Starting out Eventing….
I bought my first eventer Saville Row (Monty) to be a galloway, but he grew to 16.1 hands… nice type with, as it turned out, a great jump. I didn’t buy him as an eventer at all, I bought him as a show horse with my very limited funds, and he turned into a super star. He was a $200 weanling and I thought: He looks okay. He trotted up okay, and was actually built nice and uphill. He had quite a nice front, a well set on head and neck, was compact with a kind eye and good temperament – and cheap! I just wanted a nice horse that I could afford.
I was riding some lovely horses that other people owned, but I couldn’t afford to buy anything like that. After we bought him we did see that he had a bit of a jumping ability, when he decided that the grass was greener on the other side of the fence, and he just popped over, I guess he was a yearling by then.
After arriving home from my trip OS I decided to break him in… I’d broken a couple of horses in by that stage. Right from weanling time he’d been handled pretty much every day. So really it was just mouthing him, training him to the voice aids on the lunge – and getting on. I’d learnt in Canada, and their breaking in was a very traditional step by step training program in an indoor school – definitely not the saddle up quickly and ride out the buck style! I just followed the process, without the indoor. We didn’t even have the arena then, just a little 25 x 25 square where the stables are now.
I did a little long reining, and he broke in with a lovely mouth. He never looked like bucking, he was easy to get on and ride. We did some show classes and did quite well. He was never going to be a Show super star, he was slightly pigeon toed to be honest, and he did swing his off fore … His trot was okay, but he had a lovely canter so I started him in a few dressage tests when I was competing Elementary with Feel Free (Midgie) a 17h TB mare I was showing at the time .
At Adelaide Royal Midge tied up as I started to do my work out in the Equestrienne Turnout Class. I’d worked her hard in the morning and she was working well but standing for an hour in the rain before doing her workout didn’t agree with her and I had to retire with her very stiff and uncomfortable behind. So what to do in my Rider class? I went home and got Monty, shoved him in a double bridle for the first time – he was four years old – and we went down to the Royal. He just took it all in his stride. I worked him quite hard that morning, but not enough to tie him up too! We had to finish the workout with a gallop and a halt. I gave the gallop a bit of a go, then I just sat up and sat into him, and boom! An absolutely dead square halt at the finish of the workout and Champion Lady Rider was ours!
Then I’d decided there had to be more to do with horses than just going round and round in circles. I had been to dressage clinics with a Franz Mairinger pupil, Ron Paterson, from Queensland. Ron had been riding in Germany on a scholarship and would come to Adelaide every year to do clinics . At the time I was also having a few lessons from ex-eventer now dressage rider Prue Foletta, who was one of Ron’s star pupils, and I was also having some help from another Franz pupil, ex showjumper and dressage rider, Jane Bush. And while I was enjoying the challenges of the training scale, I figured jumping was the next step. At our dressage clinics with Ron, we would do some pole work and gymnastic lines and although Midge was a bit of a duffer over fences, Monty proved to be rather talented.
Easy on the eye and music to the ears – visiting instructor Tad Coffin
I was told of a clinic by Montreal Olympics eventing gold medallist, Tad Coffin. The always-innovative Gawler 3 Day Committee had invited him to ride at Gawler and he was doing a clinic after that. The organisers, Judy Whyntie and Gawler secretary (and ex showie) Kris Daniel invited me along, originally to watch but when a cancellation came up, I was asked to ride Monty.
I’d seen Tad ride at Gawler. He was just 21 when he won the Olympic gold medal at Montreal and was a product of Jack Le Goff, and William Steinkraus. He had a beautiful seat and feel – and he was pretty nice on the eye. I thought perhaps there’s something in this eventing caper.
So off I went to the clinic with my nicely presented horse and gear. The mane was pulled, the boots were sparkling, and Tad appreciated that sort of thing. Most of the rest were good jumping riders, and had done Gawler, but discipline and presentation wasn’t high on their agendas.
I found Tad absolutely fascinating. He was a great teacher, pedantic about little things. He was very focused on position: ‘your horse only goes as well as you are able to ride it.’ Even to the degree of making us do stretches and exercises on the ground before we even got into the saddle: ‘you can only ride well when your body is supple.’
At that stage I was doing karate for fitness, and I was right into this whole body awareness. I was also doing phys ed and biology at University, so his whole approach really clicked with what I wanted to do. It all made perfect sense.
We had lectures every day and he talked about the training scale – or his classical version of it, plus interval training with horses, and I thought, this is what I am doing in phys ed at uni, maybe eventing is an interesting progression?
We didn’t do a lot of jumping big fences – more going over poles, pedantically making sure we did them absolutely correctly. A lot of the event riders were expecting to jump tough lines over big fences and when they didn’t, possibly they didn’t like the clinic because of it. However, I loved it because we were working on things I thought were very important – line, straightness, rhythm, balance, approaching a fence (or rails!) in the correct rhythm and balance and making correct turns onto the line to the fence . Maybe I’m a control freak, but that sort of approach was something I clicked into. That was an incentive to go eventing, and maybe I’m a little obsessive, so once I got stuck into it, I became hooked.
Tad sent me a bunch of articles on fitness and interval training. He also told me to contact with Brian Schrapel to get some information on interval training. I was still taking Monty to the shows, but doing the hunter and showjumping classes, and the horse was brilliant. He was super super careful and as long as I could present to a fence with a good canter, straight and in a rhythm and balance, he would jump anything. He went very quickly from D grade to B grade.
The first eventing star in Gill’s stable, Saville Row, trouble is the selectors wanted the horse and not the rider…
We always jumped better in the jumpoffs than the first rounds, probably because I was trying to be a little less to be perfect, and I was just that bit more aggressive in the jump offs. It was more like that old novelty get-past-the-post-first feeling that clicked in. I started to think that if he is jumping better in the jump offs, perhaps the quality of the canter is better, so I started to ride more forward like I rode in the jumpoffs but without being crazy. I tried to get him to the fence, not perfect, but with a better canter, more impulsion, more jump, more uphill… we went quite well.
Monty also went up the grades in eventing very quickly. In those days there was no intro or prelim. Your first start was pre-Novice, which had only just come in, before that you started in Novice and a metre ten. In those days if you wanted to event, you had to be half way decent – or crazy – to compete at even the lower levels. This is in the late 70’s, early 80’s.
After winning a few Pre Novice Events in South Australia, like Craigburn, Echunga, Birdwood, the predecessors of Reynella, Kircaldy Park, Grand Cru, now, it was time to venture further afield.
My first Novice event was at Camperdown. They had the Australian Championships One Day Event, and another Novice class. I got to the event and thought, my god why am I here? It was huge! I’d gone to Camperdown because Kris Daniel – then secretary of Gawler and friend of Tad’s had told me it was a good place to go. It was at this event that Lucinda Green rode Kilof McOhl and won the novice championship, and I won the other novice class. Monty did a lovely test. He wasn’t a fab mover but had a good rhythm, was supple, on the bit and uphill, so I could ride him accurately with good transitions. And he had his lovely canter. I am sure the judges probably smiled because he was well presented and plaited, which many of the others weren’t. He finished on his dressage score…
I did get a bit of ‘but she’s just a showie’ from the other competitors especially in the beginning . They didn’t ever take me very seriously, but when we kept winning, they had to. I met a number of people, especially in Victoria, who were so friendly and helpful. And while it was still ‘ha ha she’s just a hackie, she’ll do well in the dressage and then fall off or have rails ’, Monty was quite forgiving if I didn’t quite get him right, but hey, that’s why you have a nice horse. I’d brought him up myself, and we had a fabulous trust and partnership. I loved the showjumping because he never had a rail – he was super clean. I didn’t interfere, I just kept the rhythm, kept the balance and kept him straight. He travelled nicely on the flat, and he would continue that in his jumping and jump very clean because of it.
My very first Three Day was in the Intermediate at a very new Werribee Park in 1982. I arrived from South Australia, Monty the float and myself. I slept in the car, but luckily as it was pouring rain, Monty had a lovely new stable as I had come all the way from South Australia. I wanted to get there early and let him settle in, so I arrived on the Tuesday.
The dressage went well and we were right up there
But come cross country day, there I was, bedraggled in the ten minute box. I’d got all this paper work on what to do in a ten minute box, and Brian Schrapel had helped with advice. So I had my rug, my buckets, my sponges and everything set out. I came in after the roads and tracks and steeple. Everyone else had all their helpers… I thought, oh well I guess the rain is going to cool him off a bit. Gave him a scrape, walked around a bit, then popped back onto a wet slippery saddle, headed off cross country.
Then we had the only stop he ever had. There was an Irish Bank, newly made, orange dirt. You had to jump up, bounce over and down. He’d never jumped anything like that before. I’d never jumped anything like that before. We came in on quite a nice stride and jumped up well – and of course nobody had told me about studs! He just slid right out from underneath himself, and I pulled him off, before he tipped over just like the distinguished visitor, Mark Phillips had done on Summer Sorbet a few rides earlier. We came round and popped it again. I did learn after that that you need a support crew… and studs.
From there, he did Gawler and came fourth. At the Australian two day event championship in Canberra, he won the Intermediate. He didn’t get beaten at any event in South Australia in that year. We had decided to go to Melbourne 3DE. I’d had a lot of lessons from Prue Foletta, I’d met my husband to be, Greg, and we were headed to Melbourne 1983, which was as a final Olympic selection trial to the 1984 LA Games. Team management had identified Monty as a potential Olympic horse – they pretty much wanted Monty, they just didn’t want me. I was offered very good money to sell Monty to another Aussie rider – but he didn’t owe me anything, I’d brought him up from scratch – and I was learning a lot and having fun. He wasn’t for sale… and he was only seven.
In the lead up to Melbourne, there was something not quite right. I was doing my fitness work at Pru and Hugh Foletta’s place at Kingston, and I just didn’t feel he was right. Everyone was saying, no no, keep going. The vet said it was all in my mind. Everyone said he’s fine, I kept going with the preparation as we found a corn, treated that and it seemed to do the trick – but deep down I still didn’t feel totally happy. I didn’t want to go, but there was a lot of pressure, I was young and silly and went.
At Melbourne, we did a good competitive test. Roads and tracks went well but disaster struck in the steeplechase. We jumped the last steeplechase fence huge, landed and the first stride after landing I knew he had a problem. He was on three legs, he’d done a tendon. If only I knew then what I know now, there’s no way I would have run him. He never came back from that tendon. I probably could have forced the issue. When he came back sound a couple of years later, I showjumped him, but I thought I would never be positive enough with him on the cross country with that old injury in the back of my mind.
By this stage I had a number of other horses to go on with, so I didn’t push it and he became a very spoiled trail horse for an older rider
The next horse was Carnaby Street, a failed B grade jumper which had a bit of a reputation of having the odd stop – but he was a good type by Agricola and went well on the flat. He won a lot of hunter classes (the prize money was good at the Aggie Shows), dressage and all the events up to Intermediate level – but when the going got tough, Cola knew he could stop – he wasn’t a Monty…
Benton’s Way cruises around Melbourne – the jumping machine needed ‘air brakes’
Next came Benton’s Way. I’d met South Aussie, Bill Ferber who owned Benton’s Way around the traps, and after the LA Games when they didn’t take Benton’s Way to Los Angeles despite very very good performances, Bill wasn’t happy. Brian Schrapel, who’d been riding him, had other horses coming on. So Benton’s Way was tipped out in the owner’s paddock and hadn’t been touched for ages. Bill came to Greg and my engagement party. That afternoon, he asked me to take the ride on Benton’s Way. I said ‘no way, he is Brian’s horse, I wouldn’t want to do that.’ Bill said, ‘Brian doesn’t want him anymore, he’s sitting in a paddock, why don’t you give it a go?’ I thought, I’ve got nothing to lose, and tons to gain, I’ve got nothing much else to ride.
I decided that obviously I couldn’t be as strong as Brian so I had to get around Ben’s tendency to take off, another way. I decided to take him on for a year with no promises that I would even event him. I started out riding him in a snaffle, riding him at home, just working on the dressage. I figured that if nothing else he would teach me a thing or two on the flat.
After six months out he was lovely… fat and lazy, so I thought, what’s the problem? . I decided to take him out everywhere, but not gallop him, and not compete in jumping, just take him round the hack shows – not so successfully with his not quite pretty hack head – and dressage days! Getting him out and about without any stress helped to get him less tense, and he started to do some good tests.
So I thought it’s time to take him to the forest and gallop him. Well…. That was the first time I realised there were no brakes and an amazing turbo charged engine. Started in trot, lovely, two point canter, quite nice at 400 metres a minute, just moved it up a little, 500 metres a minute – and he was gone! This is in the forest with tiny trails, so I had no way of turning circles, I tried everything, apart from heading straight into a tree – although that seemed our fate a couple of times! I thought I’m going to have to jump off, he was oblivious to everything I did until we got back to the float ,and he just stopped. Very scary but we survived, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to be so completely out of control ever again. I thought – right, b….rd, I’m going to have to do something drastic here..
I rang Bill and said – you can have your horse back, I know why no-one wants to ride him. He suggested trying a gag. He had a really good long shanked polo gag – ‘It’s the air brakes’. So once again I thought I’d give it a go.
I took him up into the forest the next day wearing the ‘air brakes’, and trot was fine. I did lots of halting, getting him to listen. Started to canter – canter was fine, then up a gear, and he started to go, so I gave him an almighty yank on the gag rein and voila, instant sliding stop! So we did lots of canter/walk/canter transitions, and Ben became rideable.
It took a full year of not competing him anywhere. Then I decided to drop down to Novice and see how I went. I had to work out a plan of riding him so that he didn’t have many strides straight at a fence. I would walk back three strides from a fence, then look at the oblique line I would have to ride to get there – use the turn to balance him a little and that was how I had to ride him.
In the steeplechase, Ben was super-talented, he had an amazing jump – I can remember him taking off a stride early for a steeple fence and landing a stride the other side of it, 24 feet easily, like it was nothing. You could not adjust him in the steeplechase, you just had to sit there. The control freak in me went out the window!
It certainly taught me to be brave, but also to trust his ability. You just sat there and let the horse do the job. Just galloping it was an amazing feeling.
So I found it was way easier to not fight him in the steeple, just sit there and let him come in under time – A LOT – under time. I’d also have him half fit, as fit as I thought he needed to be. I’d do the steeplechase in a vulcanite Pelham, at least it didn’t cut his mouth, and I had a fresh mouth by the time I got to the cross country. I’d put the gag on just before the cross country. If I tried to put the gag on earlier, his mouth was so numb by the time I got to the cross country that I couldn’t ride him. I’d use the roads and tracks and steeplechase to make him rideable but still with a fresh mouth. He was a real long format horse – and that’s how I finally won Advanced Gawler with him. He had quite a good record at Gawler, he had a 6th at his first try, a 4th, then a 3rd.
On course at the 1986 World Champs with Ben
Then we had the disaster of the World Champs at Gawler in 1986, we had a stop at the bounce in the water. I figured if I stayed close to the pier, I’d get a better distance, but I didn’t factor in the crowd. As he jumped in, he shied away from the crowd and that made the distance long. What I should have done is go to the right hand side, popped in and choked him and got the one stride like cunning Barry Roycroft. I just didn’t have the experience to do that, or think of it even. I had a stop in the water, and then he left a leg at the ‘lovely’ State Banks. I didn’t get up there with enough impulsion to get the very long one stride to jump the 2 metre plus gap of the bank behind the massive tiger-trap and he lost a back leg there.
We finished the course but he’d stifled himself. We probably could have got him through, but I wasn’t a team member. Knowing what I know now I could have iced him better, and got him through, but I didn’t. My wonderful dad had passed away from cancer two weeks before the 1986 Worlds, and I was on an emotional rollercoaster. It was fantastic to be a part of an Australian Team but it was just a horrid learn-a-lot bad experience event!
The water at Gawler – not Gill’s favourite jump
Ben came back and placed 2nd at Gawler next year, and then 7th at Melbourne. The Olympics at Seoul were looming and the selection event was at Worrigee. Wayne and Vicki Roycroft invited me to their place to train. I’d got to know the Roycroft Clan during the World Champs, and they were all very supportive, especially with the loss of my Dad. I trained with Wayne and Vicki for three months before Worrigee. Stuart Tinney was training there too, and we all had horses in contention for spots in the team at Seoul. It was great up there training together, learning a lot. I was set up to sleep in the back of our Panel Van – not the most salubrious digs but a great opportunity and I was going to make the most of it.
We’d heard there was a tough double bounce at Worrigee, so we were training it before leaving for the event the next day. Wayne had just gone through on Valdez, and Dez had done it rather awkwardly and – he yelled out, ‘Don’t come!’ But I was committed to jumping. Ben left a leg, did a tumble turn and sent me elbow first into a rail. I had a dislocated elbow, goodbye Worrigee and any thoughts of the Olympics. But I didn’t cry in front of a Roycroft… and I got a bed in the house when I got back from hospital!
It was a badly dislocated elbow and I was supposed to have six months off, all the ligaments were torn, but I got back into action as quick as I could, and three months later there were the Australian Championships at Gawler, so I focussed on that, and won. It wasn’t the Olympic Games, but it was great to finally win Gawler on Benton’s Way and it was time to retire him. He wasn’t going to be around for Barcelona… it was time to find another horse!
Next month – Gill finds that ‘other horse’…
Charlie Freeman-Finn takes a lesson with Gill
It would seem that Gill Rolton makes something of a speciality of training wild ones from Tasmania. She had considerable success working with the Tassie eventer, Prue Calvert and is now trying to polish another ‘Tasmanian Devil’, Charlie Freeman-Finn.
Charlie comes raw and enthusiastic from the city of Launceston, and she has a great attitude and willingness to work.
“I aim to take off a few rough edges,” Gill says of her role, “but you never want to kill the whole Tasmanian Devil spirit. Number one is to get over the fence, number two is to make it look pretty. Charlie loves to jump, as does her horse, but without a lot of style. It would be really nice if we could get more style into the whole unit and more rideability into the horse. She has got away with going around with the horse chucking its head between fences and relying on the fact that he likes being clean. You might be able to do that at one star level but you certainly can’t get away with it at two and three star… and four star is where she wants to go.
The horse has got to become more rideable, and Charlie has to become better balanced, so he can become more rideable. It’s going to be a long haul, we’ll see how we go…
The horse has the problem of dropping his off shoulder and falling against Charlie’s right leg, especially through a right hand turn. Jumping, Charlie has problems getting a distance off the right rein because he falls against her leg, and she loses the quality of the canter and the line – so she has to make last minute adjustments, without the power to do so. Charlie needs to learn to get the horse straight, and travelling better.
Our work on the flat is really just to get the horse more reliable. I’ve ridden him a couple of times, and he is actually a nice horse once he starts to give and come through. Charlie’s always had problems in tests with walk and canter transitions, where he gets very tense and hollow and doesn’t come through. We are trying to get the horse to travel better – to get him more through from behind , over the back, more laterally submissive and into both reins so that he swings in the trot work.
In the canter work, we have the same problems. When he is tense and hollow in the back, then he is not travelling through he looses the quality of the canter and the jump. So it is more of getting the horse accepting the leg and the bending, and getting his hind leg more underneath him. Poor Charlie, she is learning that the price of good jumping is good dressage…
Once upon a time, there was the idea that eventing/dressage and dressage/dressage were two quite separate exercises – you’ve spent time with dressage trainers like Jean Bemelmans, do you see a difference?
“Dressage is dressage, good training is good training. It doesn’t matter if it is an eventer or a dressage horse – the difference is only the degree of collection and expression – and the horse’s ability to sit. The fit Thoroughbred type of horse is very rarely going to get to the Grand Prix level of collection because the musculature needed for FEI level dressage is quite different from the muscles needed for eventing, where the horse has to gallop across country at speed and jump fences. But it is the same dressage, I want event horses to be rhythmic, supple, evenly to a contact with impulsion, straightness, and engagement working towards collection. In other words, all the facets of the German training scale go into the work we want produced in our dressage horses.
As a judge you are looking for exactly the same things. Really it is an advanced test. Down the track, I think we are going to find it more of a Prix St Georges test. There’s working, medium, extended and collected trot required, the same in canter– the degree of collection is not Grand Prix dressage. The degree of balance required is not the degree of balance and engagement that you need for piaffe / passage – however, you still need to be able to lengthen and collect. There should be cadence and expression in the best tests. You’ve got to have the horse soft, supple and through. You’ve got to have the degree of engagement required to do a shoulder in, a half pass, a flying change – straight with expression. When flying changes first came into the eventing test, if you could get a change without trotting you were going well – now we are looking for the quality of the changes, and they must be straight uphill, and expressive, to get the big marks.
So where did you come across the Training Scale?
“Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to go to lots of different trainers. Ron Paterson, and Malcolm Barns way back, were always along the German training scale. Ron had just come back from Germany and he worked on getting the horse relaxed, loose and supple, getting the horse through, having him in front of the leg and into a contact. It was always a progressive notion dressage.
Another Franz Mairinger pupil, National Eventing Coach Wayne Roycroft is not so academically into the theory behind the training scale, but he still works along that line of getting the horse travelling correctly forward and in a balance able to do the movements. Ride him on your line at your speed and make him straight.
Wolfgang Holzel, who was our national dressage coach for a while, had a wonderful ability to explain the Training Scale. He was very popular in SA and I was lucky enough to go to a few clinics. And put it into practice. He worked a lot with Prue Foletta and Jane Bush and they helped me a lot when I was starting.
I had lots of grief in the old days because when I am told something in a lesson, I am the sort of person who wants to know, why? When in doubt I’d always refer back to the German Handbook and would work through that.
I guess I have just been lucky in that over the years, I have been able to keep my mind open, going to different people. I’ve been doing a little bit of work with Miguel Tavora. He is a lovely man, and so knowledgeable – he’s a true horseman – he’s always got an exercise for every problem.
And for Jumping? George Morris was the guru
Overseas, it was a real privilege to be able to watch Jan Bemelmans train in Germany – he’s great because you could watch him work with horse after horse, and the planning and the thinking for each horse. The early work was pretty much the same for every horse, the loosening and suppling, then working on whatever specific aspect he needed for that horse. And his work was always so brilliantly logical.
I’ve always been very goal motivated, and I try and instill it into the kids I teach, each time you get on the horse’s back you should have a mental picture of what you want to achieve that day. So you have a warm up that works for your horse, then go into your specific work, then a cool down. You need a beginning, a middle and an end. My life has always been reasonably goal oriented, whether it be the long term goal, or the day by day session goals. .
Exercise: Single Loop on the Long Side
This is the old single loop on the long side from the 2.1 test – a very simple exercise, but a difficult exercise to do well. I find this is a very good exercise to get the horse more evenly into both reins and done correctly, is a test of maintaining rhythm and suppleness onto a contact. It works on a number of things – riding the corner correctly to set up the bend to come out of the turn to ride into the loop. To then change the flexion and bend but only to a very small degree. It is always much tougher I think to do a tiny bit than it is to do a lot. It is a subtle exercise, and subtlety often isn’t what event riders are good at! It’s a good exercise because you can see very quickly if the horse goes against the leg, or it is bulging through the shoulder, or changing rhythm or not through enough from behind or looses the hind quarters. The rider has to cope with those problems to make the horse better through the exercise.
So what am I looking for? First of all, maintaining the rhythm suppleness and ‘thoroughness’ all the way during the exercise. Next I am looking at the preparation for the bend through the corner, the coming out of the corner and re-balancing and straightening before making a very subtle change in bend. If you are coming off the left rein, you are riding through the turn, thinking a little shoulder fore before the turn, keeping the balance from inside leg into the outside rein through the turn but no blocking with the outside rein, so the horse can step through and bend through the corner – not loose his hind quarters. You are just using that little half halt coming out of the corner to re-balance, because quite often they will come out of the corner and fall through that outside shoulder . So – re-balance, and in the re-balancing you are thinking ride forward and straighten before asking for the new bend. So you are riding in the new bend while you maintain the rhythm, through X and back towards the track again, as you are coming back towards the track, you are thinking ‘straighten the horse, change the flexion and bend ’ and then a little shoulder fore to ride through the corner and rebalance out of the corner again. It seems a simple exercise but it is a difficult one to do correctly – and as a judge, you very rarely see it done well.
The exercise shows up a few of Charlie’s problems with Twister. On the left rein, she was coming through the turn and Twister was stepping out with the right hind, so she needed to keep her outside aids when starting the preparation for the corner. I find a lot of riders forget their outside leg – and a lot forget that elastic outside rein contact. So coming into the corner she needed to think about maintaining the elastic feel in outside rein, keeping her outside leg on, then shoulder fore feeling to ask the horse to bend through the turn. When completing the turn, she has to think about, half halt, , make the horse straight, then ask him to submit laterally and bend to the right. Then he wants to fall against her right leg, so she needs to use more dominant right leg and supporting left leg and rein as she comes through that flexion bend right, then straight and ask for the left bend again.
On the right rein Charlie had similar problems, except that in the preparation for first corner, she needs to ask him to give a bit laterally at the poll and jaw before the corner, so she needs to prepare for the corner, through that shoulder-fore feeling a little earlier .
Shoulder-fore feeling, laterally submissive, then she has to remember to be elastic on the right rein through the turn and at the same time, she has to remind him with right leg so he doesn’t fall against her through the turn. She has to balance again, but she doesn’t have to worry as much about the left rein keeping the shoulder, because she always keeps a contact with the left rein anyway. The bend will come easier because he naturally wants to flex this way, and Charlie is starting to think more about her outside rein and outside leg to control that outside shoulder. Then straighten and bend right again. The problem area for her on this part of the exercise is the bend in the corner that she is not getting right.
Once she masters this, and Twister is more supple and even in the contact, stepping through with a swinging back and with more impulsion, he will start to produce a more cadenced trot. The next step is to maintain the quality of the trot as we ask for more engagement through shoulder in and travers.
I think this is a good example of the kind of approach I learnt from Tad Coffin – the art of doing very simple things extremely well as a basis for the more difficult exercises: once the simple are mastered the building blocks are in place and the more complex are achieved very quickly.