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It’s beautiful to watch, but how do you get a horse to do all that?

It ain't easy. :-) The way of riding is so different, and I remember when I had my first lesson with my trainer, I honestly thought that the way that I learned how to ride was so completely wrong that's how different it is. It mostly has to do with developing an indpendent seat, so that you can be so balanced as to ride mostly with your seat, instead of controlling mostly with the reins and your leg, though that certainly does come into play. For instance, once you are balanced and relaxed, you can get your horse to be balanced and relaxed and you can get a collected trot from a working trot just by sitting up straighter. You can also do downward transitioning just by breathing out. (Amazing, huh?) If you want to turn accross the diagonal, you put your weight on your inside seatbone and put your inside heel farther down.

It's very hard, at least for me, but steering involves very little pulling on the reins at all, it's all about moving his shoulders, and butt around. My trainer is always yelling at me to not pull his nose around, and it's so hard because it's instinct to do so.

For instance, Oliver, the horse that I ride, LOVES to pop his shoulder out and move to the outside so that we end up half way across the ring. Instinct, since he's going to the outside, is to pull the inside rein, right? Well, what you do to instead to correct this, is you put pressure on the outside rein, drawing it to your hip, and relax on the inside rein, while applying pressure with your outside leg, and that gets him back on track.

And excuse the opus, it just gets me excited to talk about dressage. :-)