Fully Developed Working Trot
Good morning this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and today I wanted to give you an update on Amber and Legolas.
Legolas is just beginning to come into a new frame and is beginning to develop collection. As you can see in the video, he is able to stay up in the bridle and is not breaking over in the third vertebrae and is thrusting much deeper. Go back and compare earlier videos of Legolas and you will see that he was going a lot faster in his footfalls but without nearly the depth of suspension that we see now, that is the depth of compression of the hind legs. No matter how much we ask the horse to collect, you always need to come back to the full length of the stride.
Amber demonstrates a complete working trot where he is staying up completely over his back, not really collected yet but to the point where we would start to ask before too long. Notice how his head can come up without over-bending the neck. When we first started this horse, he was very over-broken in the neck and every time you tried to bring him up, he would curl his chin into his chest. He is looking beautiful now and looking very lovely on the weight of the rein. Beautiful job Amber! It is so much easier to sit to the trot because now he is carrying the rider. This is the longest amount of time that we have asked Legolas to hold in this frame.
People ask me how long does it take to do this? Amber had this horse for a year after I found him for her, and spent that time basically stretching him. After a year of that work, look how ready he is to come up. All horses need that year of foundation work, it doesn’t matter if they are 2, 4 or even 20. It takes the same amount of time to get them there. Once again, notice how there is no overflexion in the horse’s neck. Go back and view the earlier footage of this horse and notice that his footfalls were about thirty percent faster than they are now and he wasn’t tracking as deep under the body. Now that has developed the necessary strength, he is able to come up. This is the first day that we have seen a full working trot of this horse. His whole topline is engaged and he is active and deep carrying the rider beautifully with no resistance.
Once again, this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride here with my associate trainer Amber Matusek and we will see you next time!
Beautiful work! 🙂