Introduction to Western Dressage with Cathy Drumm

Let's see if I can coherently give an overview of our clinic today. I have audited Cathy before, once, but this was my first time riding in one of her clinics, and I would recommend it to anyone.

We started with a two hour group session. I believe there were six of us, including myself on Toby. It was an awesome group of riders and horses. We warmed our horses up for about twenty minutes while Cathy talked to us a bit about Western Dressage and allowed some of the horses who needed extra time to settle in to work quietly. We started by working on a working walk, a free walk, and a collected walk. This picture below is from the Cowboy Dressage blog, and shows the trot, but I think it illustrates the differences between the gaits well, if you just imagine the same thing for the walk

Working Walk

In the working walk, the horse's hind feet track up into the prints that the front feet left. The head is level or slightly above withers, the nose is on or in front of vertical, and the horse has an established 'marching' rhythm. I don't know how the other riders felt, but on Toby, I felt like we could get the working walk, but we had a hard time keeping the rhythm going.


Free Walk

From the working walk, we moved the the free walk, which done on a loose rein and allows the horse to really stretch and extend his stride. This, to me, is a great gait for warming up and cooling down or giving a break after working on different collection exercises. It is rhythmic, straight, and it covers ground.

Collected Walk

Next, we moved on to the collected walk. I won't speak for anyone but myself, but on Toby, I gathered my reins into a light contact and used my leg to 'drive him into my hands'. This shortened his stride but gave him more 'lift' in his legs and engaged his back and hindquarters. For an out of shape lesson horse, this was a lot of work, so I only asked for a few strides at a time. Cathy encouraged us to give our horses plenty of encouragement and rest and to just work one step at a time, then build on that.

Working Jog-

We spent a few minutes on our working jog, which is just like the working walk, and I think the picture that I put up describes it pretty well, and then did a lot of work on our transitions from our working jog to our working walk, and vice versa, through changing our seats. We talked about the differences between a light seat, a deep seat, and a heavy seat. We got back into the working jog and got into our 'light seat', where our seat bones were slightly elevated and we engaged our cores, and thighs, and then changed to a heavy seat (heavy on the seatbones, no longer moving with the horse) to encourage the transition down to the walk. Then back to the light seat and working jog.

Collected Jog

While playing around with our seatbones, we took a few minutes to work on our collected jogs. This does the same thing as the collected walk- it shortens the stride while creating more 'drive' from the hindquarters- more lift in those legs- and engages the back, with the horses head dropping to the vertical with a light contact. I personally find it easier to collect the jog then the walk, probably because there is more 'forward' to work with- it's not quite as subtle a the walk.

We then began working on our bending in the corners. We used our inside legs to push the ribcage towards the outside, and picked up our inside rein, while holding our outside rein out for support, if necessary. We used this to discuss some of the different leg positions, and some of the ways that people allow their horses to counterbend.

This is about we stopped for lunch and then began our half hour private sessions. I enjoyed watching everyone work with Cathy, even saw one or two brave souls ride some patterns, and they did a lovely job.

For Toby and I's session, I wanted some help setting him up for his left lead. He is weak going to left and he is extremely inconsistent in picking up the lead. I haven't been working on it much, just riding him a lot in the hills and trotting a lot of circles, and allowing him to rebuild those muscles, but I wanted to take advantage of the on one on supervision because that is something that I almost never have. We started with attempting some haunches in, but he was tipping his nose the outside and evading the bend.  So Cathy had us jog small circles to the left- inside leg, inside rein, just like before, and then asking for the lope departure as we exited the circle. But as soon as I asked, I would let him go and he would tip to the outside again. So we kept going around and I 'held him' in the bend, even as I asked for the lope with my outside leg. So I was going around the circle, with my inside leg pushing that rib cage, and picking up on my inside rein, while pushing my outside leg back and asking for the lope and holding my outside rein slightly forward and out for support, And we got it! It was a lot of work but we got the departure several times. He would only hold it for a stride or two, but at the end we got a circle.
Then we went to the right a few times but he was tired and I got tense and started bracing with my seat and hands and it wasn't too pretty. Still, I know when we are both 'in the zone' that we can get the right lead easily and it looks much better than it did then. And I have so much to help me get his left lead now! I just haven't been doing enough to support him. We also have plenty to work on with stabilizing our gaits- getting some rhythm going, at every pace and in every gait.

I also fell even more in love with Toby. Riding him is so good for me! It gives me a whole different set of things to work on, especially with my own seat and legs and hands.