Consistency Is Key!

Not long ago someone asked me what I thought was the biggest reason for why someone might not have success in dressage, I had to think about this question long and hard because there are so many factors that contribute to either being successful or unsuccessful in this sport but in the end I kept coming back to the same conclusion.....consistency!  I think as human beings our ability to be consistent is questionable at the best of times, people like variety, "keep things interesting" as they say, and we're not always the best at being consistent in how we approach or achieve things.  Horses, on the other hand, are the complete opposite, their lives revolve around consistency and we as riders need to keep things consistent for the sake of helping our horses to learn.  Consistency with horses is a multiple layered thing, it not only involves consistency with the care but also the training program.  With a proper stable management program we make sure our horses get the care they need on a consistent basis, this applies to the obvious day to day tasks such as feeding, cleaning and watering to the more complex care of the equine athlete including routine vet checkups (and whatever therapeutic treatments each individual horse may require) and farrier work. When it comes to the training side of things we need to be consistent not only with our regular training program but also how we train, what we ask of the horse and what response we expect to get from them.  I think a committed training program is so much undervalued in North America, there are so many riders who are wishy washy in how they train.  By a committed training program I am not in any way referring to drilling the horse or overworking them day in and day out, far from it, I think our daily routines should have variety for sure to keep the horse interested and fresh and their bodies working in different ways but what I am referring to is committing to a certain way of training and what we expect, as an example it's not okay to one day get after your horse for not being in front of the leg and then the next day let them ignore the leg and change the rules, riders often do this, when you put an aid on you have to expect the same response every single time otherwise you are training your horse that it is okay to ignore the aid and then it's not fair later on when you get after them for ignoring that aid-this conflict causes confusion and frustration in horses-when they are clear on what is expected of them and feel the reward for the correct response they are very willing to do as we ask but riders are very guilty of not being consistent in our expectations.  There are certainly times that it is okay to be inconsistent, for example we need to train our horses to be diverse in things like what time of day they are ridden, being taken to unfamiliar locations and adapting as well as different types of workouts to keep them using different muscle groups, that sort of variety is great but the ground rule basics of proper aids and proper responses has to be consistent day in and day out (that being said making sure you check out your aids and ensure that they are correct before making the correction to the horse goes without saying!).  Someone also asked me recently what I thought were the qualities that make up a "good rider/trainer", in my opinion a good rider and trainer is one who is diverse in their abilities yet consistent in their training, to better explain that I think a truly good rider is someone who can take any horse regardless of type, gender, breed, temperament, age or level and correctly train them through the levels to that horse's ability (I also think a good rider/trainer has the ability to realize each horse is different and some have greater limitations physically than others and has the compassion to not push a horse beyond it's physical limit), this sounds like a no brainer but it's remarkable the number of riders out there who can only ride a certain type, level or temperament of horse and while all riders will naturally have their preference of horse type I think a truly skilled rider can train a wide variety of horses successfully.  Anyhow that's my two cents for the night:)

Feb update

Time to give everyone another update from the sunny south, training has been progressing nicely with all the horses, we've given Nico a small break this last week as he had been doing so well in his training and then his body started to feel like it needed a bit of a rest, as trainers we have to listen to our horses even if it means delaying our plans for the week so we've backed off him a little bit to let him have a rest and will start to build his work back up again soon, this is always the hard part of training horses we have in mind the schedule we want our training to be on but we have to listen to the horse first and not be overeager and it's important that when our horses tell us they need more time that we respect that and don't put our plans ahead of their needs.  Landino is rolling along with things, I've been continuing to try to expose him to things out here as the more exposure he gets the more he settles in, he's a very rational horse in that regard, he might be a bit nervous and tentative at first but once he knows he's okay then he's settled and ready to go.  We took him out to his second show at the Jim Brandon last weekend again doing two Third Level tests to get him around the ring confidently, the first day he was a very good boy and he earned his very first 10 which was very neat and the second day he also tried very hard, had a mistake in the first medium trot but also had some very nice moments, 9s for half passes and a score of 72% to win his class, overall I really can't complain about that at all!  Miss Ocita is also progressing very nicely, she is starting to understand more and more how to start to close up her body more and use her back and topline a bit better, I've had some moments where I start to feel her lifting through the back and shoulders and can feel where this will develop into something very expressive down the road, it really doesn't matter what level the horse is it's always exciting for me when they start to have break throughs and you can feel them start to understand the pieces, anyhow that's the update for now and thanks to my clients who have sent me videos the last bit I've got a few of them on my list to get to so I promise I will get to them ASAP and send you all feedback, nice to keep in touch with everyone and see how you're all doing back home:)