Day two at the Mark Rashid clinic and all of the morning's horses made significant, make that massive, progress. Debbie and Dillon worked on their halt to walk and walk to trot transitions and then their walk to halt and trot to halt transitions. Dillon takes a few moments to go up a gear and Mark explained how you never want to use your aid as a punishment for the horse. Instead of squeezing harder or kicking, he asked Debbie to squeeze and then turn Dillon if there was no response so that he could unstick his feet. In this way he wanted him to learn that it is touch, and go.
For the trot transition he handed her a schooling whip emphasising that if because of his history Dillon had a problem with it, she could just drop it. However, all being well she could just use it against her own leg to make a noise to ask him to go. Although Dillon continued to offer the canter transition that we met on the Isle of Wight, he soon learned to drop into trot and to relax. Mark explained how Dillon had been taught to know that one and one equals two without ever learning how to add up.
Debbie also began to ask him to soften in trot which enabled him to use his hindquarters to better effect. As a result his tail was able to move gently from side to side indicating that he was able to use his longissimus muscles to their full extent.
By the end Dillon could practically do algebra, putting all of the moves together so that he could go from halt to walk to trot and back again and end on a soft halt.
Evie started off by skipping over the pole rather than leaping it as she had done yesterday and soon she was able to walk over it and pay more attention to where her feet were going rather than trying to protect them by not coming anywhere near the poles.
More poles were added and soon she was walking around a fan of poles in either direction.
She finished by walking calmly over a raised pole.
The loading horse looked a lot different from the outset today, calmly approaching the horsebox and going straight in. Once in Mark worked on asking him to stand in the right place and in the right direction and then to calm himself.
He finished not only by being able to close the partition with him in but also by asking him to stand this side of the partition too.
