This message is from: "Anneli Sundkvist" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Jean wrote: "Anneli. would like to hear how you did at the clinic." Ok, here it goes: The clinic was held by Bent Branderup (http://www.branderup.com), who visits Sweden 4-6 weekends every year. He also give clinics in Denmark, Germany, England and mabye other countries. Hm...I think he mentioned France. Normally, there are 8 riders with horses taking part in the clinics. Due to the MASSIVE interest academic riding/classical dressage is gaining in Sweden these days, they had squeezed 12 riders in to the clinic. This wasn't 100% successful. Normally, you ride twice in saturday and once in sunday. Now it was only once a day for every riders and we wasn't finished until 5.30 PM in the sunday. But it was good anyway! The clinic starts with 1,5 hours of theory when Bent B. talks about how the horse is built, the purpose of the riding itself, the aids, the bits (the diffrence between the snaffle and the curb etc). After that the riding starts. After six riders there is a break, followed by the next six riders, followed by more theory. The horses that took part in the clinics were of the following breeds: PRE/Andalusian (3 stallions), Swedish Warmblood (3 mares), Hannoveranian (1 gelding), Icelandic horse (1 stallion), TB/Irish import cross (1 gelding, he's a tobiano, so mabye there's coloured cob-blood in him), Lipizzaner (1 gedling), North-Swedish horse (1 stallion) AND....TADA! - 1 Fjordhorse gelding - Cider. The educational level of the horses differed much. The Lip, one of the SWB:s and one of the PRE:s were training the piaf, while one of the PRE:s were only four years old and had been started under saddle only some months ago. The rest of us was in between. My own riding went pretty good in the saturday and I was very pleased after the sunday training. I have some problem bending to the right, which causes me to sit too much on the left seat bone (it might be the other way around). Bent helped me a lot with that, helping me to co-ordinate my aids better. I tend to use my leg when they shouldn't be used. We were doing pretty nice shoulder-in and quarter-in at the walk. I want to learn how to ride on one hand only. Since I've ridden English all my life, this has not been part of my education. In the classical dressage you ride on one hand if you want to. I got a lesson and actually managed to control the bending and do shoulder-in and quarter-in on one hand at walk AND trot. That's what I'm working on at home now. Cider's trot had become much better since the last clinic in october. I've worked a lot to make him CARRY instead of PUSH and it seemed to have paid off pretty well. At least Bent B. seemed to be satisfied. Another intresting thing with these clinics is to look at people's equipment. You'll se Spanish saddles and stuff you don't normally "meet" since they're not allowed in shows. You HAVE TO have traditional English tack in dressage shows in Sweden. Do you have that (stupid) rule in the U.S and Canada too? Regards Anneli ***************************************************** Anneli Sundkvist Department of Archaeology & Ancient History Uppsala University St. Eriks Torg 5 S-753 10 Uppsala Sweden Phone: +46-18-4712082
