Cheryl Meisner Open House

Cheryl Meisner is a very talented and accomplished Nova Scotia dressage rider sponsored by John Risley, a  successful Nova Scotia business man. She trains and shows in Europe and is currently back in Nova Scotia for a period of time. She's Canada's 5th ranked dressage rider I think. She and her sponsor did the open house today at his beautiful facility in Chester (for free) - so nice. There was a great turn out and everyone loved it.
Although only in her mid twenties at the time, she narrowly missed being on Canada's Olympic team in 2008. Here's a bit of background on that.
She rode a 31/2 year old schooling training level and a 10 year old Grand Prix horse, Tango. Both were beautiful. She talked as she rode, explaining her training as she went and it was really interesting, informative  and helpful. I was really happy to see that her horses were in front of the vertical. I watch training videos (dressageclinic.com) and almost all the horses, even three year olds, are well behind the vertical). I want to write down some of the key pieces while I'm thinking about it.
I loved watching the GP horse perform. He is so talented and 'on'. She went through a series from 4 tempis to 3 tempis to 2 temis to 1 tempies, crossing the diagonals one after the other for each set. There wasn't a second of anticipation or a foot set wrong. Each series was perfect. Wow. So often I've seen horses start to anticipate in the tempis and change on their own. Not this horse and rider. Also, she makes it look easy.
What really impressed me was that she rode the GP horse in a single bridle in the same very mild snaffle bit she used on the 3 year old, and this horse is quite hot and in Cheryl's own words "not an easy ride". He went perfectly though - many wow moments. I've seen it suggested that upper level horses shouldn't be required to wear double bridles in competition and I have to say I agree. Actually, while I'm on that topic, it would be great if bits weren't required at all if that's what the rider wanted.
The young horse was my main interest. He was very forward, so I asked her in the question period if he'd always been that way, or if she'd trained him to be that way. She said he started very forward, then backed off and didn't want to go forward (a buck, a kick at her leg when it went on, etc.) and she corrected him strongly and quickly (a strong kick I think is what she said) and he got over it quickly. She said when you nag at them with half hearted corrections the problem doesn't get fixed and then you're in a situation of small corrections all the time.
He was such a sweet horse for being so young. It was his first time in front of a crowd of people and she got on and rode without even lunging him and he was super.
I noticed he was cantering like Rogo does sometimes. I don't know how to describe it - he threw his head a bit (Rogo's only done that once, a couple of days ago), and he seemed not to be that steady at times. Seeing another young horse do this made me realize it's just a natural young/green horse thing, not a problem.
Cheryl talked about the importance of forwardness and how lack of forwardness is the cause of most problems or trouble. Keeping the young horse forward and keeping the head up is the key to stay out of trouble with a young horse. When asked what one of the biggest challenges of training a young horse is, Cheryl responded "fear", which got a big laugh. It made me feel better, because I've sure felt that at times when starting Rogo. If a rider like her faces it too, I guess I can forgive myself. She did make clear that this young horse doesn't trigger fear because he has a very good mind (as does Rogo).
After the open house Doug went home and I went to the barn and rode. To make a long story short, it evolved at the barn that we're going to bring our horses home the end of March. Yeah! Rogo was great:

• I lunged him and his trot is really improving
• Trot under saddle could have been more forward, but it's improving
• He's very good at bending
• Contact needs more work, especially in the canter, and somewhat in the trot, but we're working on it every ride
• Canter transitions up and down are slightly improving, but need work
• He did a great canter across the diagonal and change of lead back into the canter, three times in succession. We hadn't done this in a couple of months so I was happy with that
• We did a little shoulder in and it's coming slowly (be we don't work on it much)
• He has the leg yield at the walk now, but not the trot. Boy this is painfully slow, but coming.

That's it. Thanks for all the great comments on the past post. It was fun to write and I'm going to follow up on some of the ideas.