Good morning this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride here with Frauke Murphy continuing their training. Frauke has been working with this horse for about a month now getting her to stretch on the lunge line and doing the same thing on it’s back, and I wanted you to see how nicely she has developed since then.

When we look at Frauke we can see that she has a very nice leg position, but she needs to just stretch her shoulders back. This will happen over time, this is only her third lesson with me. She will begin to get those things straightened out as she gets her horse straightened out. Every time her horse starts to come up, she needs to be sure that when she softens her a little bit that her shoulders don’t come over with it.

While this horse has had many years of training, the mouth is still quite busy, so we are going to change the bit in the horse’s mouth. When she takes up the contact, the horse is opening it’s mouth and letting her tongue out a little bit because she has never learned how to accept contact, so we will see that changing. You can also notice that she has no foam in her mouth, she does not have any moistening in her mouth and does not take the right contact, but she will in a very short period of time I’m sure. She is improving nicely!

If you compare this video with the one I just posted from 4 weeks ago, you can see that this horse is moving quite differently than it was only 4 weeks ago. What I have been talking to Frauke about is when she drops her shoulders, it makes the horse want to stop on her. Frauke needs to get her shoulders up and back a little more , which will not happen overnight. That is one thing that a lot of people don’t understand, you can’t put someone on the back of a horse and ask them to change something and expect it to happen overnight. Technique happens over time. For example: you can’t sit down at a piano and be expected to be able to play, you can look like a concert pianist but that doesn’t mean you are going to be able to play like one. Very often people do the same thing with a horse, they pose on their backs and when we look at the horse it is like an instrument that it is out of tune. If we get the horse in tune, what I usually find is the rider’s position once they work towards that, they will have to get the horse in balance in order to get that happening. The horse’s head comes up again so we are going to send her on and back into that nicer stretch. She gets a little lazy there, so Frauke sends her on getting a little more active and swinging over her back a little more. Beautiful!

This is Will Faerber from Art2Ride here with Frauke Murphy and we will catch up with them later on.

classical foundation San Diego horse training shoulders stretching topline training Will Faerber