Great Riding tells its own story…

Story Christopher Hector Photos Roslyn Neave

Our time with Jen and Johan is coming to an end but there is still one more treat, Jennifer is back in the arena now, this time on a five-year-old San Amour / De Niro stallion. It’s a nice engaged trot, forward into the contact, the rider’s hands a little wider this time, but just as still. The horse looks a real De Niro, a trifle bored with this lower level stuff, waiting for the hard bits to show what he can do.

“What is important is always to leave the door open,” says Johan, “When you pull the reins, you close the front door, but the horse needs an escape – put his neck a little longer, and a bit lower, and then he can go forward and open that front door.”

First Johan discusses these pictures:

Johan is once again using the photos Roslyn took on our first visit to make his point: “The Damon Hill mare from your first visit, they are such nice photos that I use them often. Most times when you stretch the neck, they fall down in front, but here you can see in the photo, the neck is a little bit too short, but her right hind leg comes to the ground earlier than the front leg, she is a little bit up hill – that is the right way to stretch the neck. When you make the horse longer and you give him more rein and you keep the contact, you develop a longer neck, and then it is possible for the horse to stretch his hind legs under his body, like in the canter photo where the hindleg is nearly to the girth, and that is riding for me.”

Here is the San Amour/De Niro in 2012, just after he had completed his licensing, and what Johan had to say about him then:

“I bought him in a foal auction in Germany. I liked the bloodlines but also the topline connection – the wither to the back to the loins to the croup. His negative point is his neck, it is long enough but it could be more up from the wither and cleaner on the bottom of the neck. The most important thing to look for is a body in good proportion, with an uphill tendency and connected from the front to the back.”
“One of his problems is that he is so big. He is 173 cm and he grew three or four centimetres last month. That takes a lot out of them, he is really muscled more like a three-year-old than a two-year-old.”

The stallion is now four and a half, and we watched Jennifer work him while Johann was teaching. Jennifer is a photographer’s joy – no waiting for the right moment, even corrections are examples of how it should be done.

I asked Jennifer about her warm up, with some very angled leg yields…

“It is difficult for him to give his body – he does everything, but it is as if he is holding his breath. I make him a little quicker, do walk trot transitions, push him a little sideways, push him to use his body more, then after I have a different horse. He is maybe not the most spectacular in the movements but I think he is going to learn all the work because he is really smart.”

more follows…

You were doing almost the beginning of working canter pirouettes with him?

“For his age, he doesn’t have to do this at all, but I also use that exercise to get him to use his body, because otherwise he holds himself. So I have to collect him more so he has to bend the hind legs, touch on using the muscles of the back, touch on using the muscles in the body, so he starts to give.”

“You need him to relax and give his body, stretch his neck and stretch his body, but he does it in his own time, so I have to collect him, push him sideways, ask something from him and then get the relaxation out of that.”

“I always give him a break and a stretch in between, because he is still very young. He learns so well, I ask him, but then let him relax so he likes it.”

In the trot work you were almost doing half steps?

“Exactly. He is a little bit high behind, so I ask him every time in the training to bend his hindquarters underneath him, then I get more movement through the body and more suppleness. He doesn’t have to do half steps, but he does them as if they were nothing. He knows it and thinks okay, I can do it. He is a really nice horse to ride.”

“He is five this year. Because he is so young, I do a lot of longer and looser work with his neck, and play around with him, he should feel like a young horse and stay happy in the work.”

We also talk about Jennifer’s transition from big-city girl in Amsterdam to dedicated horse trainer in the countryside…

There you were with nice cultured parents who play in the most famous symphony orchestra in the world, and everything was fine until they picked the wrong baby sitter…

Jen is laughing at the memory of being taken to the Amsterdam stables by her baby sitter: “Yes, we lived close to the concert hall in the middle of the city. I actually did two operas – with school I did a lot of singing, so we could audition for the opera as children. I did two, it was really great fun, but then it was only horses, horses, horses.”

“I was eight or nine when I found horses. I was riding once a week for a while, in a lesson on ponies. The first year I was really afraid, I was riding on the oldest pony, I think it was 28 years old. It was really cool and easy, and a girl had to lead him the whole lesson, and trot with me, because I was really afraid – then all of a sudden, one time the girl said, next week I cannot come, but then I did it on my own and all of a sudden, I was like, I’d like to ride that horse, the quick or really naughty pony… now I want to do that one. After a year I was riding all the ponies.”

When did you quit school and go with horses full time?

“When I was sixteen, I thought okay I don’t have to go to school any more, and I never went back. I was 24 hours a day doing the horses. I was riding horses for people in Amsterdam, out near the airport. When I was sixteen I went to work with Egbert Kraak, he was a dressage dealer, really high quality horses. I wanted to go there because I wanted to learn a lot. Actually when I came there, I was just the pony girl, I didn’t know anything, but I was there for two and a half years, and I really worked and rode some fantastic horses, and learned a whole lot. That was the beginning.”

“Then I started going to the Equestrian School in Ermlo once a week, and after I finished the school, I worked by myself for a while, training horses and teaching seven days a week. I was having lessons with Johan, and he asked me, ‘why don’t you come and help here’. I started here and liked it really a lot, now I am full time here, riding most of the time, and giving a few lessons. I came here in 2002.”