Last time Ulf Möller worked with two four year olds and stirred up his audience on the Sunday after D&JWTS by saying horses learned to be light by accepting contact.
The next horse into the arena was a five year old, the Just de Pomme gelding, Flashazz, ridden by Lydia Jackson.
Do you have a problem?
“He gets strong and tense.”
“Tense is good, tense you can use… but first give me the whip. Okay, so you should never go to war without weapons but if I have a horse that is a little hot, I will take the spurs away and get the horse calm to the leg. Even if you are an experienced rider, you can, without meaning to, kick with the spur and ruin all the good work. It is the same with the whip, it is easy to touch the horse at the wrong time and with this horse, I can see that I want the rider to try and feel the mouth with both hands.”
“Don’t get too active with your hands, look for a nice rhythm, contact on both reins, legs on the horse, the contact quiet. Bend the horse in the corner, feel the mouth but try to get the feeling on both hands that you had on the long side.”
“Think, when the neck comes up, don’t press down. Take your hands up a bit and feel the mouth, but don’t pull down. If you feel he is going to look at something, your first reaction should be with your leg. With a younger horse, we ride lines with the reins, but with an older horse, we ride the lines more and more with our legs but that doesn’t mean, no contact.”
“Young horses get confidence from our legs, and if something surprises them, we can react much quicker with our legs. Feel with your leg, in the beginning, it might feel that he is getting faster, but after a while, he gets slower.”
“Don’t over react. Give him a chance and wait – if you over react, then he goes away from the rein.
Don’t worry about the neck, feel reins and leave the neck to the horse. Carry your hands and wait until he comes round on his own.”
“In the canter, have the same idea. Feel, don’t pull, leave your leg on the horse, and look up and loosen your shoulders. NEVER the outside hand higher, MAYBE the inside hand higher.”
“You don’t have to hurry so much with the medium canter, the judges will wait for it to come, it is not a Grand Prix test.”
“Ride him forward to collect. You can’t collect out of collection. Be quiet, if he gets faster, relax. It is difficult to ride one round around the school where every stride is the same – ask Greg Best – but don’t control the tempo with your hands. Collect with your seat. Ride a circle and bend and play, it is still too hurried, relax, relax, relax. Why does it work on a circle and not on the long side? You get nervous – allow the horse to finish the canter jump.”
“If he drops out of canter, don’t go to canter from trot. Walk and bend the horse, and then canter, so the first canter stride doesn’t go away from you. Grow in your seat and try to collect without pressure. Touch the mouth, don’t have the feeling you can’t touch the horse’s mouth.”
“You really want things, you are too ambitious, it’s good to be ambitious but it has to be in the right direction. He gets strong because you put too much pressure on him. Sometimes you might think, today I want to work on counter canter, but you can’t collect the horse, so then don’t try and train counter canter that day. Better to wait one, two even three days. Okay you might fight with him and get one counter canter but you lose the friendliness with the horse.”
The next combination was Bernadette Gibson and another five year old, the Rotspon gelding, Neversfelde Raphael.
Their problem? “Self-carriage, especially in canter.”
Bernadette Gibson and Neversfelde Raphael
Ulf thought that one look at the horse might explain part of this: “This is a nice type, a very modern horse, but when we look behind the saddle, we miss the muscles. The horse needs exercises to build its back – the back is the bridge from the hindlegs to the front.”
When the horse trots off, Ulf is quick to point out: “You don’t build the bridge by running away. Start on a straight line because it is easier to get contact on both reins.”
Once again, Ulf was in familiar territory, trying to get the rider not to pull the horse’s head down, but to allow the horse to come a little higher in the neck and carry itself. Working on the walk to trot transitions, he asked the rider to use the whip:
“Don’t hit the horse with the whip, just put it on the croup and try to get the walk to trot a little quicker.”
The walk trot transitions are the preparation for the half halts: “Now without doing the walk transition just think it and then go out. Don’t pull down, if you do that he just becomes shorter – you want him up in the neck and out. More and more with the seat and less with the hands. Now try walk to canter.”
The gelding trots.
“Your inside leg is in the outside leg position, try it again.”
“For the transition, bring your upper body back and start the canter from your hip.”
This time they get the canter, but Ulf questions the rider’s reaction: “Why do you pat him? Is it a wonder that he canters? When you pat him, you lose your seat.”
“Now go to walk and up, up, up – that was better, you could touch the mouth without getting him too round.”
In the canter, Ulf had the same problem with the outline: “He gets too deep for such a big canter jump behind, too deep with nowhere to go. Now put him on the circle, and collect – not pulling, weight, seat, whip, maybe there will come a little pressure on the bit, just wait until it comes light again. In the canter, he must collect without getting deeper.”
And in the trot the accent was on building strength:
“Trot quicker, not deeper. If you feel he comes too deep, think about a transition. Try to get him quick behind so he is really using his hind legs, then you will get a swinging back and more muscle. Long and low with a horse like this will just make him slower. Try to make three trot steps where you were making two trot steps, try to make three canter jumps where normally he was making two jumps. With this horse the main thing we want to do is build the muscle.”
The next horse/rider combination to work with Ulf was John Thomson riding the six year old gelding, Kalimna Emblem (by Earl).
John Thomson riding Kalimna Emblem
“I’ve watched this combination, and you must take care you don’t produce too much with your body – let the horse work, not you.”
And of course, one of the common problems from this style of riding…
“Be careful that the trot doesn’t get too passagey. Not so much pressure from you, forward your hands without shortening the reins. The horse has a short neck and you must show the judges that you are willing to open υ
the frame. Keep him more on your seat, not holding him into the frame with your hands. They don’t mark you down in a six year old class for conformation.”
Ulf was insisting that the horse be ridden with less rein. “Keep your legs on the horse and ride a straight line with your hands forward, control the tempo with your back and legs, not so much rein. Concentrate that your elbows are not behind your body, keep the contact, keep your hands in front of you, and try to get the horse’s neck longer.”
Ulf did not like what he saw in the corner: “Don’t make me angry, when you ask for bending and then pull with the outside rein, that’s shit. Bend and allow the bend, the horse goes through the corner like a piece of wood, the bit is more out on the outside than the inside, that is impossible for the horse. Let him bend and follow without losing contact.”
“Think haunches in, bend, allow, for once lose contact with the outside rein – haunches in, ride it with your legs. If he gets slower, don’t get angry with your legs. If something goes wrong, don’t correct with the reins. If you feel you are losing the horse over the shoulder, more outside leg, not more outside rein.”
“In the canter it is the same idea. Bend him so he accepts the outside leg and comes light. Only support him with the outside rein. Everything you are doing, you do too much. Wait until he accepts, then pat him. Go forward with your inside hand, and pat him. In an ideal world, he’ll stay in the bend.”
“Why are you clicking? This is reserve, when you have nothing more, click. With the first couple of riders it was teaching control, now it is UN-control. Go on the long side and sit like Ingrid Klimke, even if it feels too strong, don’t pull, bend and light in both hands. Keep your hands together and in front of you. Ingrid bends a horse but you don’t see it.”
“Now you are looking better. In the beginning it looked like work, now it looks elegant. Maybe for a while you will lose the cadence but in the test what you did looked too much like work. Work hard at home, but at the show, no-one should see that…”
Ulf was saving the best for last. Daniella Dierks had a stellar show even making a bid for the Esther Belliss award when she picked up a placing in the young jumping horse 4 year old class Sugarloaf Sirhara (Sir Donnerhall/Capone).
Ulf paid tribute to Daniella’s position ‘the only thing I would change is the shoulders a little back…’ but he commented on a couple of things he saw when Daniella brought Revelwood Donatello out to win the Champion of Champions.
“Yesterday you showed some passage and some tempi changes, but be careful to come back to the basics, The horse can go away from you with passage, be careful when you ask for half pass that he doesn’t go to passage. I want to see a really nice working trot, and not too short in the neck.”
“Ingrid said she liked the really nice contact from the horse, but you must make sure he doesn’t shorten the neck when you take the contact. Now you are going to have to start showing in the double bridle, and often horses that are good in the snaffle are too light in the double.”
Time to work on the walk to canter transition. “Pay attention to the first canter jump. Make him a little more collected in the walk and keep the jump always in front of you – be careful it doesn’t come little by little, behind you.”
“In the medium canter, keep more contact with a little bend to the inside. A little more pressure on the bit in medium so he stays rounder. Ride him into the bit – come, come, come, without getting faster. In the medium he gets longer, keep him more together. When there is a little pressure on the bit, keep it, you need this pressure.”
It was back to trot, and again the discussion of the passagey tendency: “I love passagey trot but it has to be forward to the bit, not away from the bit. Be careful, sometimes he loses the hind legs – make him quicker behind and get positive pressure. Now take your hands a little forward following the pressure and there is the perfect neck. Don’t think ‘perfect neck’ and lose the hindlegs.”
This time Daniella was invited to play with passage:
“Ride your collection forward, then you can get passage with rhythm. Passage is also forward. Don’t do it with your hands: seat, legs and maybe whip, just two or three steps, then forward and out, and then the hindlegs are more active, more carrying.”
And that was the end of the 2011 edition of Uncle Ulf’s annual young horse seminar. Summing up for the audience, Ulf apologized that he didn’t get the riders to show many test movements: “I’m not a friend to riding too many lessons at home. Half passes are bad for the joints. If the horse can bend and go forward, then it can make a half pass. If it can canter more or less on the spot, then it can make a pirouette – one jump to test is enough.”
“The most important thing is for you to have no fear to touch the horse’s mouth – it is not there for sugar. Try to get contact, and if the horse is not willing to accept the contact, take it even if the horse gets too short for a while. After a while you can follow the mouth and the neck follows too.”
Now I am quite sure that this series of articles with Ulf Möller are going to inspire a negative reaction from some in the equestrian community, particularly Ulf’s forthright views that horses have to be asked to accept contact and that riders must not be afraid of looking for it. However – as with last year’s session – I challenge anyone to point to a horse that looked worried or stressed by what Ulf was asking them to do, and that, to my mind, is the final test.