Glennis Barrey’s story is very much bound up in the story of dressage in Australia. She was there as a youngster, taking those first tentative steps, and then was one of the first to muster up all her courage and take ship to live in a strange land to pursue that most elusive of quests – to become a competitive dressage rider.
Glennis won the Pacific League World Cup title in 1990, and attended the European final in s’Hertogenbosch to receive her trophy. In that same year, she and Livius were members of that historic first ever Australian Dressage Team that competed at the WEG in Stockholm.
In 1992 Glennis became the first Australian to actually ride at a World Cup final, when she made the trip to Göteborg with Livius.
We’ll let Glennis tell her own tale of courage and persistence…
“I left Australia three days after my twenty first birthday. A couple of years earlier, when I was seventeen, my Dad had driven me down to Gert and Mary Donvig’s to do a clinic with ‘Bimbo’ Peilicke with my old first cross Quarter horse, Hinkler. We thought we were pretty good, we’d done a few years of pony club dressage, done very well, and I had already done a Prix St Georges, so I thought this was pretty easy.”
“I went down there and I was rather horrified, it certainly brought me down to earth. That’s when I first met Bimbo. Then Gert Donvig won a scholarship and went over to Germany with Ron Patterson, and they connected with Berndt von Knesebeck who acted as our agent when I went to Germany. He was absolutely brilliant, he did all the paperwork for us, and he lined up a horse for lease as I was staying there for three months and he organized competitions for us to go to.”
“Unfortunately he got me the wrong translations to some of the tests, so I rode different tests to the ones the judges were expecting. Of course it was doubly difficult when I didn’t understand what they were saying – I only knew the word ‘voltes’ – so it was pretty difficult in the beginning, but I got through it all.”
“I ended up staying for three years, and I bought Livius… so my three months ended up a very long three months.”
“I went to Bimbo’s right from the beginning and I was living in the Emshof hotel. We bought a funny little old car from the place right next to the hotel – but when I went back there recently it was this huge fancy car yard with fancy cars. Obviously Warendorf has taken off since I first went there, it’s seventeen, eighteen years ago – I’m getting pretty old now.”
“I felt like a baby when I got there. Lost like a baby in an alien world. It was really hard mentally to just get around basic life. I bought the wrong things in the supermarket. You are not old at twenty one, you are young and inexperienced. I was on my own until Gert Donvig sent over John McNamara as a groom with Granada who was training with Bimbo, and it was wonderful while he was there, John was a saving grace. My parents had a car accident, quite a serious one, my grandmother was killed, my father was in intensive care, mum broke both her legs – it was a really messy accident. It only happened about four weeks after I arrived in Germany. I was just lucky that John was there because I would have been even more lost.”
“Every Monday the man who ran the hotel used to come in and shout ‘AUSTRALIA!’ and I used to run to the phone. That’s probably the only thing that kept me going, it was the only thing that kept my father going because they used to bring the phone into intensive care and I would speak to him, every Monday at lunchtime. Of course Bimbo didn’t know what was going on – he felt bad but if you can’t speak English what do you say? It was hard enough him teaching me.”
“Luckily there was a Canadian rider who translated a lot – then I picked up on a few words. If anyone was around who could speak a little bit of English, we used to drag them in to translate for me. But if Bimbo yelled once, I used to kick the horse in the ribs, if he yelled twice, I’d hit it with the whip, and if he yelled again, I’d sock it in the gob! If he was still yelling I’d do all those things together. Then Bimbo either gave up, or it was right. I’m not sure, but he kept quiet after that.”
“He told his son Peter to get a book, and each day I would write down three or four German words and learn them parrot fashion. Peter used to help me with sentence structure, I’d learned a bit of German at school but not the German you need in every day life. What you learnt at school didn’t have any relevance to half halts, or collected trot or working trot, piaffe or passage.”
“I leased a big grey horse called Hadley – he couldn’t do anything when I got him. I leased him for three months and the owners then agreed to extend the lease to twelve months. After the three months Dad said to me, we can afford for you to stay there – it wasn’t costing them a fortune and I’m quite good at living below the poverty line. We found Livius who was only a $15,000 horse, because the exchange rate was so good in those days. He was just a normal horse, he came out of a riding school, he was eight years old. All he could do was go above the bit and late changes. I didn’t like the horse, he had no character – he had always been owned by a man, so he was used to ‘normal’ treatment. I wouldn’t say he was badly treated but he was one of many in that stable.”
“The man said ‘take him on a month’s trial’. He wouldn’t eat tidbits or anything. I was helping out in Bimbo’s stables for a few extra rides, and there were apples and sugar in front of Livius’ stable and he’d never eat them. I’d just throw them in some other horse’s feed bin, they were happy for it. Then one day I was cleaning away in the tack room and I heard a bit of a noise and I looked up – he’d eaten all the tidbits – suddenly he was a different horse. It was a breakthrough, he tried harder in his work, he got more personality.”
“We worked so hard those first twelve months. I think we did a million flying changes. In the big long hall out the back of the DOKR, fifteen metre serpentines up and down, tap tap tap with the whip, flying change. ‘Do it again’. We used to ride for two hours some times, but it paid off, the horse ended up properly schooled. Probably not the most talented horse but I think he had a heart as big as Phar Lap. Really honest.”
“We stayed there for a little over two years. Then I was going through a stage where I felt I needed a move – today, I regret that move. But in another way, it proved to me, how good Bimbo has been for me – and how good he still is for me. I just didn’t realise it at that time. I went to Udo Lange, and in the beginning that was very good. But Udo got a lot of horses in and he seemed to think ‘she hasn’t got a lot of money’ and I felt I was just pushed aside. He found Leonardo for me – in some ways Leonardo was good because you can learn from all horses, Leonardo had a lot of promise but he was a strong stallion and in the end he just got more clever than me. He just worked his way out of working hard.”
“I always felt lost when I rode him because I never had the courage to push him through it. He used to rear a little bit, but when I look on it now, he was such a bluff, he just took me for a ride. If he was serious he would have hurt me, but he never did. I think I am a bit smarter and wiser now.”
“Udo taught me a lot of ring craft but I should have stayed six months with him, and then gone back to Bimbo. Sometimes even when you know you are in the wrong place, you don’t do anything about it. It wasn’t long before the World Dressage Championships in Canada in 1986. I only did the Small Tour (Prix St Georges and Inter I) at the World Champs, but that was good because I learnt a lot. Not just about dressage but dealing with horses.”
“When I went back to Germany the second time, I had Simon (Glennis’ at that time, husband to be, Simon Barrey) and it was a lot different. It was a lot more impersonal, a lot more expensive – riding had just taken off, it was such a business compared to what it was the first time. I didn’t enjoy it as much the second time. I was older, I had more of a lifestyle here. I think the worst thing was that Leonardo was not going to work hard enough for me! And it was too late to make him do it!! Livius was already 17 – too old. When he actually qualified for the World Cup in 1992, he was already too old, which was a real shame.”
“I should have stayed after the World Championships in 1990, that’s when Livius was young enough, he was fresh enough.
Still he was a wonderful horse for me. To go to the World Cup Final was brilliant. It was a really exciting year even though he was a bit old. I went to work with Dr Klimke and really enjoyed that, but I really suffered badly in the winter. I couldn’t get comfortable. When you are not comfortable you don’t enjoy what you are doing, so I didn’t enjoy the training, although getting to know Dr Klimke is something I am so grateful I did.”
“I then went back to Bimbo’s, but again, I’d let Leo get away with too much by then and Livius was too old, I couldn’t really get into it because it was too late for both of them, I needed new horses for a second time round. Still we got a lot out of the trip, we stayed at Hans Gunter Winkler’s, so Simon learnt more about the showjumping, we met new people, we caught up with old friends, but from the riding side of it, I wish I could go now – because now I’ve got Gaucho, who is very close to Grand Prix and I’ve got two or three very nice young horses.”
“Actually I wish I could go next year. I also have a very good owner now, who is the part owner of Gaucho, she’s a brilliant lady and I have a little bit more support.”
“Bimbo has been coming out to us for almost two years now. Unfortunately Gaucho has missed out on most of the clinics because he fractured a splint bone – and then the other splint bone!
I can learn so much from Bimbo by helping other riders in the clinics. They all have individual problems but they are all still horses and what you do on one, you can always relate back.”
“I love to experiment, I’m not so hard and fast in the way I train. I’m not a strong rider so I have to take a lot of different, good approaches on board – because I can’t muscle the horses into doing what I want. I take a lot on board from what other riders do, if they have difficulties then I try to make sure I don’t run into those same difficulties. Bimbo has helped me a huge amount.”
“I’m a stickler for detail, I’m even a stickler for how horses behave on the ground because as soon as a horse walks over the top of you on the ground, he is going to do it when you are on his back – or try to at least. I just figure that when a horse stands in a paddock for twenty three odd hours, realistically you only have 45 minutes to ride that horse. In that time, you are lucky if you have 20 minutes to really put information into the horse, the rest of it is exercises.”
“As much as possible you have to do the right thing, there is not enough time to be doing the wrong things. Life is too short. You might as well try to do it to your best ability because it is so easy to get it so wrong. Yesterday is history, five minutes ago is history – you have to try always to do the best possible job you can. Sometimes that backfires. Leading up to the Nationals I tried so hard that by the time I got to the Nationals I was exhausted mentally.”
“I’ve got to get back into competitions again. I’ve had a big lay off, which was good, it freshened me up, I’d got stale. I almost got to the point where I didn’t want to compete again. I’d got out of the habit of it, whereas now I am enthusiastic again, but I have to make sure I don’t get too hyper. Simon is good, he is a good leveller, he brings me back to earth every now and then. I’ve always been that way, and you have to be like that to be competitive.”
“I don’t regret going overseas. I think it is very good for young riders, but it is hard, it is not easy over there. I’m not talking about riding the horses, I’m talking about daily life. It’s hard, but it was worth it.”
On Teaching and Training:
“When a horse comes into the arena, the first thing I look for is where I can make the easiest changes. There is a lot of pressure at clinics because in two or three days the rider is only going to have a couple of lessons, and you need that rider back at the next clinic – or you don’t have any food on your table next week! You want to give the rider something, you want to give the horse something. How can I make that horse better?”
“And I’m like that in my training. I don’t think I’m pig headed or I’ve got blinkers on when I train, but I look at the horse and think ‘how best can I mould this horse? How can I make him happier so he is more willing?’ I have to be very careful when I ride Gaucho because he is a bit of a lazy horse. Last week, he kept trying to break into trot in the walk. I thought ‘naughty horse’ – then I had to stop, and think ‘why are you losing your temper? Why get angry with him when you have just told him for 40 minutes that he is not energetic enough?’ It is easy for me to sit on the chair and teach – halt, walk on, halt, walk on, that’s easy, but when I get on the horse, I have to think, what would I be saying if I was sitting on the chair? I have to look in the mirror and be very strict with myself because my fuse is short when I sit on the horse – but not when I teach a rider. I’m no different, I’m not allowed to lose my temper or be hard.”
“It is the same as teaching Simon. I know it is very difficult when you teach someone who is so close to you, and in the beginning it was awful, he hated me being within fifteen metres of the dressage arena if he was riding. I thought ‘he’s not going to ride the horses for me if I speak to him too harshly or lose my temper’, so I just teach him more like I would any other student. If I can’t get somewhere on a horse, if I’m really stuck, I put Simon on. I can see things – he might not always know what I want, although he is getting better and better – but I can say do that, do that, do that. For me that is better than me hitting the wall. He is bigger, he is stronger, he has good feel (for a male!) and we are quite successful. Simon is really good at piaffe work, he is good at lateral work, he is getting better in the changes, although he still has a bit of trouble teaching changes. He does the clinics when Bimbo comes, Bimbo loves teaching him – he does all the piaffe work, and Bimbo is out the back with the whip because Simon can hold the horse. Sometimes you need a bit of strength.”
Glennis had told me she was a stickler for detail, and she wasn’t exaggerrating. Right from the start of Jackie’s lesson Glennis was riding every step her, a true rider-trainer.
Glennis and Livius at the World Cup final
The Lesson:
“Lighten the rein a little bit when you can, so he doesn’t always sit against your hand. Ride a little bit of shoulder fore past here in case he gets a fright. Then lighten the hand and let him go forward again, always increase and decrease of temp in the warmup).
Now a little bit forward again, half halt again, don’t let him run.”
On one of his first visits to Australia, Bimbo remarked that Australians warming up looked like they were going around and around like a washing machine. Glennis was certainly not letting Jackie fall into that pattern…
“Don’t half halt him to the point where he loses his rhythm – he must always half halt into the bridle, your hand is too strong and your drive is not sufficient, that’s it, a nice soft hand.”
“A little more contact on the left hand because to the left side he is not so good in his impulsion and his engagement, as he is to the right. You can’t afford to collect as much, but possibly more often. Be careful only to collect him to the point that the rhythm is still good in the canter or else you will teach him bad canter. You make him uncomfortable, he makes his back stiff and then he doesn’t like left canter and that’s not good. A bit more canter again, always increase and decrease, it should be like an aerobics workout, more and less. More and less, not always the same. If you only ever ride the same, the natural paces of the horse will get worse, he gets tired, he gets sore, and you lose the quality.”
“That’s it, always a little bit loose through the poll but not wiggling his head to the left and right, flexion, wait for a little while until he starts to soften, straighten and give.”
“Now go to a little bit of rising trot and that will complete your warmup phase. Same in the rising trot, a little bit of an increase, then a decrease, but when you start to collect him a little bit, you can only collect him as far as the rhythm stays good. Even if it is walk, even if it is halt, the horse still has to stay forward into the bridle.”
“Each horse at each level, has its collectability, depending on how advanced the horse is, depending on how much engagement and impulsion the horse has, depending on how supple the horse is, depending how balanced the horse is. Not too much bend, you can’t bend him to the point where his head starts to twist, especially in the double bridle you can’t afford to ride them behind (the vertical). They have to still stay a little bit out to the bridle, they can come lower but they are not allowed to come behind. If it does happen, because it can happen sometimes they come behind, then you give with both hands and give a little kick with the lower leg, or if they are too far behind the contact, a little kick with the spur. Then soft with the hands again.”
“Walk, change direction, sit up straight, you have to relax into the saddle for walk – if you tighten your knee or tighten your thigh, then you will bounce in walk, or slide backwards and forwards, sit up.”
“Try to look nicer on the horse, not uglier on the horse.”
“Not too much riding in collected walk, rather shorter times, then allow in walk again. It is easy to kill the walk, to squash the walk. In the walk you can ride half halts and changes of pace, no different from the trot or the canter. In walk with an advanced horse it is important that the frame determines the increase and decrease of tempo, more so than in trot and canter. With a young horse it is different, you need to allow more frame when you increase the tempo, but with an advanced horse it is not so necessary unless he is lazy, and then you have to allow a lot more.”
“Now begin the trot work. Start with shoulder-in, most of the long side in shoulder-in, and always remember to go straight at the end, because you have to put the horse back on the outside rein to allow you to ride a decent corner at the end. In the Prix St Georges test, you ride shoulder-in, eight metre volté and the half pass out. Today I want you to ride the shoulder-in until it is soft enough, make him a bit loose through the poll, not with the inside hand coming back too far towards the hip. When you want the shoulders to come in to the left, both hands have to come to the left – not the inside rein coming wide and back. It has to be shoulder-in, the shoulder has to be really inside of the hindlegs. In a lot of cases the rider uses inside rein for lateral work or to ride a turn, and what actually happens is that the outside hind leg steps out, so it becomes quarters out not shoulder-in.”
“That’s good, now you can ride your half pass – this is just an exercise half pass so you increase the degree of sideways. See now, the trot tempo isn’t good enough, so in that case your horse is not forward enough. In the warmup for a test, you should recognize if the trot loses quality, ride him more forward, then collect him and ride more sideways. You can’t ride lateral work that it destroys the natural paces, you have to ride lateral work that improves the natural paces.”
“See there, the turn to the left was too much on your inside rein, so the right hind leg was stepping out. Your inside leg has to keep him forward in the half pass. This horse has a bit of a tendency to lead with the shoulder, and trail a bit with the hind legs – so you always need to think that the hands stay a bit more to the outside in the half pass. That is, in your left half pass, your hands towards the right shoulder, so you can keep the hindquarters up with the shoulder. In actual fact, the shoulder is being kept a little bit slower. If the quarters trail and you push harder with the outside leg, you will still have a half pass that is not parallel and what you will end up with is your horse running.”
“Now a little bit more flexion, now a little bit less flexion, not so much that it is obvious to the eye, what I should see is the horse suppling in his poll and his neck. He has come a little bit too low so you give with the rein and push him up a bit. You have to feel what the horse is doing , don’t look at him, you ride too much with your head down, which again takes away the strength in your back, it takes away your seat, and it puts the horse behind your aids.”
Next right half pass …
“You have to give with your rein in the right half pass, if you keep him too much in your hand in the half pass, he comes too deep in front and then he starts to twist his head, you have to keep him more open, he needs less bend. Now lighten the hand and the poll can stay up, and his head can stay vertical.”
“Now rising trot to make him open again because he has had quite a few exercises in a collected frame. Then back again, shoulder-in, volté like in the Prix St George test. It has to be accurate. Sit up, if you hunch down, he hunches down. You have to be a little bit proud when you ride, show your horse, not like you are embarrassed to be there.”
The volté and once again the emphasis is on precise riding…
“Outside rein, outside leg, watch your space, half on each side of B, half halt, rhythm, half pass left, your head has to look at where you are going. Now the quarters are trailing because your hands didn’t come to the right. Do it again. Bring him up a little more again, always a little bit more through your snaffle rein to bring him up, give with both reins, a little tap with your leg.”
“Even when it is only a small thing, like changing direction through two half circles, it has to be correct. Your left turn was too late and the horse lost his rhythm through the corner, every turn you ride, every half halt you ride, is an important one. Tch Tch, the trot is starting to get boring, come on – expression. Poll up, but not losing the rhythm and now come to your half pass.”
And quality of the paces…
“Come on trot, he gets a bit nothing in his trot, we want a trot with some life, but not running – there is a difference. Impulsion and expression are very different to running and just fast.”
And then on to canter half pass
“Rising trot, then canter and first a half pass in the canter, and feel the half pass. Is he a bit lazy in the half pass, does he want to run sideways? If he is lazy in the half pass, then you increase the speed, and then you collect again, then you increase the speed and you collect again. If he is a bit fast, then maybe you even have to come back to walk, and then canter on again. You have to experiment always. What feels good? What feels comfortable? How can I make this as good as I can possibly make it for today. Now you have too much inside rein so the horse is starting to twist his head – so you have to straighten him a bit in the neck, even in the half pass. Put him on the right rein, then flexion again. You have to remember to give your inside rein, it’s not up to him.”
And flying changes…
And so it goes, this is instructing from the inside, from an instructor who spends as many hours in the saddle as she does on the ground shouting instructions. That fact gives a very special, very precise flavour to the instructions: “half halt, increase the tempo before the flying change, you can feel the deterioration before I can see it. Every horse has a certain speed at which he can carry out a good flying change, and no two horses have the same speed. If you ride it too slow, the change is flat and lethargic, or he doesn’t change. If you ride the tempo too fast for the flying change then he is too flat and too much on the forehand, and he is too much in your hand. So you have to find what is a good speed to make a nice jumping flying change, not a running flat flying change.”
“Collect and lengthen to refresh the canter then collect again – not so much, don’t ride more than you can collect. We want to ride him forward but we don’t want to waste energy on medium canters. He is an eleven year old horse, he knows medium, he doesn’t need to do medium for sixty metres.”
“I don’t discourage a little bit of anticipation on the part of the horse – at least then they know what is coming, and that you are not going to pull any surprises on them – but if the horse anticipates badly, then he is basically not on the aids.”
“Okay now let’s work on the three times changes. Start round about the quarter line, because the third change should be at X. You did seven, not five, the marks come down when you do too many, they don’t go up. Try again, the first one on the quarter line, the third one at X – there you are, spot on.”
And finally the pirouette…
“Walk and take a little rest. Now the hard one for you is the pirouettes. This is an exercise for you, because pirouettes are new for you, and he is difficult to the left, so we make it simple. We are not allowed to bend him to the left because when you hang on the inside rein, the quarters turn out. So let’s walk, and put the quarters in. There you can feel, he is ignoring your half halts, so we exaggerate the half halt, we tell him, ‘I really need you off my outside leg’ – now we let him go straight, on to a large circle in canter. He is listening to the right leg, what he is not doing is listening to the half halts. What we want to drive home is the fact that you say ‘come here, sit on your hind legs, this is what I would like’. Pirouettes are very difficult for the horse. I would rather practice ten pirouettes on a circle, even though they may only appear as quarters in, because I want you to do the mileage, I don’t want his joints to do the mileage. That’s it, now forward again, forward before he starts to labour and you put too much strain on him. You have to do the mileage not him, so we try to make it easy for him but harder for you.”
“Go on the diagonal from H to F and when you are near to X where you want to do your half pirouette, walk transition, half circle in working walk, and you are back on your line for H, canter to it. This is purely a rider exercise, you have to work, you have to use your inside leg, and get a straight line, but you have overridden your line. This hasn’t cost the horse anything, but what it has done is taught you that you didn’t use that inside leg. Walk, half circle return. The walk pirouette is less pressure for him. Less physical effort for him but it lets you make mistakes without putting him off, without losing his enthusiasm. Immediately the half halt, outside leg, good and canter. It gives you time to ride some more transitions, it gives you time to find your line to F, transition to walk, the half halt coming into walk is lacking, so what that tells me is that when you come into your half pirouette you are going to give him one aid – and what happened yesterday? He stopped. And that is exactly what is going to happen today, he doesn’t know we want walk, it is only because you tell him, there is no anticipation if you are correct. That’s why it is a good schooling exercise for you, because you have to tell him if it is walk or if it is canter. Now we do it once more. The horse has to be on your aids and you can do one walk, two canters, one walk, two canters, in those pirouettes and he should listen to you. It should not be the horse deciding what to do – that is not on.”
“Think where you are going to ride the half pirouette, you have to plan ten to fifteen metres ahead. There are certain rules that apply in every single movement that you ride. The first rule is your line, the second rule is your preparation. Look at the difference that time, you didn’t lose your energy and you didn’t lose your line. It’s like driving your car – if you want to drive down the road, then you would not be looking at the dashboard, so don’t do it on your horse.”
Back to an exercise to help preparation…
“First prepare on the twenty metre circle, this is purely for you. You are a highly skilled businessperson, before you do a job you probably do eight hours of preparation for it. You get on your horse – you are dealing with another living creature who can’t read minds – and you think within one second he should know you are going to do a half halt and a canter pirouette – that’s impossible.
Canter, now half halt and quarters in, you want his shoulders to relax, both hands go to the left, yeah, when you are on the right canter lead, the left rein half halts him and the left rein keeps his collection, collect and quarters in. Outside rein, I don’t see the outside rein working. Even if you use a bit of outside flexion for one or two strides to help you to engage the left hind leg.
Walk, quarters in, IMMEDIATELY, that’s not immediate, and walk the circle again. There’s a lack of attention to the aids, so the application of the aids must be questioned.”
“Canter on, half halt, let him sit there, you have to get used to the feeling where he starts to canter on the spot . It doesn’t feel like working canter, it feels like canter on the spot. Now let him forward again. When you go on the diagonal you have to watch that you don’t try harder than necessary, your aids have to be discreet. Your aids have to be clear. You keep him thinking, what would the rider like me to do next – he is not allowed to take command. He has to be thinking, and positive, but never in control. He has to think, what does the rider want? Whether it is half pass or whether it is a flying change or a pirouette.”
Then back to the diagonal again…
“Sometimes he can do what you want accidentally, and that shouldn’t be punished, but you should be aware of what he does. Why are you looking down, the ground has no signs – ‘this is where you do the pirouette’. See there you started the pirouette too early, he was too short in the neck and there were mistakes in the collection. If there is a mistake in the collection on the straight line then you should ride the canter straight and forward again. When you are schooling you are allowed to go a little bit further.”
“We have made a little group of the exercises. We have made the line across the diagonal towards X from M, one part, then we have made the turn and the pirouette, another part, now we’ve made the riding out another part, then there is the counter canter, then there is the change. You can’t jumble them all together.”
“Super, you could feel him almost stop, but do didn’t quickly attack him with your aids, you quietly went ‘I’ll have another stride, and I’ll have another and another, now I’m finished, and now I’ll go out. But what did you do, you leaned forward, you looked at his front leg, and what did he do? Kicked up behind! If you are on the forehand, why should he be off the forehand?”
More on good changes…
“Now we want medium canter across the diagonal, then we want collection, then we want him a little bit forward again for the flying change. You can begin your medium canter at the three quarter line, because we only want the end part of it, we don’t want to make him tired. There look how nice a change you got.”
“If you are still busy collecting the horse and you ride the flying change, your change will always be downhill.”
“If you are riding again into the corner where he just shied, then make an exercise out of it. Horses will sometimes do that, they pick a spot on the arena where they get a fright – then you turn that into an exercise – then your collection comes earlier, you say ‘hey horse, come on the aids, listen to me’ then you can give him the confidence to ride the corner.”
“Now you can ride a walk pirouette either way, but I want a working pirouette, on the long side and I want it at least one to one and a half metres – I want working walk so to speak. No that’s running – that one is better. He loses his balance, then he loses the rhythm, that’s good, he should almost feel like he could piaffe, not from tension but from activity. Good now give him a long rein.
That’s the feeling you want, that he comes under himself. Always the hind legs have to step under the body, when they step out sideways or behind the body, then the base isn’t closed and the horse can’t carry weight on its hind legs. At Prix St Georges level they have to carry weight on their hind legs. It’s not an option any more, it is a necessity. If you have a horse that wants to run in the walk, then you ride a lot of curved lines so you don’t have to hang on to the horse’s mouth. If you have a horse that is a bit short in the walk, then ride less curved lines and turns, more straight lines to encourage him to step out. If they run, you halt.”
And finally some words and a cup of coffee beside the arena…
“Jackie basically came here as an ex-eventer. In England, she was quite a successful eventer, but riding event horses is a bit different from dressage horses. Eventers have to operate on three levels, so it is hard to put in enough concentrated effort into one discipline. Jackie is quite ambitious, and she wants to ride Grand Prix and so she has to learn a lot of things well. She doesn’t have four years to learn a good half pass, the pirouettes, piaffe and passage are going to take up all her time. She has to learn to coordinate. We have days kwhen I say ‘left’ and she goes right. And that is difficult, because with counter changes of hand, it has to happen now, it is not allowed to happen in three strides. So Jackie is being put under pressure to learn to do it now, to get her body to respond in a way her body hasn’t had to respond before. Suddenly it is like ‘whoa’ this is a whole new thing. She has come a long way… with her flying changes, she had half halts and no aid, then we had an aid with no half halts.”
“Jacky is quite a strong rider and when I said ‘put your leg on’ she took me quite seriously and we had hand gallop across the arena, then I said, do a half halt and it was like ‘screech!’ hand brake on. Now she can ride fours, threes and twos – she hasn’t started on the ones yet, that’s our next step.”
Jacky reflects on her lesson…
I came to Australia about three years ago. I was born in New Zealand, and successfully went through Pony Club. I had a great year the year I turned twenty, and won the area dressage – at that time they didn’t have national dressage. I worked for Inland Revenue at that stage, and they allowed their workers to go abroad for two years, leave without pay, so I thought I’d go to Britain. I worked for a dressage rider there for a year, then started working for Vodafone – and ended up staying there. I rode a couple of eventers. I had a lot of fun with one of them, but then he had to be put down, and after that, it was like ‘ok let’s go home’. Vodafone was putting in the same system in Australia as they had in the UK, and they asked if I would come over. It was have a job, have an apartment, have a car and we’ll pay your air fare. It was lovely but I missed riding. A friend took me around Centenial Park a couple of times and so I was back riding – but dressage, because it is so much cheaper than eventing, and you don’t have to put the same amount of time into it. But I thought, if I want to do it, I want to compete and compete well. I don’t want to just go around in circles.
OK, what do I need? I need a good horse. I looked at a couple of studs and told the people exactly what I was after and I ended up buying a horse from Kinnordy, and Holger Schmohl recommended that I go and work with Glennis Barrey. He said, I don’t want you to take the horse until you’ve got a nice place for it, and unbeknownst to me, he kept phoning Glennis and Simon, saying, can you tell her to come up to your place. It took about a month and a half before I brought him out here because I was hoping I could ride him more often – but we work project work, and getting up at five in the morning before working a twelve, fourteen hour day, getting home at eleven, then getting up again at five, was just a bit too much – and for the horse as well, I wasn’t riding him the way I wanted to, so we got out here eventually.
I needed an advanced horse because Meister was very green, and I needed an Advanced horse that I could learn the movements on rather than me trying to sort myself out and sort the horse out. We looked around for something that could do changes, extensions – that sort of thing – and found Woody – BT Spellbound – and he has been brilliant, really great. Glennis said to me not long after I arrived ‘we’ll have you competing in tails by the end of the year’ and she was pretty much right. Woody arrived here on the 23rd of December and he has gone from Elementary/Medium to where we are doing our first Prix St Georges / Inter 1. It’s brilliant, very exciting.
It makes a difference riding here. I only ever ride under supervision, if Glennis is away, then Simon is around, and so bad habits never develop – apart from the ones I started with, and they get corrected as soon as they start to creep in. That’s why I think I have improved so dramatically over the past year.