Shaun Mandy's dressage blog: a stressful move

Dear gorgeous readers,

As I write to you, I am sitting in the glorious sunshine on Southbourne beach sipping on a cappuccino while Pringle wanders from table to table in search of food. I obviously never feed her, or so she makes out.

I had a little nudge a couple of days ago to get pen to paper while out celebrating my bestie, Elodie’s birthday. We had a delicious dinner out in the Langley Tap in Langley Burrell with Sarah, Richard, Polly and Mark. At the end of the evening, our waitress Jess, who had been particularly smiley and helpful came to our table with the bill. She asked if I was Shaun Mandy. A bit nervous as to what might come next, I answered yes. She then said that she thought she recognised me as she read my blogs in Horse & Hound. Fame at last! It was a fun end to a special evening with good friends and it made me think that I must write my next one.

Here is a little something to think about when schooling your horse or pony. As my clients know, I work a lot on position. How can we expect our horses or ponies to go well for us if we are not sitting nicely and in balance? A very common fault for us riders is to be more dominant with our left hand. I see this a lot and is also something I have to remind myself about. When riding on the left rein, this results in pulling our horses round to the left, losing the outside rein and thus the horse’s shoulders. A good exercise to counteract this and get more security into the right rein and therefore straightness, is to ride renvers when on the left rein. So soften the left hand forward, feel the right rein for a bit of outside flexion with your right leg on the girth and left leg a little behind. You are, therefore, asking the shoulders to come in a bit and for the quarters to go out and you will the start to get more connection to your right rein and your horse will become straighter underneath you. It helps to think a little right shoulder back, left shoulder forward to get a bit more straightness through your body and your left hand forward.

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Shaun Mandy’s dressage blog: a stressful move

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