After temperatures near 90 degrees last week, a cold rain on sunday with the mercury hovering around fifty, and a couple of hundred horses schooling cross-country at the Kentucky Horse Park was a recipe for some friskiness! It was important to stay alert to avoid accidents, which may have helped to add some adrenalin to the schooling sessions, which I always used to find hard: difficult to replicate a competition atmosphere, hard to not want to “protect” your horse.
There were some large groups schooling, some individuals, and some small lessons. Everyone who rode needed to sign in to get a pinny for insurance and safety purposes, and there was medical staff on site, as well as stewards to make sure things didn’t get out of hand.
I was thrilled to bump into Dorothy Crowell who’d ridden two horses earlier and was now busy schooling, and very kindly let me tag along for a while. Dorothy was helping a rider hoping to move up to Prelim at Maydaze in a couple of weeks time. I was relieved when she told me she also found xc schooling a bit of a conundrum, and found teaching it just as tricky,
“I really like to try and put at least six or seven fences together, rather than stopping and starting and stopping which makes it hard to get a rhythm going. The riders might get over the fences and they might do the right things with their bodies to get over the fences but it’s still a little bit different when you’re out there galloping. For instance, the adjustment you have to make is probably bigger than you think: If you’re galloping at 600m per minute, which is fast, and you have to jump a fence at 350mpm, that’s a huge change, so you might go from 600mpm to 400mpm, and think you’ve got it, because that’s still a huge change, but it’s still not good enough to jump the fence, and that’s one of the main things we have to work on when you’re moving from training to preliminary.”
Dorothy’s husband had rigged up a couple of walkie-talkies so that she could speak to her rider via earbud while she rode, and after a quick talk about the basics they started with some simple fences, before moving on to the water and coffin complexes.
Dorothy stressed keeping the rider’s eye up and concentrating if not on the next jump, then on a focal point, be it a tree or telegraph pole in the near distance straight ahead and after the jump, and this really helped, especially jumping skinnies out of coffins. She also talked about adjusting your position as you get closer to the jump,
“From about 15 to 10 strides out, you’re using the motion of the horse galloping underneath you, but you’re still out of the tack. From 10 to 5 strides out you’re moving into the tack, so that the move for cross country is: unlock your back, then in that rhythm, you’re moving your seat under your shoulders, but you’re still out of the tack, then over the next five strides you move the weight into the tack, and then the next two or three strides you look up at your next destination, and you move the saddle as needed. Now, during that period when you’re going from 3-point to actually in the tack, you maintain the canter we created 15 strides out, or you can create a better one. If it’s just a matter of straightforward fences then it’s all about maintenance. My more experienced horses now have got to the point now where when I go to make that first move with my back, then that’s their half-halt and that’s all they need”
Dorothy compared riding your horse cross-country to driving your car, especially where gears and speeds were concerned in relation to approaches to different types of fences,
“I relate it to gears: if fifth gear is a gear you would never jump from, it’s just flat out gallop, then fourth gear you would only ever do a true steeplechase course with, something that has a really generous ground line and nothing hard in it. Third gear is where you would do most of your straightforward, with a sloping face, galloping fences. Second gear is where we spend our lives. Second gear is all about anything vertical or anything with a combination. Within second gear you can do a hard second gear or a soft second gear, depending on what you need.”
The earbud system was a godsend, it meant that Dorothy could give instructions, compliments and a running commentary, all without shouting, and we joked that it would be wonderful if we could have her riders compete with Dorothy in their ears at the same time! Dorothy is unfailingly genuine and positive, and really gives her all to the lessons; it was a horrible, cold rainy day to be honest, but nothing dampened her enthusiasm, her obvious delight in making a difference, and just still enjoying what she does. When things didn’t go perfectly, she remained calm and drew on her vast experience to fix the problem, and the schooling session ended with a confident horse and rider who’d tackled some fairly meaty problems in trying conditions, and who I think should quietly be looking forward to their first prelim.
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I’d like to thank Dorothy and her student for letting me tag along; but especially all the volunteers who gave up their sunday to spend it it in the cold and the rain so that everyone could enjoy the wonderful facilities. Also, big up to the eventing community, I had to drive through the jumper show to get the schooling, and stopped several times to let riders, grooms trainers etc cross the road, but did not get a single thank you, or even acknowledgment. The very first person I stopped for at the cross country session gave me a huge smile and a wave, from under her raincoat, a lovely girl, she’s lucky I didn’t jump out of the car and hug her right there and then, and I discovered later she’s Juliette, Dorothy’s daughter!
Incidentally, Juliette saw this jump by the trailer park and calmly told her mother, “No, I won’t be doing anything like that!”; she has dressage dreams after seeing Totilas at WEG last year.
Good luck to her with that, and to everyone who rode yesterday, and indeed all eventers. Thank you for reading, and thank you for waving and smiling. Go schooling and go eventing!
