Bareback work

I managed to stuff my foot in a boot last night and clambered up on Coriander for a bareback ride. I've decided that I need to ride bareback a lot more: I need to work on my balance, my terrible habit of being too stiff while I ride, and I want to really *get* seat aids. I also want to be comfortable trotting bareback, right now I bounce all over the place and can only go about five steps at a time (there's that stiffness again), but I'm bound and determined to be trotting comfortably bareback by next year.

I also decided to incorporate clicker training into my riding every once in a while. I've never done that before but I want to start teaching Coriander how to do more difficult maneuvers than just go, stop, and turn and I can't think of an easier way to do that than clicker training. There will also be a side benefit- he'll get in a  stretch every time he reaches around to get the treat. Right now he's so stiff to the right he can barely grab it and tries to compensate by using his teeth; I had to be really careful of my fingers.

I mostly concentrated on our no-rein halt, getting bend while turning and a teensy bit of lateral work. I'm really proud of our halts, all I have to do is sit up tall and stop my seat and within a stride he's stopping soft and square. The interesting bit is that after I started clicking him for stopping he began to give me collected halts all on his own! He was tucking his quarters, rounding his back and raising the root of his neck- it was awesome.

I also tried for some real lateral work with an actual sideways step. I know that this is a particularly difficult maneuver so I was happy with just one step in each direction, mostly I just wanted to know if I was cuing him correctly (another reason for being bareback).

You know what? I'm going to veer off here. I've thought quite a bit about aids and training horses to listen to the aids. I've decided that the aids are actually a pretty simple concept: they involve using weight and pressure to best follow the laws of physics. The problem is that a simple concept doesn't always translate to simple execution. Execution is pretty darn hard actually, especially if the wrong aids have been sewn into your muscle memory for years.

Whenever I moved to a new place in the past I always made a point of intentionally getting lost. I found so many places and things I never would have found if I'd stayed on the same route all the time. My approach to horse training has been along the same lines. I try stuff and see what happens. I don't see myself as training my horses so much as allowing them to train me. They're going to follow physics no matter what I think I'm doing. What I ask for is what I get, even if I really wanted something different.

I knew I should have kept that physics minor, even if it would have bombed my GPA.