From: "Wendy A. Scepanski"
Hi Jessica!
Thank you for the excellent advice on getting my horse, Duke to yield to leg pressure. I will try out everything you said, and it all makes perfect sense to me. Another minor problem we've been having is that he is more difficult to bend in tighter circles to the left and more difficult to move in larger circles to the right. I've always been careful from the day he was born to do everything equally on both sides, so it must be something unconcious on my part. I now have a tendency to give in rather than try to correct the problem, which is bad because it's leading Duke to believe that it's correct. What are your suggestions in dealing with this?
Wendy.
One: your horse is one-sided. ALL horses are one-sided, to one degree or another. It's natural -- that's why good trainers work so hard to make their horses equally strong and supple on both reins.
Two: you are one-sided. ALL humans are one-sided, to one degree or another. It's natural -- but unless you ride or ski or swim or skate, or do some other sport at a level that makes you AWARE that you have a dominant and a non-dominant side, you probably won't ever think about yourself this way.
Test yourself: try crossing your legs the way you don't usually do it; try putting your telephone on the OTHER side of your desk; try eating or writing or brushing your teeth with your other hand. Walk up a flight of stairs, or down one -- then do it again, but start with the OTHER foot. It will feel "wrong."
One of the best things you can do to help your horse develop equally on both sides is to try to develop YOURSELF equally on both sides. You can do exercises out of the saddle and in the saddle -- and just being aware of the problem will help your riding.
Watch yourself carefully when you ride, or, better yet, get your instructor, or a friend with a good eye, to watch you. You'll almost certainly find that when your horse makes those circles in one direction, your inside shoulder is NOT as far back as it should be -- or indeed as far back as your inside shoulder is when you circle to the other direction. Your shoulders and hips must stay parallel to your horse's shoulders and hips -- and you can lead the way. You will also, almost certainly, find that when you work in one direction (which tends to be YOUR soft side too!), you drop your inside shoulder a little -- but when you work to the other direction, you don't. This alone will guarantee you larger circles to the other direction!
Sometimes this sort of problem comes down to something as simple as a tiny weight imbalance -- the kind that can result from uneven stirrup leathers. Check yours, especially if you haven't been changing them from side to side each week. You may be surprised to find that one is quite a bit longer than the other.
If you determine that the problem is simply that the horse is stiffer to one side, here's one more thing you can do. If you know that you won't be interrupted, time your work so that you work both sides equally, and work the easy side first to warm up and stretch the horse before you work him to the harder side.
If you aren't always careful about how long you work, or if you are likely to be interrupted, work the hard direction first -- that way, if you ARE interrupted, you'll have done that side at least!
Don't worry about Duke believing that something is correct or not correct. Like all horses, he is doing what you are ASKING him to do -- which may not be what you WANT him to do, or what you THINK you are asking him to do... but this simply means that if you are dropping your shoulder in one direction and getting smaller circles, he is responding to your aids and GIVING you smaller circles, and when you sit up and control your position and ask for larger circles, he will give you those. From his point of view, there's no "wrong" or "right" or "correct" or "incorrect" -- there's just what you ask for, what he does, and whether he gets a pat afterward.
Jessica
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