Hi all,
As a rather well trained “straight” dressage person, I’ve recently attended some Rolf Janzen clinics. He does Working Equitation and Doma Vaquera stuff in Germany (where he’s from and lives) and Europe. He is German but spent a lot of time training in Spain with vaqueros.
He has an exercise for everything, focused on the horse’s muscle movement and elasticity and brain. Brain is most important, as he insists on building confidence with the work. This past 3 days, I did my second clinic with him and was really impressed with his focus on the particular horse and using essentially bull-fighting moves to address engagement. Much focus on the rider. My horse’s gaits became MAGNIFICENT as much as my horse could do at the end of each session. Much work to do on my part to train this regularly. Of note: I had the only warmblood at the clinic, the rest were Iberian bred horses and the clinic was hosted by a large Lusitano breeding farm.
Has anyone else done clinics with real Doma Vaquera trainers to improve their dressage on non-Iberian bred horses? What did you think?
J.
