 |
| Ella piaffes beautifully, but it took a little training to get Lauren’s feel to recognize her quality. Photo by Susan J. Stickle |
Midgey spoiled me.
I’ve shown five horses at Grand Prix, two of which I made myself, plus a handful of others in training for various periods of time. Billy was always so sketchy in the ring that he never really gave a good feeling at Grand Prix—it was like sitting on a powder keg with the fuse lit but no idea how long that fuse was. Cleo still had a lot of developing to do in the passage when she got hurt and her career ended, and Tres had been really ruined in piaffe earlier in his life; I made it better, but not really real.
Ella and Midge came to Grand Prix around the same time. And Midge spoiled me. He gives the most incredible feeling to his rider, in all things, but especially in the piaffe and passage—the piaffe feels like this incredible ball of energy; the passage feels like a strategic release of that energy.
And Ella, who is unquestionably the better and more accomplished of the two, does not.
Sure, Ella can make this super sexy feeling passage. She can get her knees so high, and this unreal airtime. But that one, the one that feels so cool, looks dreadful. Her back goes down. Her hind legs go out. And there’s not a prayer in the world of achieving piaffe from that passage.
And in her best, most energetic piaffe, the one where she sits and carries and is on an 8 from any international judge in the world? It feels like… nothing. If I didn’t have Michael, my eyes on the ground, telling me that her piaffe was excellent, my “feel,” my gut instinct, would have told me it wasn’t enough. My feel, educated by some excellent trainers and, if you will indulge me in a bit of ego, a bit of innate talent, would have lied through it’s little feeling teeth.
Ella is not alone. I have sat on dozens of Grand Prix horses now, from the ones who will take their amateur owners to the Grand Prix ring at the local shows and no further, to seriously successful CDI winners, who do not give the feeling you think they’re going to. I’ve seen and felt this so many times that I think it’s probably the norm, and that horses who feel like Midge are the exception.
ADVERTISEMENT
Let’s be clear—I’m not saying that these horses who feel flat and unexpressive in the piaffe and passage are doing it wrong. Many of these horses I’m thinking of piaffe and passage better than Midge, who tends to operate his hind legs up and down rather than under (characteristics of his Tuigpaard family tree). It’s just the way they feel. There is something funny about the feeling of piaffe and passage, and it takes a lot of mileage and a great coach to help program our own innate sense of feeling, on those horses, to identify which is the right one and which is the wrong one.
Here’s another upper level movement that never ceases to amaze me in how not-magical it feels when done right: canter pirouettes. Fender and Midgey both have pretty sexy canters, one from nature and one from nurture, but really sitting and under and very cool. And I remember teaching both of them the pirouettes, and being mystified as to why, when I schooled them on my own, they never looked like how they felt. When they felt really upright and organized, they looked stilted and stiff. I remember a lesson with Michael on Midgey a few years ago where he told me to lean into the pirouette, to really overdo it, like a reining turn. I did, and I remember thinking, “Good grief, this feels hideous.” And then I remember watching it on video—it looked fluid, balanced and through.
It was the first time I’d ever really had that feeling, but not the last, because sure enough, on every horse I’ve shown FEI since, the pirouettes that feel fantastic get 6, and the ones that feel like I’m leaning in and they’re falling on the inside shoulder get 8.
I’d love to be able to tell you why, but I can’t. And maybe that’s just me, the way it feels to me and to my anatomy. But over the years I’ve taught many other students the pirouettes, and without fail and without exception they report the same feeling.
It all goes to show the incredible importance of eyes on the ground. There are two Grand Prix horses in my barn, both wonderful, wonderful professors owned by amateur clients. Neither is Valegro, and that’s OK (that’s why they work so nicely for their amateur owners!), but both are capable of giving this really fantastic feeling. And when they do, both are going really, fantastically wrong. And that’s why their owners take regular lessons with me, and why I take regular lessons with Michael, and why we all need our ground crew. “Feel,” that fickle mistress, so crucial a gift in the development of riders from green to good? Feel lies.
In time we train ourselves to appreciate the trot, the canter, the piaffe that’s really right. We can recalibrate our “gut feeling” to love the one that’s neat, tidy, crisp and upright, instead of the big, bold, brash, ground-covering and, ultimately, not helpful one. “Feel” is a lot about nature, for sure, but it’s also a lot about nurture, in how we train our minds as riders and trainers—when to trust our guts, and when to trust our coach.
