Over The Years

Just got home from another fantastic clinic in Calgary, had a few days of excellent lessons (as always I believe that even professional riders need to take advantage of good instruction whenever possible, if we don't get routine help then we lose touch with reality in our training and often get stuck in a rut or keep making the same mistakes over and over again), I rode two horses in the clinic, my usual partner Dominic as well as Landino a horse in training who I felt would benefit from a field trip and some instruction, both horses were fantastic and made great progress over the days.  With Dominic we worked lots on variations, especially lots of transitions within the gaits.  Dominic is a tense horse by nature and consequently the biggest issue in our training is always to get him looser and more swinging, every horse has their natural tendencies and as trainers we have to understand that we can't 'fix' who our horses are but work to improve their weaknesses progressively through a planned training program, in other words I can't expect that Dominic will overnight just magically change and become the world's most relaxed horse, he is who he is, however with systematic training and development we can improve this tendency and develop him into a more relaxed boy, consequently we try to keep a work program that consists of lots of variations between high degrees of collection and then intervals of loose, stretching working trot, with the goal that over time the looseness and stretching that we find in the working gaits will carry over into all the other work.  As always, it's so interesting to look back over things in time and see how they've changed, if your horse continues to improve his gaits throughout the course of his training then you're doing your job as a trainer.  It's so beneficial to keep old video footage to look back on to see the development, after this week's clinic I looked back through some of my old videos of Dominic and found this one taken two years ago in June 2010:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hLSOqFIADY
-video clips from a couple of shows at PSG/I1 level in 2010

After watching this one I compared it to the video taken from the clinic this week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmTdypBDzlo
-this only shows a few clips of some of the more collected work as I could only fit so much in the video but in between we alternate frequently to a working/stretching gait and then back to the collection

I was shocked at the difference in Dominic, it's rare that I get the chance to just sit down and compare video footage over the years, it's truly amazing how much a horse develops with training and a proper care plan in place to keep their bodies performing in top condition, I have to say a thanks to Mills Vet for helping to keep Dominic in top shape over the years.  It's so interesting to see how he has learned to use his body in such a different way, much more articulation through the back and joints and consequently greater carriage and more expression.  To make a long story short it's fascinating to keep video over the years and see how the horses change and develop, it's also a great way to see if your training is really helping to develop your horse into a better athlete, I'm very happy with how far Dominic has come over the years and can't wait to see how he continues in his career:)