There is a best distance between cavaletti for every horse, at every gait. Those distances may get uniformly longer or shorter depending on the horse’s level of training, but this should be intentional, not random.  If you vary the distances between cavaletti or if you choose the wrong distance to begin with, you undermine the best use of these training aids.

If someone tells you that cavaletti are normally spaced “between four and five feet” or “around four and a half feet,”  remember that’s not a distance, it’s an estimate.

Lufkin Contractor's Measuring Wheel

When you’re ready to set out your cavaletti, get out a tape measure, the way course designers do when they’re building a course of jumps, and use it to measure a true distance.  If you’ve got a measuring wheel, that’s nice and easy and it’s handy for building courses later.  If not, a 30′ tape measure will do, and will see you through building gymnastics (when you’ll be varying the spacing quite a bit, but that’s down the road).

If you think you can measure a distance by striding yourself, just remember that when you see Anne Kursinski taking big long steps with her long legs to measure the distance between fences, all she’s doing is confirming whether it’s a short two strides…or a long three.  She doesn’t need to know the precise distance, but whoever built the course did.

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Confidence has long been a cornerstone as well as a primary goal of my teaching and training.  It informs what I do on the ground and on horseback and it’s what I try to give my students and their horses when I work with them.

I think it’s of equal importance for horses and riders and that’s true whether they simply want to enjoy each other’s company or progress together towards higher achievements.  Nothing — not even a near-perfect position, and I’m a stickler for position — gets riders and horses further along, more quickly, than confidence.

Who knew this better than Alexis L’Hotte, whose famous guiding principle for training horses is “Calm, forward and straight?”

Calm is based on confidence (which L’Hotte likely took as a given where riders were concerned).

The manner in which horses gain confidence may vary slightly from horse to horse.  There are outliers, for sure.  Some horses need a supremely strong leader — certainly “alpha” mares, stallions and those geldings who, were it not for the knife, would have themselves led a herd…

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I’m an overachiever.   I strive for excellence.  The harder something is, the harder I try. It’s in my nature.

My younger sister, who takes a much more lighthearted attitude towards life, gave me some advice years ago.  She said, “Imagine that you grabbed a handful of sand…you wanted to keep it so badly that you kept squeezing your hand tighter.  All the sand would disappear.”

I try to follow her counsel, in life and with horses.  I have to admit, it’s easier with horses, because I can do for them what I can’t do for myself.

It can be difficult to draw the line.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting more and there’s nothing wrong with striving, but there is something wrong with forcing.   Especially with horses.

It's not so easy. Fail to support the sand in your hand, and you will also lose what you want. Thanks to Barbara Carr for her photo.

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Years ago, at a TTouch clinic, we played a classic TTeam game.  The idea was to help riders see through their horses’ eyes.

One of the participants offered to be a horse, and the instructor offered to be the rider/trainer.

The “horse” stood attentively, waiting for instruction.  Within seconds, the “rider/trainer” said in a firm tone of voice, “Orange.”

The horse did nothing.  So the rider again said “Orange,” only this time a bit more loudly.

The horse now moved a foot and lowered her head.  The rider responded by shouting “Orange!”  The horse moved both feet.  Wrong again.  At which point, the rider shouted, “Orange, orange, orange!”

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Last Saturday’s post talked about how important it is to have an open mind.

So I’m going to ask you to have an open mind about Turn on the Forehand and its distant cousin, the Pirouette Renversee, which also requires the horse to move its haunches around its forehand.

You’ve probably read that the Turn on the Forehand should only be taught to the beginner rider or used for the young horse, primarily to teach the leg aid or responsiveness to that leg aid for lateral work.  You may even have heard someone point out that there’s a reason it’s called turn on the forehand — and that the last thing you want is your horse on the forehand, so the sooner you abandon the exercise, the better.

I say, “Yes but…”

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If you’re like me, every horse you’ve ever met has taught you something. Maybe it’s just a little something.  Maybe it’s a lot.  And maybe that next horse simply confirms that you’re doing things correctly.

At least for that moment in time.  

Because it takes a lifetime to learn almost everything there is to know about horses.  You’ll never know it all.  And, if you’re like me, you’ll change your mind more than once along the way.  Maybe someone will show you a new technique…or you’ll discover that the “way that always works” suddenly doesn’t work with that one horse…or your own skills become proficient enough that you realize it’s not the method that was wrong, but your own technique.

One of the critical skills of the horseman is to have an open mind.  An open mind, along with patience and humility, will get you far.

How many of us have learned the lunging dogma that one must stand in the middle of the circle while lunging, as soon as the horse understands the lunging circle?  Yet, if you watch Philippe Karl’s DVD Classical Dressage 1, The School of the Aids, he will tell you not to plant yourself in one place, because you will bore your horse…

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