With the spotlight on young horses this month at Dressage & Jumping with the Stars, Roger Fitzhardinge gives us his top five exercises when training them.
Every young horse is of its own type, mentally and physically. There are no set rules as how to train the young horse, but there are basic principles. The most important thing is to not overtrain the three- and four-year-olds. Never overtax their limbs, never make the exercises more difficult than they can cope with.
With horses that are totally accepting of riders and are very keen to get on with the job, you must remember to go slowly. With horses that are hot and excitable, first you need to think about their minds, not about their physical ability, but just about getting them to accept the rider’s weight and aids.
It’s important not to take the will to work for themselves out of young horses. In the past, Preliminary and Novice tests were judged on quiet horses doing nothing. Unfortunately, this is detrimental to producing a Grand Prix horse, as Grand Prix horses need to have spirit and a feeling of wanting to do the work for themselves. With this in mind, it is really important to allow the horse’s expression to come through all the work and not to trounce on this expression and squash it.
1. GO AND STOP
Of course, the first and most important exercise is to go and stop. There are horses that are very forward and then there are horses that are very backward – so, depending on the horse, you need to make certain that you keep this desire to go forward and to come back on an even level plane, like a seesaw. You don’t want more forward desire than you can contain, and you don’t want a backward feeling that there is nothing to contain. Like Carl Hester says, “emptiness is not lightness”. So especially with the young horse, you must be very careful of this.
I would work young horses in either a round yard or arena in the beginning, and one of the easiest exercises to train a horse to slow down or stop is to turn them outwards into the rail. So, when you’re on the left rein in a round yard, if you ask the outside rein and they don’t come back to you, then turn their head towards the rail and use your voice as encouragement to “whoa”.
If you’re in the 20 by 60 metre arena and you’re going around on the right rein, don’t always go and ride into every corner, because the horse eventually thinks “if we get to a corner, I just turn”.
So, sometimes you go down the long side and five or six metres before the end of the arena, you ask them to come back to you, and walk and halt. And if they don’t, you just keep straight and keep going towards the wall and keep them really straight and make them realise they need to make the downward transition. Don’t turn the corner, face the wall.
In these exercises, it’s important to note that it’s absolutely not about running the horse into the wall; it’s gently turning them and using that visual cue to help them understand the message.
2. TURN ON THE FOREHAND
The next exercise is to introduce the first of the lateral work; a little lateral work early on is important because you need to encourage straightness. A good exercise to begin with is the turn on the forehand.
So once they halt in the corner of the dressage arena, bend a little bit to the outside rail; with your leg on the same side, push the quarters around. They can’t walk forward because the rail is there, and they have to move their quarters away from your leg.
The most important thing with training any horse at any stage is that their reward is lightness and no contact, lightness and no aid. So, doing nothing is a reward for the correct response.
3. THE LEG-YIELD
Once you’ve mastered the turn on the forehand, the next exercise is to do the leg-yield. The horse flexes a little away from the direction it is going and moves away from the inside leg. It’s easiest I believe, once the turn on the forehand is established, to do this in trot on a circle by decreasing the size of the circle and then with the inside leg, increasing the size of the circle.
The most important thing is that if you put yourself in the position of the horse, and you as the horse would have to say what the rider is doing to make you go sideways, the answer is using an inside leg. Too many riders don’t realise that when they leg-yield, they increase the flexion. This is just falling away from the bend and flexion and is not leg-yielding. The horse must stay straight with the tiny flexion to the inside and move the inside hind leg out.
It is important on both reins, but of course a horse has a stiff side and a hollow side, especially young horses, and always the stiff side is the easiest one to ride on. So if a horse is stiff to the left and hollow to the right, when you are going left you do a lot of leg-yield. When you’re going right, I would put a lot of counter flexion and make certain that the horse listens to that outside rein and you don’t lose the balance and the feeling of the pushing power from behind by letting the horse become too flexed and falling across the aids.
4. TRANSITIONS, TRANSITIONS, TRANSITIONS
Next exercise, of course, is a million transitions… walk to trot, trot to canter, canter to trot, trot to walk. They don’t need to be round and short in their frame like a Grand Prix horse from the beginning; they need to accept the bridle, take an even contact, not be too light, and certainly not be heavy. But as you make a downward transition you must feel that your contact with the reins allows you to bring the horse back over the hind leg. If the horse pushes at your hand and gets his neck longer and opens more at the poll, this will create a feeling you’re moving forward onto the forehand and is not required. So make certain that in downward transitions, the frame – that won’t be short at this stage – stays the same and then gradually becomes a little more collected in every downward transition.
5. VARIETY IS PARAMOUNT
For me, one of the most important things with the young horse is to have fun and enjoy them. You need to encourage them to go on rides, you need to encourage them to do trot poles and cavalletti work – depending on the horse’s attitude and temperament, it all varies. But you must keep the work interesting and you mustn’t work every day in the arena and get them bored! EQ
