Education of
A yearlong series that follows the training and development of a young stallion.
Toti The
By JP Giacomini
that the first year of work is focused on the basics. Although there are many roads that can “lead us to Rome,” this column will pres- ent the ongoing education of the three-year- old Warmblood stallion Totil Hit, or “Toti,” over a period of one year. From backing to his debut in competition, trainer JP Giacomini will pres- ent the techniques he uses for Toti, working in hand, on the lunge and long lines, free jump- ing and under saddle.
R
In this session, JP continues lunging Toti and explains numerous concepts of how a young horse begins to rebalance himself in the demands of the work. Toti will also start his early work with saddle and rider.
egardless of the discipline one intends for the future of a young, athletic sport horse, most trainers will agree
Training Journal #2
Lunging for Educational Purposes We continue Toti’s education with very basic but impor- tant concepts that he is going to need in order to improve and manage his balance under saddle and perform his job. As we showed in the photos of the last article, we spend a lot of time lunging Toti (and all
our young horses). Lunging has great advantages: control, safety and a much greater influence on the young horse than we can achieve from the saddle at that stage, but it can also create problems such as too much repetitive flexion on the joints of the inside lateral pair of legs. In order to avoid those, it is important to make sure that the horse is in balance later- ally (does not lean inward). The verticality of the horse comes from his acquired ability to bend (the more a horse can bend his neck, the more vertical he is going to be). We also change the size of the circle constantly and ask for pieces of straight lines in between turns as often as possible. With this multi-prong approach, I have never had any problem of wear and tear on young horses over the last 50 years that I have been practic- ing the technique. Antoine de Pluvinel (dressage master of the French King Louis XIII in
seventeenth century France) wrote that teaching a horse to turn is one of the most difficult (and most necessary) things to do in dressage. In their life in the field, horses do not need to turn that often (compared with their work under saddle) and certainly never do circles (except in the case of stallions “rounding up” colts or mares or play-fighting with each other).
A recent conformation shot of Totil Hit (Totilas x Sandro Hit) at age three.
Photos on this page by Shelley Giacomini
The Natural Turn Horses’ natural way to turn is to lean in the direction they want to go to and balance themselves by turning their head to the opposite side to offset the inertia of their weight going inward for the turn. The greater the speed, the steeper the angle of leaning and the greater the angle of the neck outward (and its contractions). This mode of turning obviously works well for a horse at liberty, as long as the footing is not too slippery and he is not subjected to the leverage of a human body two feet above his back. We must remember that this is the most natural way for the horse to turn and certainly the easiest way to teach him how to change directions at the beginning of his education. The “natural horse” turns like a bicycle. When the horse is able to load his inside shoulder on request (practically, throw- ing some weight in the new direction), we can get a turn when we want one. Obtaining those simple turns is the starting point of training and it’s
Warmbloods Today 29
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