My trainer worked hard with us and we got JJ moving forward however it was always a bit hit and miss as to how the training session would go.

As you can see from the early pictures, JJ wasn’t round at all and only in the last couple of years have I realised that any roundness we did get was fairly short lived and not really true.

Looking back we did make progress in the first 2 years but it was small steps and my trainer Hugo had the most success riding him as he could easily wrap his leg around and bring JJ “up” to a better contact.

I also had training sessions with Mandy, A TTT trainer, and they really set us on the right path. We were starting to get nice comments from friends and onlookers as to how nicely JJ was going but it still felt inconsistent and subject to a great deal of luck.

During these early years, we had a couple of bouts of refusal from JJ where he would set foot in the menage and refuse to work and even sometimes out hacking he couldn’t be bothered. We worked through these instances however I was never particularly confident about my expectations from one flat work training session to the next.

In July 2010 I moved JJ to our present yard, a full livery yard with lovely facilities and a dream that JJ would be safer and happier here. Three years later I am relieved to be able to say that the move was the best decision I ever made. JJ is happy and settled and I love the yard.

When we arrived, we started having lessons with Anna which were highly successful, JJ started to learn to move forwards which gave me a bit more chance of riding nicely instead of looking like a was doing all the work. We still had highs and lows though and it was really difficult to pin point what needed to be done to get him going in the right direction.

Enter Andrew Murphy and Mark Butler in June 2011.

I had a couple of fabulous lessons with Andrew Murphy. I remember our first lesson focused on two things. One was not to let JJ lose concentration and look at everything outside of the menage whenever he felt like it by wiggling the reins and regaining his attention. The second was to repeatedly but gently (annoying not hitting) use the whip on his hind whenever I wanted trot and not used my legs at all and to keep tapping until he trotted then immediately stop. This was because JJ ignored my leg so we were finding a new way to get a reaction. Soon we were getting immediate trot transitions as soon as the whip moved.

I had a couple more lesson after that where Andrew taught me other tricks like the four time tap, where you lightly tap left shoulder left hind, right hind right shoulder and carrying two long schooling whips and tapping both sides of JJ - again to shock JJ into paying attention and not doing his own thing. None of this whip use was hard or nasty, just plain annoying to JJ and it started to make a difference because it became a better option to him to listen and respond rather than back off.

Andrew generally only comes to the yard to teach on a Thursday in the day and not every week so having Andrew on a regular basis was going to be impossible owing to work.

Sally and Lorna recommended Mark Butler who is a great friend of Andrews and was already coming to the yard on Monday lunchtimes to teach Lorna.

I had a lesson and explained what we had done with Andrew and as they have worked extensively together Mark knew exactly what we had been trying to achieve and was able to pick up where Andrew left off.

I took JJ to Dressage Volente for a 3 day camp in August 2011 and worked with Mark and Andrew again and we introduced more tricks like turning the whip upside down and waving it from side to side over JJ’s head to get his attention. I have some video that I will upload to the movies page as some stage to show the work we were doing.

I have been working with Mark once or twice a week now and have a huge box of tricks from which I can pull out the necessary tool to use to get over a particular problem I may be having.

The tricks include:

Two whips / four time tap / bend to the outside / whip upside down in the air / tapping the hind leg / tapping the croup / fixing hands wide to give a fixed but wide frame for JJ to work in / hands forward to encourage J to take the bit out in front.

I went back to camp in 2012 and some familiar faces commented on the improvement from the previous year.

At the hands of Andrew Murphy and (mostly) Mark Butler JJ is transformed into a forward, eager, willing, flexible, strong horse that is capable to doing pretty much everything I ask of him.

I think the journey so far is best summed up by first working on getting JJ’s attention and roundness which as you can see by the pictures above is greatly improved - he is never off the bit these days - and moving on flexing JJ and breaking down each corner of him and building him back up to result in him being much more available to my instruction. 

We can do shoulder in, haunches in and leg yield which all help with the flexibility. We can produce collected trot, working trot and some strides of medium trot. We can canter in a round frame on both reins without breaking gait. We can produce medium canter down the long side.

This is all a far cry from my younger JJ who wouldn’t move forward, couldn’t walk positively, never mind trot, and whose canter I dreaded riding because it wore me out it was such hard work.

Dolly and I are living proof that the right trainer and a labour of love really can produce a transformation.