The Art of Natural Dressage

Hello everyone!

I have been silently reading, but decided to write you something anyway. My name is Mies and I have been crazy of horses practically all my life. Although I never owned my own horse, I have helped others (mucking stables, riding). The last couple of years, my interest in groundwork was sparked. With the horse I have been working with until now (I know her little over a year now), this interest grew into something more than 'just' riding with barebackpad and ropehalter with previous horses.

As she is not my own, I feel awkward to put pictures here - although I can tell you she is beautiful ;-) This Rheinlander mare is/was very sensitive, sceptical and easily spooked. She had a lot of backproblems (which have been taken care of now), but moreover she had some emotional problems. I have been focusing on relaxation, and helping her understand (a) it is ok to have an opinion (b) to think before running. After almost a year of groundwork we slowly now started riding her, which is brilliant. Moreover, I was able to show the owner we were even more advanced than she realized, as last week I rode her with just a neckring.

Now we can begin asking a it more from her (before, she got tense as soon as she had the idea of 'working', now she is enjoying our time together as everything we do is playful), and I thought it might be a good idea to look into some exercises that fit the way this horse has been showing me!

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A good rider can hear his horse speak to him. A great rider can hear his horse whisper.

Welcome, Mies!

Great that you have joined the forum. Kirsten (KDS) also has a horse with backproblems and she has a very large diary for her, describing in lots of detail how she is working with her. Perhaps you will find some interesting information in there. I hope you will enjoy the forum and I am looking forward to reading more.

Best wishes,
Romy

Hi Mies and welcome!

Are you from Holland?

Kind regards,

Josepha

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www.equusuniversalis.com

Welcome Mies!

Sounds like you're doing great. Nice that you prepare her so well for riding.

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Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

thanks! So nice to get such a warm welcome!

Yes, josepha, I am Dutch - completely forgot to mention that :-P
Thanks for the tip, I will go and check out kirsten's diary!
Next Sunday I will drive to Belgium to watch a clinic given by Jossy Reynvoet, a student from Bent Branderup. He rides with an adapted rope halter, should be interesting... Maybe I'll write you a small story of how it was and make myself useful here ;-)

grtz Mies

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A good rider can hear his horse speak to him. A great rider can hear his horse whisper.

Hi Mies,

Well, if you can visit Zutendaal, you could perhaps also visit us in Riemst

www.taonara.com 20 minutes from Zutendaal.

Hope to meet you one day

Josepha

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www.equusuniversalis.com

Haha, small world!
Now that's something I didn't expect

I'll look if it's doable, would be really cool to meet you indeed!

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A good rider can hear his horse speak to him. A great rider can hear his horse whisper.

Ha, you lucky Benelux guys! You can actually meet!

That would be very nice indeed if you can write a bit about it. I just looked him up and saw the halter/bridle you mentioned. Interesting all-in-one solution

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Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

Austria is not that far Volker
I need to look you guys up... Lidia and you... wish I had time... could visit the SRS also...

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www.equusuniversalis.com

BTW, We already have an interesting all-in-one solution since the 17 century that is soft and kind...

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www.equusuniversalis.com

?

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A good rider can hear his horse speak to him. A great rider can hear his horse whisper.

I guess Josepha is referring to the vienna cavesson, which looks like this (without metal in the nose piece):



Not sure about the all in one, but then I guess that depends on what you define as "all". For example for me the main advantage of rope halters is that you can simply put them into your pocket, so when I first started going for walks without a headstall, it was ever so easy to take the halter with me and make me feel that I had something to use just in case...

Or when the horses were in pastures where I had no house or caravan nearby, I could simply hang my tack into a tree and leave it there instead of carrying it to the pasture every time, which I certainly would not do with a leather headstall. This may not be relevant for people who have their horses in or near a stable all year, but for us this was crucial back then when I still used halters and had my pastures spread over different villages.

So in sum, I guess I like rope halters simply because they are so practical. I don't know how well you can do in-hand work with them, but that's just because I have never done the kind of work you can't do without a special headgear. Others will know more about that.

You're always welcome here

I thought about it as well - it's all-in-one enough for most things. And if you go for an allround tool you usually end up with the lowest common factor.
BTW this is the halter I was referring to:


But I don't want to take up more of Mies' introduction here - sorry for that Mies!

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Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

This is the Jossy Reynvoet headstall? I only knew it like in this picture and then thought it looked quite nice actually.

Mies, I am looking forward to your clinic report as well. I have never seen JR in person, just heard from some people who have trained with him.

JR himself uses the halter of the first picture:
http://www.paardencoachnatuurlijk.be/media/te-koop
It's with two reins.

I've seen him and a student of him and they were riding with that.
But I suppose he uses in the beginning just something without the hackamore.

I'm also looking forward to your clinic report!
I've heard several thing of him, bad and good things. But I've never had contact with him and I don't know very well his approach.