Charlotte Dujardin works on forward with Bonnie Kingsley and a six-year-old Friesian stallion, Braggo. In The Netherlands, the stallion had been a harness horse, now he was being trained for dressage. And the session works on the Basics – surprise. Charlotte works on exercises to develop an essential basic – forward.
Charlotte is not a breed snob: “This horse looks really fun – how good will his piaffe / passage be with his pushing hind legs and great front legs. However he has got a tricky neck, so up and naturally on the bit, we have to work on getting him to drop and stretch, so the neck is not so tight. Friesians are tricky in the neck because they are carriage horses and get a strong under neck.”
Charlotte asks Bonnie to ride a leg yield from the centre line, but is unhappy with the horse taking charge of the movement: “First ride a diagonal line, A to S, ride the diagonal straight first, then ask him to go sideways. There she let the horse fall sideways rather than going forward and sideways. You have to stay in charge of how much sideways. The whole time, he is trying to take over, trying to get to the wall quicker than Bonnie wants him to.”
“He wants to rush sideways, most horses want to hug the track, this exercise gives the rider control.”
Charlotte jumps on and demonstrates how much deeper she rides into the corners, that’s discipline. She tells us it’s the job of the rider to maintain suppleness and contact. “Often when the rider says the horse is ‘lazy’, it’s actually the rider who has made the horse dull. You’ve got to allow the horse to go forward, the contact is there with your horse, but not enough forward…”
And Braggo was learning to go for a bit of a burn:
“When I touch him with my leg – FORWARD – straight away. See how much quicker he is now after three times. If you leave your leg on them all the time, they get more and more dead and lazy. Touch and forward. They have to react from the smallest aid, when you get to Grand Prix, you just want to steer.”
“I’m going to try a flying change. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t look pretty at first, as long as he does one side to the other. Never tell them off if they don’t do it perfectly or they will become afraid of doing changes. Okay, he just changed in front, how you start doesn’t matter, at home I’d use a little whip to bounce him through.”
Never tell them off if they don’t do it perfectly or they will become afraid of doing changes… Valegro showing Charlotte’s system works.
