So what are you doing for deer season?
Nov. 26th, 2021 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickFor deer season we will be working on piaffe. L. O. L.
I am 100% serious. We gonna pee yaff. Not, mind you, because I want to pee yaff. I want to passage but apparently you have to pee yaff first, so... yeah. Gonna pee yaff.
Do you know how to piaffe?
No.
Have you ever ridden a piaffe?
Nope.
Does your horse know how to piaffe?
Not as such, no.
Did you magically acquire a piaffe-capable trainer in the last week who can competently and safely guide the pair of you idiots through this?
LOL, nope.
How do you expect to be able to make piaffe happen, given that neither you nor your horse have any idea what you're doing out there and you refuse to engage a capable "lives in the same state as you" professional to assist you?
YouTube.
... YouTube? (rolls eyes) I cannot WAIT to see how this turns out.
Yeah, me neither. It's gonna be awesome. :)
(tap tap tap) Is this thing even on? Can you HEAR me?
I can hear you just fine. Look, other people have horses that piaffe. Horses can piaffe. People can teach horses to piaffe. So... why can't I try to teach my reasonably-clever, reasonably-athletic horse to piaffe?
Failure, incoming!
Everybody who doesn't try has failed. I bet a lot of the people out there haven't even TRIED to teach their horses to pee yaff. Me, I haven't failed yet because I have heretofore been too busy failing at leg yield and fancy trot and shoulder-in and haunches-in and halfpass. But I have failed well at those things and (it seems) even have some canter lateral work going on here. Christ, it took me two horses and like twelve fucking years to get to half-ass halfpass. Not gonna give up on Pee Yaff before I've even started.
So, after extensive YouTube research (only using videos that have an accent because everyone knows that dressage instruction is only worthwhile if there's an accent involved), it looks like you get to piaffe as follows:
Start in-hand. For all your in-hand work, keep these lessons SHORT and LOW STRESS. Your horse should be able to do this stuff in a quiet, relaxed frame of mind. Ten, fifteen minutes, tops.
1. Have horse walk politely and stop politely and stay reasonably straight while you stand kind of at the neck, walking backwards, and leading the horse along. Look for obedient and prompt. If you have a wall or fence or something you can work him against to keep him straight, that's also helpful. Horse can wear a bridle for this part if you like. I think this is basically Make sure you have some sort of control of your beastie on the ground. I imagine tiny blonde german women being trampled by large bay sofas with no ground manners.
2. At the halt, teach your horse to lift a hind leg in response to a gentle touch of whip on hock/cannon. Horse should lift leg calmly and slowly but is allowed to put it back down in short order for this part. The goal here is a calm & relaxed lift, not focusing on "hold". Work for calm and relaxed. Take plenty of time to pet horse and tell him he's clever when he does a good job. This should be BORING and the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of fraught. If horse is "kicking out" at touch of whip every time, you are doing it wrong. In this phase, the "kick" response to leg touches should die out completely. That's completely not what we're going for and here is a great time to eliminate that by boring the horse to death with an absurdly easy task that he can get right every single time and feel confident and happy about doing the thing correctly. You can change sides to work on the off-side leg at first, but it's easiest (for later) to teach both legs from one side.
3. Teach horse to lift *and hold* hind leg in response to gentle touch of whip. Leg should stay lifted while whip is touching leg. Leg should also be pretty well lifted, towards belly, not just hovering above the ground. We want well-bent hocks, here. Still, this should not be fraught. This is basically a "shaping" of step 2. You have a correct-ish response of "pick up the leg but not in a fraught manner" and now you want a "better" response. Take it slowly, and be reasonable and generous with praise for improvement.
4. Teach horse to lift *and hold* hind leg in response to gentle touch of whip (like in #3) but now he's to set it down a little "under" himself. This is to kind of mimic the posture of piaffe, to help the horse learn the position he needs. Do one leg and then the other, kind of alternating. Again, slow progress, generous praise for improvement. No fraught-ness. You can kind of inch forward if that helps here with horse getting the idea of stepping under.
5. Now, you start walking forward slowly and asking the inside (left) hind to lift higher with that hock touch. Get this kind of going along so that horse understands that we are now doing leg-lifting *and* forward movement. Apparently you can ignore the off side leg for this part.
6. As you go, with your slow backward walking, migrate your taps to horse's butt (so, up the leg). It's easier to tap butt than a moving hock, is why. And click in a trot rhythm (to add some energy) while you look for a diagonal rhythm of the feet with the hind legs kind of tucking under. This is hard, a lot of the videos look like the horse is getting flustered when people try this part. Even a TINY try is good. Even a "maybe I thought I saw something" try is good. Err on the side of generous praise for the very slightest maybe-I-saw-a-thing, using your best "I thought I saw a spider" mentality. LOOK for chances to congratulate the horse. Be sure to take PLENTY of breaks and allow lots of horse decompression time to keep him in a confident, non-stressed mindset.
7. Once you can get some diagonal rhythm with hind legs stepping up under (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STILL LET THIS PROCEED FORWARD, IT IS OK) then work on building strength and consistency in this exercise. Still allow some forward, but kind of hang out at this level to build strength and consistency and rhythm. This is not a fast process. Goals are first of all, a relaxed horse who feels like he is a champ for doing the thing with very gradual improvements in strength and such.
This is as far as I have youtubed. As far as I have gotten, it looks like you teach this shit on the ground and magically it transfers to riding... somehow? I will research and report back but since we're not there yet, it is not a currently pressing concern. Realistically, we are probably at least a year away from where I need to figure out how to get "riding" pee yaff working from "in-hand" pee yaff.
We are on Step 3, pick up leg and hold it in response to whip touch. He's pretty good. In another two outings, he is going to know this cold. And we will move to step 4. It's gonna be a while until I have something interesting to report, but I have two weeks of Stupid Deer Season to work in, so... yeah. We might get there.
I am 100% serious. We gonna pee yaff. Not, mind you, because I want to pee yaff. I want to passage but apparently you have to pee yaff first, so... yeah. Gonna pee yaff.
Do you know how to piaffe?
No.
Have you ever ridden a piaffe?
Nope.
Does your horse know how to piaffe?
Not as such, no.
Did you magically acquire a piaffe-capable trainer in the last week who can competently and safely guide the pair of you idiots through this?
LOL, nope.
How do you expect to be able to make piaffe happen, given that neither you nor your horse have any idea what you're doing out there and you refuse to engage a capable "lives in the same state as you" professional to assist you?
YouTube.
... YouTube? (rolls eyes) I cannot WAIT to see how this turns out.
Yeah, me neither. It's gonna be awesome. :)
(tap tap tap) Is this thing even on? Can you HEAR me?
I can hear you just fine. Look, other people have horses that piaffe. Horses can piaffe. People can teach horses to piaffe. So... why can't I try to teach my reasonably-clever, reasonably-athletic horse to piaffe?
Failure, incoming!
Everybody who doesn't try has failed. I bet a lot of the people out there haven't even TRIED to teach their horses to pee yaff. Me, I haven't failed yet because I have heretofore been too busy failing at leg yield and fancy trot and shoulder-in and haunches-in and halfpass. But I have failed well at those things and (it seems) even have some canter lateral work going on here. Christ, it took me two horses and like twelve fucking years to get to half-ass halfpass. Not gonna give up on Pee Yaff before I've even started.
So, after extensive YouTube research (only using videos that have an accent because everyone knows that dressage instruction is only worthwhile if there's an accent involved), it looks like you get to piaffe as follows:
Start in-hand. For all your in-hand work, keep these lessons SHORT and LOW STRESS. Your horse should be able to do this stuff in a quiet, relaxed frame of mind. Ten, fifteen minutes, tops.
1. Have horse walk politely and stop politely and stay reasonably straight while you stand kind of at the neck, walking backwards, and leading the horse along. Look for obedient and prompt. If you have a wall or fence or something you can work him against to keep him straight, that's also helpful. Horse can wear a bridle for this part if you like. I think this is basically Make sure you have some sort of control of your beastie on the ground. I imagine tiny blonde german women being trampled by large bay sofas with no ground manners.
2. At the halt, teach your horse to lift a hind leg in response to a gentle touch of whip on hock/cannon. Horse should lift leg calmly and slowly but is allowed to put it back down in short order for this part. The goal here is a calm & relaxed lift, not focusing on "hold". Work for calm and relaxed. Take plenty of time to pet horse and tell him he's clever when he does a good job. This should be BORING and the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of fraught. If horse is "kicking out" at touch of whip every time, you are doing it wrong. In this phase, the "kick" response to leg touches should die out completely. That's completely not what we're going for and here is a great time to eliminate that by boring the horse to death with an absurdly easy task that he can get right every single time and feel confident and happy about doing the thing correctly. You can change sides to work on the off-side leg at first, but it's easiest (for later) to teach both legs from one side.
3. Teach horse to lift *and hold* hind leg in response to gentle touch of whip. Leg should stay lifted while whip is touching leg. Leg should also be pretty well lifted, towards belly, not just hovering above the ground. We want well-bent hocks, here. Still, this should not be fraught. This is basically a "shaping" of step 2. You have a correct-ish response of "pick up the leg but not in a fraught manner" and now you want a "better" response. Take it slowly, and be reasonable and generous with praise for improvement.
4. Teach horse to lift *and hold* hind leg in response to gentle touch of whip (like in #3) but now he's to set it down a little "under" himself. This is to kind of mimic the posture of piaffe, to help the horse learn the position he needs. Do one leg and then the other, kind of alternating. Again, slow progress, generous praise for improvement. No fraught-ness. You can kind of inch forward if that helps here with horse getting the idea of stepping under.
5. Now, you start walking forward slowly and asking the inside (left) hind to lift higher with that hock touch. Get this kind of going along so that horse understands that we are now doing leg-lifting *and* forward movement. Apparently you can ignore the off side leg for this part.
6. As you go, with your slow backward walking, migrate your taps to horse's butt (so, up the leg). It's easier to tap butt than a moving hock, is why. And click in a trot rhythm (to add some energy) while you look for a diagonal rhythm of the feet with the hind legs kind of tucking under. This is hard, a lot of the videos look like the horse is getting flustered when people try this part. Even a TINY try is good. Even a "maybe I thought I saw something" try is good. Err on the side of generous praise for the very slightest maybe-I-saw-a-thing, using your best "I thought I saw a spider" mentality. LOOK for chances to congratulate the horse. Be sure to take PLENTY of breaks and allow lots of horse decompression time to keep him in a confident, non-stressed mindset.
7. Once you can get some diagonal rhythm with hind legs stepping up under (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STILL LET THIS PROCEED FORWARD, IT IS OK) then work on building strength and consistency in this exercise. Still allow some forward, but kind of hang out at this level to build strength and consistency and rhythm. This is not a fast process. Goals are first of all, a relaxed horse who feels like he is a champ for doing the thing with very gradual improvements in strength and such.
This is as far as I have youtubed. As far as I have gotten, it looks like you teach this shit on the ground and magically it transfers to riding... somehow? I will research and report back but since we're not there yet, it is not a currently pressing concern. Realistically, we are probably at least a year away from where I need to figure out how to get "riding" pee yaff working from "in-hand" pee yaff.
We are on Step 3, pick up leg and hold it in response to whip touch. He's pretty good. In another two outings, he is going to know this cold. And we will move to step 4. It's gonna be a while until I have something interesting to report, but I have two weeks of Stupid Deer Season to work in, so... yeah. We might get there.
