When we last visited the stables of Jorn and Martina Hannöver-Sternberg, we were lucky enough to witness the first steps along the road to a competition career, of an exciting prospect, Remember Me. Like so many of Tina’s horses, the three year old Remember Me is by Rubinstein, the stallion she took to Grand Prix fame, and he is out of a mare by Inschallah, making Remember Me a full brother to the handsome greys, Rescue Me (now in the United States) and Reach Out (now in Holland).
Jorn had ridden the youngster for about a month, and now his education was being progressed by one of Martina’s team of five girls, an exceptionally sweet rider, twenty year old Susie. Even Martina was impressed with how the horse went for Susie, and decided it was time for her to try him out for herself for the first time. He looked lovely with Susie, fantastic with Tina. The young Rubinsteins don’t usually show much of a trot, but this one can stretch a bit even at this stage, and for a baby, he has such lovely natural balance.
Martina looked really happy as she came into the walk from the trot, then suddenly felt something she did not like and shot the horse forward again. This happened about ten times until she was absolutely sure that the horse was still forward in his transition to walk.
“Even with a young just broken in horse it must always go forward. Even in halt you must think to have the horse in front of your leg. The horses have to learn this, even from breaking in. We saw that especially with Boyd (Martin, for Boyd’s story of his time at Martina’s you’ll have to wait ’til next month’s magazine) when he was breaking in a few horses here, he wasn’t interested in having the horse round at first, just in front of the leg going forward. Later the horse needs to go into the hand and then goes round and down, without being afraid.”
As Martina finished riding the young horse, she gave it back to Susie, and as she lead it away, gave it a little tap on the bottom with her whip…
“When you lead in hand them they must be forward too. In the material class you have to show them in hand in trot, for the vet check also. Actually the horses move on hand like they will with you on their back. So if you walk along with the horse all strung out with his neck up, he will be like that when you ride him. Whatever you do with the horse you are always training it, so you might as well train it to be right.”
“This horse has been ridden for four weeks. At first we lunge them, and lunge them really through so we aim to build up their muscles, and learn that the whip and the bit don’t hurt them. They learn to be round without having a rider on, and we do this for as long as they need.”
It was interesting yesterday, when you were giving Boyd a lesson on the young Argentinus gelding, you were saying there was a point where you had to move from just getting the horses to go forward, to getting the horse to go forward into some contact?
“When the horses trust you, and you can get on them without them getting tense, you can walk them and trot them – then you should start to keep them round. You cannot just push and push with your leg to go forward, you must feel where they arrive. What you push, the horse must arrive in your hand, to make the horse round, and through and listening to the half halt.”
“To get the young horse to stretch, I put my hands a little bit wider, I don’t really know why I do that, probably it is from the lunging, they are used to the reins a bit wider and they can balance much easier. You can help them all the time, and they learn to go straight and balanced, and after a little while, you can put your hands more together.”
“Especially with the young horses you can feel more and more how they trust you. They are used to the side reins when they are lunged, and if I put both my hands on my legs, but I am still sitting with both my seatbones into my hands, both hands even.”
“When you are breaking in, some horses are afraid and run away from the rider, and we just take our time so they trust us, just get on, walk a few steps, get off again if they are tense. It all depends on the horse.”
“At the moment because it is so cold, and the outside arena is frozen, they work only inside, but still we take them out for walks in hand, and when the weather is better they will go on our little racetrack. They trust us; they like to go outside with us. I don’t ride the young ones so much. Like with Remember Me I will ride him once every two weeks and in between, the girls will ride him, just so he gets used to the rider and gets conditioned. He’ll have fun and still be relaxed. No-one is thinking, he must be a Grand Prix horse in five years, it is just playing around, but in our indoor, playing around is still respect and work, and no rest in walk…”