Ingrid Klimke Clinic

Today Doug and I audited the Ingrid Klimke clinic in Truro that Joanne Dustan (Nova Scotia Dressage) organized. We're so lucky to have the quality of clinicians she brings in, here in Nova Scotia. Last year she brought in Steffen Peters - can you believe it?
Ingrid of course uses LOTS of cavalletti in her training. There were mostly dressage riders in the clinic, but some eventers too, which I was really intrigued by. Can a mid 50's woman who's never jumped take up eventing? Maybe the most introductory level? No? Damn. To digress for a moment I do want to learn to do just low, basic jumps, because I think it would be good for both Rogo and I, but that's another story.
Back to the clinic - I'm not educated enough to interpret it in detail for you, but here are some key points that Doug and I took away:

• do lots and lots of transitions - trot walk trot with only ONE walk step, canter walk canter
• put cavalletti at the 1/4 points of a circle and count your strides between them to make sure your strides are rhythmic and even in either trot or canter. You can also set the cavalletti higher and go 3 strides between, four strides between, three strides between, four strides between, etc. by regulating the stride length and steering more to the inside or more to the outside of the circle / cavaletti. This is a good exercise for eventers to control stride length and control steering at speed, but would be good for any horse and rider.
• school canter pirouettes by coming out of the corner doing canter half pass to the far quarter line followed by a 6 m circle in travers. Do this several times, then ride a half pirouette. Focus on the rhythm and quality of the canter more than keeping it small.
• A recurring theme was to release the inside rein on the circles, something I need to do more, especially to the left where I still hang on it too much
• When schooling changes, if your horse starts to anticipate and change on his own, make sure your aids are saying 'no', until you say 'yes'. Reduce the number of changes to 3 (i.e. 3 three tempis, 3 four tempis) and concentrate on getting three correct changes rather than trying to go all the way across and having the horse start changing on his own. Don't collect too much - let the horse go reasonably forward.
• to help a young / greener horse do canter walk transitions, try cantering 10 m figure eights, with 2 or 3 walk steps to change direction. We watched her working with a 5 year old Friesian stallion on this exercise and is was striking how quickly he went from not being able to come close to a canter walk transition to almost nailing it.
• Here's a picture of him. I LOVE Friesians to look at. I don't expect I'll ever own one. Stunningly beautiful as they are I'd rather spend my limited time and budget with a warmblood if I can, simply because most are better suited to dressage. But boy, I'm sure glad others ride them so I can watch! Come to think of it, I think Jane Savoie rides some Friesians, so I guess they can do dressage just fine  :) This guy just may have been the most beautiful one I've ever seen.

 And here he is going over the cavalletti, with Ingrid in the background (phone photos, sorry):

In other news, I start my lessons with Sue Fraser tomorrow, on Rogo. When the vet came to take out the stitches he decided he needed five more days off, so he's been there getting settled (the wound was still a bit open). Rogo's been off for over three weeks except for three or so short bareback rides, and I've been doing very little riding. Soooo, I'm a little nervous to jump right in, but how else will we get going again? We really need lessons from a skilled teacher right now and Sue fits the bill. It's over three hours to make the round trip, so I may stay in the living quarters in the trailer tomorrow night. I have lessons Mon., Tues., and Thur. this week. Let's hope that trailer furnace is working well!
Here's a picture I took when riding Savanah on the beach the other day:

These are a couple of the horses that live next door. They're in with cows and this is where Rogo had his terrible cow fright :) He'd only been to the beach a few times so when they ran over to look at him it threw him for a loop.
I was very proud of Savanah on our ride. She was bareback (she's so warm and comfy I can't resist) and I aasked her to lengthen, shorten, lengthen and shorten her canter down an open stretch and she did it perfectly! Twice! This is a challenge as she loves to go forward and an open beach on a crisp Nov. day brings out the 'go go go' in her, but she stayed perfectly on the aids and responded brilliantly. We're so lucky to have a safe, sensitive, forward horse like her.
Hope everyone had a good weekend.