Tails From Provence

Quick refresher… I had a lesson with Pauline Beulze last month.  I made an attempt at working both horses on the ground at the same time, but I need to bring Flurry up to speed for that to work.  If you missed it, it’s HERE.  I decided to use the rest of my lesson working on ‘ride and lead.’

First of all, I retrieved Aero from where he was lurking behind the cameraman (he likes to help).  Then me and Flurry hauled him off to the centre of the arena and stopped.  Pauline very politely said yes, that’s all very well but if you want to work with Aero at liberty eventually, you can’t drag him around – you must get him to move by tapping him on the back with the stick.

Off we went again, in walk and then trot.  That all seemed to go ok, so we tried a little bit of backwards.  The first time was okay-ish, the second time, which is in the video, wasn’t bad at all.

So, forwards in walk and trot was fine.  We discussed cantering, and I’m sure it will happen in the not-too-distant future.  We also discussed whether it’s better for Aero to stick one particular side (of Flurry).  Pauline’s feeling was that, with just two horses, it doesn’t really matter and it’s probably better to have him working off either side, although if you have four or five horses working together, each one has his own place in the line.  Interesting.

Next we tried sideways, which I have made one or two feeble and unsuccessful attempts at before.  Going to the left, with Aero following, was ok on the second try, although I felt Aero’s hindquarters were trailing.  But at least we all went sideways for a few steps.  Going to the right was a different ball-game, poor Aero struggled to figure out what I wanted.  On the third attempt, Flurry basically went “Oh, for feck’s sake, Aero!” and pushed him in the correct direction.  So yeah, it worked, and we now have something to improve on.

Believe it or not, that was thirty minutes of lesson.  I’ve edited it down to just over eight minutes.  I left the audio as it was; French speakers will probably get a lot from what Pauline is saying to me, but you’ll need to turn your sound WAY up.  Also, apologies for loud quad-bike noises at six minutes!

PS this was my first time using Youtube’s video editor.  I’m not thrilled with the result, it seems a bit choppy, but I think I will do a better job next time.  Which will be the final part of the Pauline lesson, working Aero at liberty from Flurry’s back.