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POINT OF VIEW


and knew nothing about the subject. My first teacher at the French riding club where I started my career was Cap- tain Hubert Clauzel, a retired officer of the Spahis (a French light cavalry regi- ment with riders from North Africa and Barb horses). He was not at all a technical rider and taught us mostly by making us experience situations. We had 120 horses in the barn at any given time, many of them from Spain, others from the racetrack (Thoroughbreds and trotters), some fancier Selle Français and Anglo-Arabs, as well as many horses res- cued from the slaughter house Rue de Vaugirard, where horsemen could get their pick on Monday mornings. Une Aventure came by truck from Po- land as a three-year-old and was bought by Clauzel to be a lesson/trail riding horse for the school. She was gray and maybe 14.2 hands. He decided that I could proba- bly do the job and get her started and I ea- gerly accepted the challenge. I never received any advice on how to do it, so I devised a system to make her safe, as I was never one to sit on bucking horses. I worked her every evening after school and had no assistance whatsoever, so I had to make sure she would be completely safe when I got on her by myself. I lunged her on every kind of circle in all three gaits,


T


he first horse I started under saddle was called “Une Aventure” (One Adventure) and was aptly named. She was very safe and kind but I was 14 years old


By JP Giacomini How I Learned to Start Young Horses


This is the second ride for Cades Concerto, a 2014 Holsteiner stal- lion candidate (Concerto Grosso/ Accord II) owned by Marion Martin of Windover Farm in Tennessee.


Starting Youngsters with Nuno When I was twenty, I started a one-year apprenticeship at Nuno Oliveira’s old school near Lisbon. On one occasion, he received five young horses straight from the breeder that he was planning to train and sell. They were related to two older horses he had in training at the time (Impostor and Invencivel) whom he was very fond of. Those horses came straight from the field and had absolutely no handling. His regular rider was unavailable and so I got the job to ride the colts. What was notable in his approach was the amount of forward- ness he insisted on. While I was rid- ing on the lunge, he held it (that is the most important job in the whole pro- cess), had one helper at his side push- ing the horse with a lunge whip and at first two others on the open side of the manege to “frame” the horse and avoid any deviation from the circle. Progres- sively, I took over the job of maintaining the impulsion. Horses were ridden with a bridle equipped with a semi-loose dropped noseband and a cavesson.


The loose-ring bit was attached to the rings of the


worked at liberty in the small indoor (45 X 90 feet), taught her to travel into corners, do directional changes and cir- cles and, most importantly, stop on voice command from any gait. By the time I thought she was ready to be rid- den, I also taught her to tolerate a chair next to her that I used as a mounting block. As beginner’s luck had it, she never gave me any kind of grief and was probably grate- ful for the alternate life she got once rescued from the kill truck. After she demonstrated that she was reliable in the arena by herself, I started to take her out in the vast forest that lay behind the club in the company of friends mounted on older, experienced horses and she went ev- erywhere with confidence. Two months later, she became a lesson horse, first with the better riders and eventually with beginners, as she was very safe and pleasant to ride.


dropped noseband, so all rein actions were applied to the nose as much as the mouth. The whip was a simple branch from a quince tree that was used generously. Af- ter a few days on the lunge line, horses were warmed up at liberty before riding, with several handlers guid- ing them on long sides, circles and diagonals. When first ridden off the lunge line, the handlers made sure that the horse kept his direction and follow the “geometry of the manege” by being pushed forward instead of being pulled around by the reins. The lessons were entirely com- posed of trot and canter work, as it is difficult to obtain a forward walk from a young horse at first. I rode the hors- es individually for several weeks until Nuno considered them safe for the regular students to ride, where they were ridden as a group, a “reprise,” as we say in French. I kept riding the more complicated one (a Luso-Ar- ab stallion with very big gaits and a character to match called Jasmin, a totally unsuitable name). By that point, the horses were ready to start shoulder-in, working trot to medium trot transitions and canter from the walk, as well as free walk on a loose rein. The progression toward


Warmbloods Today 63


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