Working on the Walk

I received a scholarship through SEDA in the fall of 2022 and used it towards two lessons with Linda Strine during her trips to Louisiana in 2023.  The horse that I rode in the lessons is my now-20-year-old OTTB, Oughtlands (also known as Otter).  During the 2023 season, we were competing at Third Level, and made the move up to Fourth for the 2024 season.  Since he does face some challenges in dressage work at these levels, every point matters for us.  Given that, during my normal lessons at home, we have been working on some of the “simpler” movements to not throw away points.  To carry over that work for my lessons with Linda, we worked on some very specific movements that are very impactful on our scores in tests.  My horse, Otter, tends to be fairly tense and loves to anticipate movements, so in general, the walk movements are hard for him – gives both of us too much time to think!

The first thing that we worked on was the turn on haunches/walk pirouettes.  Otter’s evasion for these tends to be to get crooked and counter bent. In order to correct this, Linda had us start them off on a small circle, instead of the straight line, so that we already had the correct bend. During this small circle, I was to keep my weight over the inside seatbone. The small circle also kept him busy thinking of what we were doing, versus what might be coming next. Then, when we had a good quality walk and bend,  I would open up the inside hand, and use slightly more outside leg to ask for the pirouette out of the circle.  If he got tense, or changed his bend, it was easy to correct back onto the circle and start over again. Since the lesson with Linda, this is an exercise that I have found myself going back to again and again. I have found it really helpful to make sure that I’m not preparing too much before the movement, as well as preventing Otter from getting tense and crooked (which usually was because I prepared too much before the movement).

The second thing that I worked on with Linda is our walk in general. Otter has a fairly nice walk at liberty, while walking on the buckle, and/or when he’s headed out to the pasture. Unfortunately, tension affects it a lot, and so we struggle to show a decent walk in the ring or while schooling at home. In particular, going from the extended walk to picking up the reins for a medium or collected walk has always been a struggle for us. Otter will tense up and start to jig, especially if he knows an upward transition is about to come (as is in most of the tests).  The exercise that Linda gave us to try for this is to never be walking in a straight line!  Instead, make gentle curves – think an S shape – and keep the turns unpredictable so that he can’t tense up. While this is not something that can initially be done in the show ring, the idea is to start to fade those curves out, so that just asking for the hint of bend gets the attention back onto the rider (and not the upward transition that may or may not be coming up). As in most things with horses, some days we have had better success with this one, and other days, it’s definitely still a work in progress.  The thing that I like about this exercise is that it can be done during the hot days in the summer when you are trying to keep work to a minimum due to heat, or as a break during a normal ride.

My hope is that by sharing some of these exercises that we worked on during these lessons, I can help others with their training journey. Walk work is not always the most fun thing to work on (says the former eventer), but it definitely pays off in dividends.