Bryn doesn't carry passengers

There are two ways of describing Bryn.  A negative description would be that he is ‘nervous’.  A more positive description of his behaviour would be that he is ‘sharp’ or ‘fiery’.  Bryn by the way is a six year old Welsh Section D gelding.  Whatever the choice of adjective there is no escaping the fact that when he is being ridden he does not tolerate passengers.

At the start of the last few lessons I have had Bruce, our trainer, has been working on getting me to relax Bryn and to use my legs rather than the reins to direct him around the arena.  This involves Bryn responding to the instructions coming from my leg and me gaining the confidence and trust in my ability and the horse to be able to let him work on a long rein.  The objective of this exercise is to have the horse walking with his head and neck stretched out as if he were trying to reach out over an open ditch for some rich green grass on the other side.

The thing is that although this is very comfortable position for Bryn to be in he does break out of it by raising his head and going hollow.  This basically means that instead of carrying himself with a nicely arched back, forward stretching neck and powering from his hind legs, his head has gone up and his back sags in the middle.

To return him to ‘relaxville’ involves co-ordinating pressure from my inside leg with backward pressure on the outside rein so he can reach out over that imaginary ditch again.  This is probably similar to hand, leg and eye co-ordination a helicopter pilot needs.

Bryn is getting increasingly responsive to these two aids but it still takes quite a bit of effort on my part, especially with the lower leg, to achieve a result.

Once Bryn is settled into this position then we can transition into trot.  That does not mean that we go faster but maintain the same speed with a different gait.  Once we both find this rhythm it is approaching the addictive as both of us are balanced, working together and expending very little energy.  To reinforce the positive I release my inside hand and reach forward to give the merest touch on Bryn’s neck.  He seems to know this is telling him all is well.

Every so often his sharpness or fieriness does surface and to manage the situation you have to be a rider and not a passenger.

Take the other evening for example.  Outside the arena is an open trailer filled with rubble and a crumpled up bright yellow tarpaulin near a corner where for some reason Bryn has always tried to spook at.  I am ready for those spooks now and on this evening we went past the trailer with the predatory yellow tarpaulin three or four times without any issues.   Yes, on the first pass Bryn did give the offending trailer the wild eyed look but after that he was fine then he went past it after that almost disdainfully; ‘I’m a big Welsh pony and you can’t scare me’.

Then during the lesson when he was in that addictive slow working trot swinging along I must have just taken the slightest amount of pressure from my hand or lower leg just as we were going past the predatory tarpaulin. That tarpaulin had Bryn eyed up as first choice on that night’s menu. We ended up jinking sideways into the middle of the arena   accelerating quicker than a Porsche 911 from a standing start.  There is nothing violent about this type of jink, it is just the sheer raw power that Bryn can unleash in less than a second that never ceases to amaze me.

Not quite as quickly as we left the track we return to it and I have to take Bryn back to relaxville.  He does get there and is returning there quicker each time he leaves.  Whether it is him realising it is a good place to be and goes there by himself or he is listening to me saying ‘we MUST get back there as soon as possible’. I am not sure how much each of us contributes to that return journey but it is definitely a partnership without passengers.