Georgina feels that for an inexperienced rider to train at advanced level is not for the fainthearted, it needs a calm horse that won’t get flustered when you don’t get it quite right, a patient trainer with great empathy.  She spent a week every month for a year with hers!  Now it’s more about tweaking and perfecting she manages just once or twice a month.

Passage is easy for Theo, he enjoys it, and I made myself problems I suppose by ‘playing’ with it before we established his understanding of piaffe. He found it very difficult to accept someone on the ground alongside him and this is where Isobel was brilliant. She is so quiet and calm, and worked out quickly that when he worried, she would stay walking along side but stop asking anything but just keep walking, and talking to Theo. Only when she saw him relax would she continue to ask anything of him. So gradually he built up trust.

It is still our hardest part of the test, he used to try so hard but get croup high and push out behind with his hindlegs and then couldn’t work out how to get his shoulders out of the way. So tapping him on his rear end didn’t help, it just made him go higher behind. Now a tap down the shoulder encourages him to lift his shoulders and he is starting to lower his quarters. A revelation for me came recently when riding a twenty three year old former international Grand Prix horse who loves to piaffe and does it really well and in a classically correct way. It felt so easy, so balanced, so uphill and what’s more, I did so little! It gave me a totally different feel and I started to think about piaffe differently with Theo. I had to make him hotter and quicker off my leg, so I could do less in the actual movement, ask him, then let him do the work. I do remember Dane Rawlins, who trained me for many years tapping me on the bum with a piaffe whip on my old mare saying quite rightly, ‘she has to piaffe, not you!’

I suppose now that I have experienced Grand Prix, when I am riding my others I am looking at my training slightly differently, I understand what ‘off the leg’ can feel like. I now expect a quicker reaction, and insist on one, so that I may take my leg off and they keep going. I would love to train more horses to the ultimate level too. Georgina felt that before riding at Grand Prix she would only introduce a move as required at the next level, ie half pass for medium. Now she feels she pays more attention to the scales of training and how the new movements improve the horse physically for the higher levels.

I am unusual in that I don’t ride my horses that often. Originally because I just didn’t get time to do them most days, but now I have relaxed and realise they are all going better because of it! Sadly in 2014 I lost my father and had to fly out to California to be with him before he died. My horses were not ridden for a week before the regionals but had a few lunge sessions with good friends. That year I won six regionals, and a national title and it made me re think. I try to make sure they do something every day, whether it be schooling, hacking, a quick lunge on a head collar or time out in the field. I love to see them able to stretch and work over the back, with no tack on, no restraints. I even like to jump them when I can, not big as I am not that brave but to make them gymnastic and to give them a bit of fun. I do a lot of my training in a snaffle. Theo was trained all the way to Grand Prix in his snaffle. I competed to Intermediare 2 in it and still do most of my daily training in the snaffle. The Grand Prix tests I have ridden in a double to get a little more refinement and I find I can get more bend and softness to the bend in the half passes.

The horses do however have to be fit enough, and strong enough, to cope with the demands of the work. I don’t start mine too early. The three horses I have now I bought at ten, eleven and twelve years of age. Granted its probably too old to make an international Grand Prix horse but then that isn’t a realistic goal for me. I don’t have the time, or the funds to do competitions like that. For me, going to the Regionals twice a year, and the Nationals if I am lucky, is a major logistical nightmare. Trying to arrange yard cover for one, time off earning money, and transport issues. I have an old Rice trailer, towed by a Land Rover. A lovely friend lends me a little lorry to stay in and take another horse but it is hard work!

For me temperament is key, the horses have to want to work, you can’t make them, well not at that level anyway. Good movement obviously helps. My middle horse Mi Amigo (Zardin Firfod (Gribaldi)/ Lauries Crusador) has super paces with a hind leg that comes underneath him naturally. He is however rather lazy and it has taken me a long time to teach him flying changes. But that is probably more due to the fact that he spent six years not working after being backed and then competed as a five year old. He still thinks he should be on holiday! Georgina’s key qualities she feels are necessary are a genuine and generous nature, intelligent, with a natural uphill balance and active hindleg.

As a rider I think you need to be fit too. Luckily for me this is not too much of a problem as I am doing a very physical demanding job, and ride at least 4 daily as well as sitting on lots in lessons, and generally walking about whilst teaching all day. I often don’t finish teaching til 9pm and rack up a lot of steps per day as totalled by my Nike Fuel Band which is a bit of an obsession of mine. Georgina said ‘The fitter you are the better of course, as you can better control your body thus improving your balance, harmony and clarity of aiding.  I do a weekly pilates session and ride daily.  As important must be to train the horse to be responsive, in self carriage and good balance – so it is not just a rider strength issue.’ She summed it up well with this statement ‘Coordination of mind and body is absolutely key rather than pure strength – definitely the sport for the thinking rider with empathy’.