This is How You Handle an "Energetic" Victory Gallop

[Bluey]

[QUOTE=SmartAlex;8965516]
And you walked to school, in the snow, uphill …both ways! That’s the way it was and we liked it. :lol: sorry I couldn’t resist. I’m channeling Dana Carvey this morning[/QUOTE]

We really did, every Tuesday morning, we took horse after horse to the indoor and ran them around, taking turns riding some of them thru our makeshift Hitchcock pen, jumping right along.
Even those that had the day off would still come to that, it was our fun times with the horses, that had a ball with it too, you could see them smile.

[Bluey]

[QUOTE=pluvinel;8965299]
For those of you who missed this education…Here is where George Morris got his training…from people who came from this tradition.

Here is a US Cavalry training video showing the chute and cross country. Sometimes in the chute you had to go over the jumps doing the “seat exercises”

This one starts with the sort of terrain you were training for…and shows why/how a rider had to be prepared to follow their horse over uneven ground.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3z2sA8OLRQ

This one finishes with a rider showing exemplary form over a jump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXbhvwPb11k[/QUOTE]

Thanks for those videos.

I have tried to explain several times how you lean forward to go down the very steep spots, so as to stay over the center of gravity with the horse and those show that so well.
That is the way we learned to do it and works great.
Many western riders lean back and that, if the slope is steep enough and long enough, may just slingshot you out over the front as it gets longer or if the horse takes a bad step.

[pluvinel]

[QUOTE=Bluey;8965580]
Thanks for those videos.

I have tried to explain several times how you lean forward to go down the very steep spots, so as to stay over the center of gravity with the horse and those show that so well.
That is the way we learned to do it and works great.
Many western riders lean back and that, if the slope is steep enough and long enough, may just slingshot you out over the front as it gets longer or if the horse takes a bad step.[/QUOTE]

If you follow the Part 1…to Part 12 that are posted on Youtube, you will see pretty much the entire set of jumping/riding instruction. It shows the expectations of riders “back in the day” and is a window into days gone by.

If you listen to George Morris he echoes a lot of this stuff…as he trained with Gordon Wright…whose book “Horsemanship and Horsemastership” is actually an almost verbatim copy of the Army Cavalry Manual.

The videos are part of a set of instruction that is part of a VHS series I bought years ago…US Army Cavalry logos and say “Declassified 1947”…It includes info about bivouac, tying horses to picket lines, feed, hay, etc.

[Bluey]

[QUOTE=pluvinel;8966042]
If you follow the Part 1…to Part 12 that are posted on Youtube, you will see pretty much the entire set of jumping/riding instruction. It shows the expectations of riders “back in the day” and is a window into days gone by.

If you listen to George Morris he echoes a lot of this stuff…as he trained with Gordon Wright…whose book “Horsemanship and Horsemastership” is actually an almost verbatim copy of the Army Cavalry Manual.

The videos are part of a set of instruction that is part of a VHS series I bought years ago…US Army Cavalry logos and say “Declassified 1947”…It includes info about bivouac, tying horses to picket lines, feed, hay, etc.[/QUOTE]

Our instructor was a retired military officer, that took us along with the cavalry soldiers on maneuvers, so we could watch and to encourage the soldiers to the equivalent today of “cowboy up” when they saw us kids participating in the same scary stuff to them when new to it.

We did their same gallops, jumps, drills and slides down, to us, mountains, fabulous to be part of that riding with purpose.

One rule that always impressed us so much, how to securely tie your horse.
As a soldier, if your horse got loose, you were sent to kitchen duty and cleaning barns for a while, no more riding until the suspension was over.
That would have crushed us, not sure some soldiers didn’t like the rest from their riding, if they were not really interested in it at all.

[sophie]

[QUOTE=pluvinel;8964982]
How old are you guys??? For some of us “ladies of a certain age” who rode with former cavalry officers, exercises to follow a horse over jumps were part of your basic training…freely admitting that I could not do it now.

considering this girl is French, she is probably a product of that sort of schooling.[/QUOTE]

I learned to ride with the military in France. Some were Cadre Noir, some just SHN people. And some were crazy.
Tough instructors! I vividly remember a student who was consistently left over fences, and hitting the horse in the mouth. His reins were just taken away.
At the time the instructors could pretty much do whatever they wanted, without fear of lawsuit. The way they saw it, they were “winnowing” their crops of students and only the toughest, most motivated ones remained.
Their instruction still comes in handy when my fruit loop decides to suddenly play “dolphin” or buck on landing a fence…

[pluvinel]

[QUOTE=sophie;8966187]
I learned to ride with the military in France. Some were Cadre Noir, some just SHN people. And some were crazy.
Tough instructors! I vividly remember a student who was consistently left over fences, and hitting the horse in the mouth. His reins were just taken away.

At the time the instructors could pretty much do whatever they wanted, without fear of lawsuit. The way they saw it, they were “winnowing” their crops of students and only the toughest, most motivated ones remained.
Their instruction still comes in handy when my fruit loop decides to suddenly play “dolphin” or buck on landing a fence…[/QUOTE]

Thank you!!! Perhaps other readers think Bluey and I were hallucinating that this stuff actually happened.

Having no reins definitely forces the rider to follow the horse.

And I really think the young rider in the OP’s link is a product of some modern variant of this sort of training…else how could she develop such fabulous seat and feel?

Young riders nowadays (ok, I freely admit to being an ancient neanderthal) miss out on not having had those old tough cavalry guys…those guys pushed you to do things you didn’t think you were capable of…but then were so proud…that not only did it but you survived.

I don’t think this style of “survival of the fittest” is possible in today’s world of lawsuits.

[SmartAlex]

[QUOTE=pluvinel;8966236]
Thank you!!! Perhaps other readers think Bluey and I were hallucinating that this stuff actually happened.[/QUOTE]

One of my co-workers grew up in Chile and learned to ride under a military instructor. She said there were no “beginners”. If you wanted to learn to jump, jumps were five feet.

[Joanne]

Riding banks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOyvimZuF5o

[Marla_100]

wqw those horses understood the meaning of forward…no stops there.

[pluvinel]

It is called “riding with a purpose”…

I got dinged when I made a comment about going “mindlessly around” a dressage arena…and I stand by that statement.

Riding in a dressage arena by former cavalry was the culmination of demonstrating a horse’s training. It showed that a horse that was obedient within the confines of the dressage course was capable of going as shown in the cross country riding shown in the old cavalry videos.

[pluvinel]

Ok…I can’t edit prior post…I meant to add that being able to follow a horse that had to negotiate uneven terrain and obstacles required a rider that had an independent seat and was capable of following the horse…whereever it went…just like the rider in the OP’s link.

[jdobbs64]

i had appaloosas as a child. i recall an article with some big appy trainer teaching his show kids how to ride. in a round pen and w/ a saddle, but no reins. chest up eyes forward b/c he was in the middle and directing the horse- lope and rollback into the fence go 3 strides roll back the other way,.

it’s done, maybe its stilldone.

[SnicklefritzG]

[QUOTE=pluvinel;8966236]
Thank you!!! Perhaps other readers think Bluey and I were hallucinating that this stuff actually happened.

Having no reins definitely forces the rider to follow the horse.

I don’t think this style of “survival of the fittest” is possible in today’s world of lawsuits.[/QUOTE]

You are absolutely right. I feel the same way. In fact, many of the opportunities I had growing up I don’t think would be easy to come by these days for the same reason.

[shall]

It’s a Quidam de Revel pony out of an Arabian crossbred. That giraffe posture is well known… Arabs have a “take you with them buck, jump, land soft” that is easy and flowing to sit. Plenty of people had to tell me to make them stop as it wasn’t bothering me enough for me to get around to it. (Mine don’t come close to this one though.)

http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/quibel+des+etisses

[shall]

This is a pony!

It’s a Quidam de Revel pony out of an Arabian crossbred. That giraffe posture is well known… Arabs have a “take you with them buck, jump, land soft” that is easy and flowing to sit. Plenty of people had to tell me to make them stop as it wasn’t bothering me enough for me to get around to it. (Mine don’t come close to this one though.)

http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/quibel+des+etisses