Progressing with a Young Horse

[@redmare1746]

I love to see young horses in training. It provides so much info for the rest of us. Thank you.

[@rajeevbhardwaj8514]

Looking forward to the coming video of training a young horse

[@lesleychamberlain595]

Hi Amelia, super video which I'm pairing in my mind with the one on self-carriage. I ride a marvellous forward-going mare who somehow missed out on her early training and for a long time wasn't ridden at my riding school because she was too excitable. She's fifteen now and when I first started riding her a bit over a year ago she was still like that, and she hadn't learnt to balance and struggled to carry herself in canter and to leg yield. She wiggled a lot and hardly went round the arena. I ride her twice a week and something like a miracle has happened over the year or so. She's much more consistent and with a bit of effort on my part she stops looking around and listens. Often now she's really trying, though she breaks in the canter and the leg yields are still not great. Her best leg yields happen on a small circle, when I leg-yield her out and I want to build on that. Recently I've been trying the exercise two ways, once with a normal contact and once with a loose rein. In fact I do the loose rein version first. Her excitability always came from a fear of the rein,. She got tense when I had a strong contact and asked for things she found dificult. But then I found when I trotted her on the buckle at the end of a session she moved freely and rhythmically and was happy to listen. So my question is what do you think of this loose rein approach , which I think of as a way of inviting her to find her own balance? She's very obedient to the leg and tries just as hard and it's fun for both of us. It also makes me use my core.

[@AmeliaNewcombDressage]

Focusing on rhythm is always the first step! You can do this on a loose rein!

[@CamdenJones-kr1dp]

Are you still at finals if you are where are you stabled at