Good afternoon this is Will Faeber from Art2Ride and I am going to give you an update on Mr. Murphy after a few requests have come to us to see more from them.

He has had about seven or eight lessons under saddle after working her on the lunge for a few months, getting her to stretch into the contact, going quite nicely, calming down and not being so over reactive about everything. We just finished lunging her getting her into a nice place even after having a few days off! She was a little excitable but she settled right down in a reasonable amount of time, maybe a little longer than we would ultimately like. It took about thirty minutes today when we would like to see her calming down ultimately in ten or so, but that’s alright.

Dave is working on the concept of maintaining contact: getting her to accept the contact with his legs, sending her forward and learning to maintain contact with the mouth of the horse. Now he needs to stretch up a little bit and get his upper body up a little bit, very nice! What people have been asking me that we are going to answer today is: What do you do in order to get the horse to stretch? What Dave is doing is he is trying to keep the slack out of the rein. When the horse’s head comes up, all it takes is slightly more pressure than the weight of the rein. The horse will not want to feel that contact against his mouth and he will start seeking ways of getting out of that contact. Zoey starts to canter there, but Dave is going to bring her right back down to the trot again not making a big deal about it or anything and is certainly not going to slam her into the ground, he is just going to quietly bring her back without getting the horse over excited. Often people create their own problems because they themselves get excited, when what they need to do is to be in that very zen mind so to speak when you are on a horse. Nothing must affect you, you must not get emotional or angry.

Dave has brought her back nicely and now he has her back into the stretch and reaching into the contact with the bridle. Dave is a pretty big man for this horse who is 15’3 even though she is  stout and stable, when he first started to ride her you could see that she was really struggling with his weight and getting her front end off the ground. Now she has no trouble at all, only after a couple of months of conditioning. We have also seen her belly come up quite a bit, she looked like she had quite a hay belly when we first started.

A car just drove by and that upset her to some degree but compared to what that would have done a few months back when she would have gone into a fit, it is a big difference. Dave is able to bring her right back, he has his contact and is once again working her back into the stretch. So every time she comes out of that contact, he is not going to fight her back into it, he is simply going to follow upwards with his hands and let the horse feel the contact with his hands. As the horse seeks a way out of the bridle, it will try up and down, and when the horse seeks downwards we simply release that contact so the horse finds the open door. The open door being the one that stretches down and gets them in the position that we need them in order for their body to operate correctly, bio-mechanically so to speak, which Zoey is now starting to do.

Dave hasn’t stopped her at all, he keeps her working. He stays quite and doesn’t make any big demands resulting in her stretching beautifully into the trot. We hope this helps, and we will see you next time on Art2Ride!

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