Megan Jones continues with the re-education
of her flighty ex-racehorse, Monique.
Photos by Sarah Reed.

Well here she is, I haven’t given her the sack yet - in fact she is actually growing on me, she has really settled down.
She is still being fed Winergy Calm, chaff and meadow hay and there have been no adverse changes in her temperament when I increase the amount of Winergy she is fed. I am working her quite hard and have even taken her to a few dressage days, where she has behaved like a lady and actually placed in a few tests!

You will be pleased to read that Monique has progressed extremely well since the previous article. I can now get her out of the shed and get on her without coming close to death. She can also trot and canter around the arena on a fairly loose rein and she is actually stretching down to the ground and starting to get her own rhythm. She is still a little sensitive to my legs, however I only need to touch the outside rein and wait with my body now if she runs. I don’t need to halt and start again any more. Yes we have progressed, but now I need her soft.
What is softness?
Well, to me (and this is only my opinion of softness - everyone has their own ideas), softness is when my horse can go left, right, slower, faster, backwards, forwards and sideways without running or stiffening. She must stay round and soft to my legs and hands, if I feel her side with my left leg more than my right leg I expect that she will ‘give’ to me on that side. This softness to the rider’s aids is not something the horse studies by itself whilst growing up in the field and playing in the clover. However, you do sometimes see people at competitions cursing their ‘stupid’ horse, I just giggle and wonder whether that rider believes their horse must have skipped the ‘softness to the rider’ classes at foal school!

Oops, who said dressage was boring! I nearly took a close look at the arena surface during this early attempt at leg yield!

The horse needs training, clear training - not mumbled instructions that are very difficult to understand then a smack in the mouth for not being psychic and knowing exactly what the rider is asking. If the aids are very clear and simple and the horse doesn’t respond you can back up your aid/leg with a tap with the whip. But please do not flog your sensitive horse - it can take months to work back the trust your horse once had in you!
I think Monique is ready to start some lateral work, nothing too fancy - just good old leg yield on a circle. I choose to do it on a circle because she is still a little sensitive to my leg and I can keep her a bit steadier on a circle.
I did experiment with some leg yield on the 3/4 line to the outside track, however I was right in thinking it would cause problems - she just got hot and confused and tried to run away down the long side. I abandoned that idea fairly quickly. I then moved on to leg yield on the circle and found Monique could cope a lot better - without a long side to take off down. Doing it on the circle makes them work a little harder than normal and it gets them soft and around your inside leg. Don’t forget every horse is different and if one exercise is not working think of another way to do it and if possible, get some advice from someone.

For this exercise I now need a little more contact than I have had over the last few weeks. The stretching she has been doing has been into a fairly loose rein with very little contact. What I want to achieve with the leg yield is for Monique to accept a contact, not run away from my leg and to be soft and round. When I slowly made my reins shorter Monique got a little tense and tried to run away, so I just waited with my body, then relaxed again and Monique relaxed too. Once my reins are at the right length and she is quiet I start the leg yield exercise at the walk.

Now she is getting the idea of the leg yield.

First I work on riding the circle off my outside aids and looking a quarter of a circle ahead rather than pulling the inside rein to get her around, basically controlling the outside shoulder. Then I try a little leg yield off my inside leg, being careful not to lose her outside shoulder. At first Monique actually stopped and tried to step backwards and outwards (I think I tried to stop her outside shoulder from falling out too much), so I softened reins and rode forward out of the resistance. The next time I asked I made sure my outside rein was a little more alive and light.
Every time she gave me one or two steps of leg yield I gave the rein to her and rode forward and straight out of the leg yield. I continued this until I could ride 4 or 5 steps at a time. I did this on both left and right circles and it didn’t take very long before Monique was stretching, soft and round before, during and out of the leg yield.

She is stretching softly into my hands, but is still rump high and on her forehand.

Now on to the trot, you can use the leg yield to make a nice transition by asking for trot when coming out of the leg yield. At this stage I don’t mind how deep Monique goes as long as she is into a contact, round, soft and forward.
In this nice soft deep frame I did some leg yield at the trot exactly the same as in the walk. By using the leg yield I can adjust her trot - smaller steps as I go into leg yield, and longer ones as I ride forward out of the leg yield. I did lots transitions to walk and forward to trot again all before I even considered going into canter.

After a few transitions and some leg yield Monique has come up through her withers and is beginning to engage and come off her forehand into a nice novice outline.

So when I did canter it was relaxed, soft, round and felt great. I have to work very hard at staying in the saddle in the correct position when Monique canters, because she has a slightly roach back and every stride throws me forward and to the outside of the saddle.

I feel like I'm jumping a drop fence, I had better do some transitions - within the canter and in and out of canter.

I need to keep my weight down into the inside stirrup, keep tall through my torso and feel like my inside seat bone is almost off the saddle to the inside.
Then I have more chance of keeping the power in the canter, going forward and not escaping through her outside shoulder because I’ve let it, by not sitting correctly.
I’ll spend a few days now (or more!) making Monique really soft and round through the leg yield exercise and transitions. If she ever gets upset I can always just go back to long rein work for a session or during the leg yield session. However, I’ll never stop using transitions. Don’t forget a transition does not have to be from one pace to another, it can be done within a pace (i.e. smaller trot to larger trot and back again using some leg yield to create activity in the smaller steps.).

I should sit more to the inside of the saddle before I fall off!

Make sure you don’t get stuck on the same exercise, be artistic and find out what variations on the exercise work best for your horse, the more keys you have to your horse the easier it will be to ride them out of resistance and into softness.

Ah, finally I have my balance and she has hers and we have a nice canter.

In next month’s article we may even get a little adventurous and begin jumping Monique! Finally, just a passing thought, if anyone has any good ideas to get Monique’s tail white I’d love to hear them; I’ve tried just about everything short of bleaching her tail (which I don’t want to do) and I can’t seem to get it really white!