When I was a young fellow I loved to compete. My favourite was show jumping, but I dabbled in dressage. I dabbled with the dressage mainly to please my instructor. But it was the adrenalin rush from jumping that had me addicted. All this was with riding other people’s horses. I couldn’t afford a horse of my own and I was a good enough rider that people would ask me to ride and compete on their horses. So I did.
Then I managed to save enough money to go to an auction sale and fall in love with a Percheron Arab gelding called Sebastian. He was 3 years old and had come from a cattle station in the Northern Territory. He was barely rideable. The first thing I did was change his name to Luke.
I did a lot of training on Luke over the years, but I have to admit he taught me more than I taught him. People often talk about the horse being their greatest teacher and it is true PROVIDED you are a good enough student to learn the lessons.
For this post, I want to briefly talk about one of the really important lessons that Luke taught me. That lesson stays with me today and I incorporate it into my clinics with almost every lesson.
I made a solid effort to work with Luke at least 5 days a week. I knew he had the potential to be a terrific jumper. He had a steady mind, he was athletic, he was careful over a jump, and possessed a beautiful bascule (the shape of a horse over a jump) that would almost shave the paint off the poles.
However, Luke would get excited and would rush at jumps. He would often cut a corner on a turn and when it came to jumping a combination I just had to let him do it his way or risk crashing.
This frustrated me tremendously.
One day I took Luke to a competition. For us, it was a bit of a ”close your eyes and hope for the best” clear round. But shortly after Luke and I jumped a woman came into the ring with a thoroughbred. They jumped clear too. But the contrast between how they danced around the course versus how we wrestled around the course was stunning. I had to talk to her.
I approached her after the event. She was a local amateur rider who loved her horse and loved jumping. Her name was Louise (I can’t recall her last name). She said she had watched my round and noticed I was having an argument with Luke. She said Luke reminded her of her TB when she first started jumping him. I asked her for any advice.
“Well, I work Bobby 5 or 6 days a week, but I only work him over poles and jumps once every 2 or 3 weeks.”
“Really!” I exclaimed. “What do you do in the other workouts?”
“We trail ride at least once a week, sometimes twice. The rest of the time we work on our dressage and our groundwork.”
“You put all that time into him and you only work over jumps once in a while?” I asked.
“Yep. Dressage and groundwork. Then more dressage and groundwork. We work in the arena sometimes, but mostly we work in the jumping ring, the paddock, and the trail near the lake. Everywhere we can. But only sometimes in the area. Even if I’m going to take Bobby on a trail or work over poles and jumps I start the session with groundwork and dressage. I even have a dressage instructor and she has helped me so much with Bobby’s jumping.”
This got me thinking a lot. It motivated me to start doing more groundwork and dressage with Luke. I began to work on our groundwork and dressage every session and pop him over jumps only once every 2 weeks or more. I read everything I could and watched every film available. I couldn’t afford lessons but I would watch dressage lessons that other people were having and annoy the hell out of people with my questions.
As my skills as a dressage trainer slowly improved so did Luke’s skills over jumps.
Over time, Luke was listening to my feel as we cantered around the courses. There was no rushing at jumps. I could adjust his stride softly - even in a combination. He learned to stop cutting in on turns and learned to approach a jump with supreme straightness. I could even leg yield him into the middle of a jump we were approaching without any fuss. Teaching him to pirouette helped Luke learn to clear a jump, stop 3 strides after, spin to face the same jump he had just cleared, and clear it again.
Louise gave me the idea, but Luke taught me how to be a better jumping coach. Luke taught me how big a dummy I was for thinking show jumping was about jumping. He knew how to jump all by himself. He was a natural. What I needed to help him with was how to be with me when we approached the jump and how to stay with me when we left the jump ready for the next one. I had to teach him to be straight, balanced, soft, and calm. I didn’t have to teach him to jump. Luke taught me I didn’t have to teach him to jump.
I believe the lesson Luke taught me is not confined to jumping. It’s relevant to every horse sport or discipline. The basics of good groundwork and good dressage can help every horse. Every horse should have a foundation of good dressage for which to help them be better barrel racers, trail horses, plow horses, polo horses, team penners, western pleasure rides, and every other sport you can think of.
The value of good dressage is not limited to benefiting dressage horses alone. It’s for everyone. Good dressage is the yoga of horsemanship.
Unfortunately I don’t any photos of Luke and I jumping or training. But this picture was taken a few years later when Luke and I were trekking from Victoria to South Australia and passing through a town called Geelong. The photo was taken by the local newspaper (Geelong Advertiser).