It has been all go at the farm this week with Dressage lessons with Nancy Kleiner and Showjumping lessons from international trainer Chris Ruysen from Belgium.
Chris and his friend Hilde are in the USA for the week and visited Fairland Farms on Wed morning for a lesson with Tesouro and I. I immediately felt very comfortable with Chris’ teaching style and knew that it was going to be a very productive ride. His training philosophy is very much centered around correct balance and training on the flat and he has so many wonderful gymnastic exercises that can be used to challenge and improve horses and riders of all levels. From the beginning to the end of the lesson, I felt that the quality of our canter had improved ten fold and I was also thinking and planning so much further ahead, an essential tool for successful coursework and just riding in general… I was so thrilled with the progress we had made and how many great training ideas Chris had given me, I asked if he would mind if we got another lesson in before he leaves. He was happy to do that and very kindly offered to come back Friday morning. Luckily they were staying in a hotel not too far away from us so it worked out well.

Thursday afternoon we had Dressage lessons scheduled with Nancy. I have to tell you that I was slightly sore from the lesson with Chris but still very much looking forward to my two lessons. The thing that I love about Nancy is that she has such a great eye for the slightest details on the rider’s position and how it is affecting your horse. Not only does she recognize these details but her explanations on how to correct things are really easy to relate to and everything just makes so much sense. She is a library of great information and i try and video as many of our rides as possible so that I can remember everything from the lesson. I think being a little sore from the day before definitely didn’t help my riding but I did get a few glimpses of the ‘feel’ that I need to work towards so now I know what I need to practice this week. I intend to get a lot of practice in this week to make sure I show her some decent improvement in lessons next Saturday.

I decided to ride Emmie with Chris on Friday morning. I was really excited to see what type of exercises he would do with her, since she rides completely differently to Tesouro. During the warm up Chris really emphasized the need to be able to lengthen and shorten the trot and canter whilst keeping her really active. He also reminded me to keep a lot of variety in the exercises so that she really had to pay attention and wouldn’t start guessing what was coming next. We then moved on to a gymnastic exercise with poles that incorporated what we had already worked on in the warm up but added a new degree off difficulty, requiring more accuracy with a combination of lines, smaller turns and varying distances between poles, all whilst maintaining the power in the canter. We continued to some exercises over fences, again the focus remained – the quality of the canter and also control between the fences for more positive strides to the second fence. Again, I felt like we had achieved a great deal and it was also a great opportunity to get to know Emmie better with some exercise that has been new to both of us.
I am very excited that we are looking into a few date options for a full clinic with Chris this summer so I will confirm those as soon as we have something official. I think everyone will really enjoy working with him and it will be a fantastic learning opportunity.