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We meet Lisa at one of those Florida horse complexes that have made Wellington the equestrian centre of the USA – the extremely beautiful Marsh Pond Farm, where she is working with the owner, Jacqueline Shear and Galant, her seven-year old Escudo \/ De Niro gelding.<\/p>\n
Lisa is riding, Denzello, a ten-year-old Hanoverian, owned by her Canadian friend, Betty Wells. The bay is by De Niro out of a mare by Rohdiamant, the stallion that Lisa rode in World Cups when she was based at the famous Vorwerk Stud in Oldenburg.\u00a0Denzello is working towards his first Grand Prix start, with only the ones left to master.<\/p>\n
Now either Lisa has got smaller since we saw her last, or this is a very big horse. He is! Eighteen hands, but it is amazing how quickly he finds his balance with the petite blonde in the saddle. Lisa had warned me before she got on, that the warmup might involve some work with the horse\u2019s nose behind the vertical \u2013 and it does \u2013 but this is a far cry from the pulling back behind the vertical with the spur dug into the horse\u2019s side.<\/p>\n Lisa is flexing the big horse, in \/ out and now into shoulder-in, and shoulder-in in passage, the transition to passage so seamless that I wonder if it is the horse\u2019s own idea? \u2018Not so – mine,\u2019 Lisa, tells me later.<\/p>\n Suddenly the big, slightly dopey looking bay is starting to dance. And Ernst\u2019s teaching style is classic European. A word here or there, a jawohl<\/em> when it happens right. Ernst is teaching in German, he once explained to me that he would hate to have to teach in English because there are just not the words in that language to convey exactly what he means. Really we could be back in Oldenburg, at Cappeln, except for the palms and the Everglades in the distance.<\/p>\n The horse is showing some wonderful big rhythmic piaffe, how could I have forgotten how beautifully Lisa sits? She is so centered in her core, so supple through her back, her calf so beautifully just brushing the horse, when they go into a pirouette, I am reminded of the famous photo of Podhajsky, the body position is exactly the same\u2026 little wonder I guess, since Ernst learnt his craft in the tradition of Podhajsky and the School in Vienna.<\/p>\n Now Ernst is on the ground with the long whip. There is no drama, the whip is barely touching the horse, it is all a matter of exquisite timing. The first passage is a bit piaffey, Ernst moves further away, and the movement comes slower and looser, now it is truly passage and Ernst is just walking beside the horse.<\/p>\n How subtly Lisa brings the horse back from passage to piaffe, the aids are truly invisible and when I remark how subtle the change is, she laughs\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cThanks I\u2019ve been working on that since I saw you last. The goal in Ernst\u2019s training is through the core, and a very light help with your lower leg, and I am squeezing my fist, squeezing, relaxing the ring finger. I\u2019ll balance him on my outside rein, release the tension in the inside rein periodically by relaxing in the elbow, allowing my arm to go forward and creating a bit of a loopy rein. When I feel him lose his balance, then I\u2019ve got both reins evenly weighted again to help solidify and regain the balance.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe key is \u2013 no rhythm mistakes, and for that, the quieter you are with these big animals the better, because it doesn\u2019t take much to throw them off balance in that degree of collection. The quieter I am the better, through my seat, my leg \u2013 no over-aiding, quiet aids. It all depends on how much I feel he is in front of the weight of my seat, my core is 80% of my driving aid, if I can balance my core weight directly over my hips, my seat bones become properly weighted to then produce an effective 80% driving aid. If he comes behind my driving seat, my outside leg must assist to activate the outside hind leg in a tactful way that does not disturb the balance or rhythm of the horse. This is why it is important to be ahead of the situation and be there with my driving leg before the loss of impulsion disrupts the movement and the horse falls on the forehand.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTry to be ahead of the feeling you\u2019ve got, if they get imbalanced, then they start to hang on a rein, and the minute they\u2019ve done that, they become hard in your hand \u2013 that\u2019s what happens when they get behind your seat. When you have them through the poll, elastic in the throat latch, and it\u2019s all soft, that\u2019s when you have fluid flowing energy from the hind leg to the contact \u2013 from back to front. You only get the block of energy when you feel him hardening to your hand for a second, then I have to use precise technique and come with short, quick, tactful impulses with my leg because I don\u2019t want to produce balance or rhythm issues. You want to come with the appropriate aids to correct, rather than coming too much like an elephant in a china closet and you just ruin the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n When you started coming out of the piaffe work with Ernst and went to passage, it was really advancing piaffe, and it was so interesting that when Ernst backed off, the rhythm became slower and it was more truly passage\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cRight now with this horse, where he is in his learning phase, he is a little stuck in his balance and often he can\u2019t come out of the piaffe yet. He\u2019s trying to figure out what to do, so the rider\u2019s thought process is think trot <\/em>leaving the piaffe, he\u2019s not going to lose all that suspension and really go off in trot, he is just going to begin to passage. And you need to take that time and space when you are developing the horse, they can\u2019t be pushed in the transitions. The transitions are very valuable points, and they are the ones that are most critical.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOnce they are in a movement, okay we\u2019re stable, it\u2019s the transition in and out where it gets tricky and they need that strength and balance. That\u2019s when the rider has to be on the aids and quiet, and wait, patient. You have to be patient, and if it takes you ten metres to get out of piaffe, and you are forward in advancing piaffe until it becomes passage, then the horse goes ah <\/em>click! Pat good boy. Okay I get it\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThey are trying to figure out the transition, and it becomes more difficult the more expression they have, it gets fragile.\u201d<\/p>\n But lots of people don\u2019t recognize the difference between advancing piaffe, and passage\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s right and that\u2019s why there are a lot of frustrated horses. You get horses that just stop. They are held into the piaffe and kicked, rather than allowed to find their balance in piaffe. I remember back when I was riding Relevant, I had just taken over the ride from Nicole Uphoff and started showing Grand Prix, my piaffes were quarter line to quarter line because he had a severe panic of being on the spot. In order to re-train that thinking, I let him go forward, got my 4s, and then went into passage. He was a happy camper, and I was very happy that he was happy in his test, and it wasn\u2019t about the score, it was about re-training the thinking in that particular area of the test. Allowing him to advance, he took a big deep breath okay I\u2019m not trapped any more\u2026 <\/em>He had all that power but he wasn\u2019t in a place to be able to understand how to keep it there, and especially with the rider.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0Lisa and Relevant competing at the 2002 WEG in Jerez<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWith Ernst, the proof is in the results, and especially with the in-hand work, that can be a very tricky thing. The horse I rode today is electric to anyone on the ground, so I never have asked anyone to help work him from the ground. When his owner, Betty, was riding the horse once, she found herself in a frightful situation, where the horse was whackety whacked by someone with no feeling. What is so important is that distance between the horse and the person on the ground, there is a lot going on there\u2026 Monty Roberts stuff that we do naturally being horsemen. If you are watching their eye and they are a little worried about you, you back out to zones where they become more comfortable. You watched Ernst change the parameters all the time depending on what he was reading in Dino. I didn\u2019t have to tell Ernst, oh back off something is coming up, no \u2013 he can read the horse and he appropriately places himself, and you see the horse relax.\u201d<\/p>\n The first passage you got on the wall out of left trot shoulder in, was that his idea or yours?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cMine, because I was losing the shoulder and the control over the right side, he was drifting, and I was getting rhythm issues, and no fluid forward, he was crooked. Often what we will do then is piaffe or passage in shoulder fore. To get control of the outside shoulder, and that is what dressage is really all about. The outside shoulder is how you steer a horse, if it is the pirouette, or the half pass, anything we do, I shoulder-fore first, now I have the shoulder I can go off in my half pass.\u201d<\/p>\n It was interesting last issue, we had a photo of Podhajsky in pirouette, and when I looked at you in pirouette, it was I\u2019ve seen this before\u2026 there is a pole through the rider\u2019s body\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThat is correct. I like to think of it as a pole through my shoulder, my hip and my heel and if I am tracking left, my left or inside seat bone becomes more weighted by my stepping with two thirds of my weight into my left stirrup iron, creating bend in the left side of the horse\u2019s vertebrae. He is skewered, through me, through my seat bone to my heel, and he canters around that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At the beginning you were joking about rolkur, but with you it is different because of your timing\u2026. I find Ernst such an incredible trainer, after all these years are you still learning more? Ernst Hoyos, one of the great masters of in-hand work, prefers teaching in German\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n They must hate Ernst here in the United States, he says one word every five minutes, and Americans are so used to the continual running verbal diarrhea\u2026 I can remember Ernst saying to me once that he didn\u2019t want to teach in English because the words were just not that, that in German there were half a dozen words to describe what was happening in a half pass\u2026 And you train in German with Ernst? I was amazed and horrified one time, when one of our dressage team members who was in the ill-fated Ulla training camp before the Aachen WEG, said, oh yeah, the piaffe man came to visit! I thought I guess that is why you ride so badly because you can\u2019t even see what Ernst has to offer, and that is why you will never get any better. The real thing he teaches is the seat\u2026![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/1BendMore.jpg\")
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\n<\/em>\u201cCorrect, the giving of the hand. Sometimes when not so educated viewers, see the horse behind the vertical they think it is rolkur<\/em>. But I\u2019m with you, what I do is not rolkur, it is getting a horse through and over his back by softening and releasing tension in the base of the neck muscles, encouraging them to reach or lengthen the neck to the contact, not hide from it.. You have to go a little behind the vertical to get that done but it\u2019s the feeling, the timing, it\u2019s not holding them and locking up the base of the neck so the back drops. I\u2019m looking to release the base of the neck, so the back comes up. I want the bow up into me, not to brace and hold and have the false break of the neck, and the chin on the chest. To do that would be completely against what I am trying to achieve.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>\u201cYes, still advancing. You\u2019d laugh but there are many times when I\u2019ll go that\u2019s what he was talking about, <\/em>all those years ago. I think you can better your balanced seat through a strong, elastic stable core. Every horse you ride confronts you with your weaknesses, they\u2019ll bring them out of you and show you where you are weak. Some horses are perfect for your balance, and some horses are not balanced and show you where you are not balanced. I\u2019m working every day on my seat with every single horse: that I stay bi-lateral, that I have as good an outside right rein as I do an outside left rein.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/em>\u201cHe hates it when he watches me teaching \u2013 \u2018You talk too much.\u2019 But what I have found is that it is very difficult in our language to have a precise lesson, and you end up having diarrhea of the mouth because one word in German takes me a paragraph. Losgelassenheit, jawohl. <\/em>So I get to explain that in English, it\u2019s tough.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>\u201cAnd in half a second. This is something I\u2019ve worked on, how I can most closely translate with the fewest words, that\u2019s been my teaching goal. It is not easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>\u201cNo question, I would always want to train in German with him, because it is so quick and to the point. He has to learn a little English for when he is teaching my clients, and I will sit on the sidelines and translate if I think I see their eyes glazing over. He\u2019ll say ‘Loosen your Ober leg, <\/em>upper thigh, or halbe parade, <\/em>it\u2019s a half halt, but it is good for them to learn the German.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/em>\u201cIt\u2019s everything we do, it is real horsemanship and understanding each individual horse and working within that horse\u2019s individual mental capacity so that it would like to do the job. Like the mare I ride, I try to get a smile on her face every day, and Ernst knows how work with that \u2013 she can\u2019t be worked for a prolonged period of time, you\u2019ve got to get what you want, give her a pat, give her a rest and let her know that was what you wanted. Dig a little deeper than the surface, on each ride we have.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n