| Bluebird Lane Blog |
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On September 14, Ooruk and I had a really nice training session working with my coach Summer McEwan.
Luckily Stefan was home to take this photo series, which provides a nice snap-shot of our on-going work towards developing improved balance and self-carriage. These concepts have really been the theme of our training this summer!
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This still feels like a fairy tale to me, even now! But it’s true! Today I rode in the Ontario Has Talent training symposium, primarily for FEI dressage athletes, taught by Olympic medalist Ashley Holzer together with FEI 5-star dressage judge Libby McMullen. What an amazing opportunity it was, and I am ever so grateful to the Ontario Has Talent group.
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I had the opportunity to ride in a clinic with German dressage trainer Christian Garweg today. Christian boasts a very impressive resume of both students and teachers, and in January this year I went to watch him teaching a nearby clinic. I found him extremely perceptive in his ability to quickly zero in on what a combination’s “core issue” was, as well as innovative and effective in his recommended exercises to make improvements. He struck me as one of the most “outside the box” dressage trainer I had ever seen.
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One of my favorite techniques for successfully motivating myself, as well as for troubleshooting just about any problem – all the way from horse training to health issues – is something I call “Ask a Better Question”.
Here’s the thing. If ask myself a question like, “Why can’t I get motivated to do my stretches every evening before bed?”, my brain starts searching for answers, and it comes up with all sorts of things, such as:
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If we’re giving out medals for the most effective tool that a rider has for improving their horse’s way of going, the gold would have to go to “Transitions”. The humble transition has the ability to improve the horse’s balance, build his strength, increase his adjustability, as well as tune his focus on, and his reactions to, his rider. The secret to gleaning these benefits from transitions is (no surprise!) all in how we ride them.
The truth is (and this can either strike you as a sobering fact, or a liberating realization) you are one of the most important factors in your horse’s way of going.
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There’s this philosophical argument called Sorites Paradox, also known as the paradox of the heap. Sorites (pronounced so-rite-ees) is a Greek word that simply means “heaped up”. The argument goes like this:
Suppose someone dumps a large sack of rice on the table. On the table now sits one heap of rice. Now suppose you take one grain of rice away, and set it at the other end of the table. How many heaps are there now? One grain of rice can’t be said to be a heap, so there is still just one heap, the original one. Now take another grain of rice, and relocate it to the new spot. We get the same conclusion, two grains is not a heap. The same with a third grain, and a fourth.
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It was years ago that I first heard about Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin is an autistic woman. She also holds a PhD in animal science, is a professor at Colorado State University, a designer of humane cattle handling systems widely used in meat-packing plants throughout North America, the author of a number of books, and is a popular and sought-after lecturer and consultant.
But I didn’t know all that when I first heard about Temple Grandin. It was simply the title of her book, Thinking in Pictures, that caught my attention.
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I’ve never worked a horse in a round pen before. It’s not that I thought it was hooey or something, I’ve just never needed to. And honestly, a lot of the round penning I had seen looked like a great deal of running the horse around for a long time on a small circle, and that I didn’t care for. It didn’t look good for their legs. But at a more basic level, with all the horses I’ve started, I’ve had my technique and it has worked for me. The Fjord horses I work with are, by nature, pretty low-fear, high-intelligence animals. I start by teaching them to lunge in my indoor arena, and they easily pick the concept up […]
Lori seems to bring out the strengths in every horse, and works to nudge away any problems. Every horse in the barn was unique and she was working with each of them to create living, breathing, trusting works of art…
I realize this note makes Lori and Bluebird Lane Fjords and Bocina sound too good to be true, but over the last few months I have been consistently amazed, even though I already knew I’d connected with one of the great Fjord farms.
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