Jane Savoie’s Tips For Having A Great Ride Every Day

Do you want to know how to have a great ride everyday? Stop expecting perfection. Rather than looking at training and competing in black or white terms, learn to see things in “shades of gray”.

The key to seeing shades of gray is to recognize when things are just
“a little bit better”. For example, when you think of your ride, ask
yourself if:
• Were your hands a little quieter?
• Did you sit a bit more centered today?
• Did you keep your eyes up for more of your ride than you did
yesterday?
• Were you able to use your legs, hands or seat a bit more
independently? That is, when you used your legs, did your
hands stay somewhat quieter than last week?
• Did you remember to use your legs before your hands more
often?
• Did you control your emotions a bit better so that you were
more relaxed, patient, brave, or calm?
• Did you stay slightly more focused throughout your ride?
• Did you remember to breathe more often?
• Did you reward your horse for every effort he made that was a
bit closer to what you want as a finished product?
As long as things keep getting “a little bit better”, pretty soon you’ll
be riding “a whole lot better”.

www.janesavoie.com/hhinvite/happyhorse

Jane Savoie’s Happy Horse tip #7

Happy Horse Tip #7

It’s important not to use your reins to control the things that you should use your seat to control. If you pull on the reins to steady rhythm, slow speed, decrease the length of stride or do downward transitions, you BLOCK the hind legs from coming forward.

So, make it your goal to develop a knee jerk reaction to use your seat instead of your hands for each of those four things.

Your seat can be used in four different ways:
1. Passive Following Seat
• Your passive, following seat tells your horse that everything (his rhythm, speed, and the gait) stays the same.
• Simply open and close your hips to follow the current movement of your horse.

2. Driving Seat
• Your driving seat tells your horse to increase his speed or length of stride.
• Think of pushing the back of saddle toward the front of the saddle, polishing the saddle from back to front, or pretending you’re pushing a swing higher in the air.

3. Retarding or Stilled Seat
• The stilled seat steadies the rhythm, slows the speed, decreases the length of stride, or asks for a downward transition.
• Sit in a “ready” position by stretching up tall so you have a gentle curve in the small of your back.
• Then, contract or tighten your tummy muscles like you’re doing a sit-up. This action braces your lower back and stops your hips from following your horse’s movement.

4. To Control the Position of Your Horse’s Body
• Your shoulders should be parallel to your horse’s shoulders, and your hips should be parallel to his hips.

Jane Savoie’s Happy Horse Tip #6-Improve Your Seat in the Canter

Happy Horse Tip #6-Improve Your Seat in the Canter

Think about how your seat moves when you’re cantering. Notice how your hip angles open and close. Start with your upper body on the vertical, and then open your hip angles and let your upper body rock a bit BEHIND the vertical. Then come back up to the vertical with shoulder over hip over heel.

Visualize arrows extending down from your seatbones. Whichever way those arrows are pointed, is the direction you’re sending the hind legs. If you lean forward and close your hip angles, you push the hind legs out the back door.

If your upper body is on the vertical and you rock behind the vertical, you open your hip angles. As a result the imaginary arrows extended down from your seatbones point forward. You’re saying to your horse’s hind legs, “Come along, come along, go with, go with.”

A Horse That Goes Forward To Light Leg Aids is a Happy Horse

Happy Horse Tip #5
Make sure your horse reacts to light leg aids. Your goal is to “whisper” with your aids and have your horse “shout” his response—Not the other way around!
To check that your horse reacts to light leg aids:
• Close both legs and see if he immediately responds with a surge from behind as if he’s going to do a lengthening.
• If he doesn’t, correct him by tapping with the whip or bumping with your legs to send him forward. (The intensity of the correction depends on the sensitivity of your horse.)
• Then slow down, and RETEST. Ask for the lengthening again with an aid as light as a mosquito bite. (Remember, your horse can feel a fly on his side so he can feel very light aids IF you train him to react to them.)

The key here is to RETEST. Otherwise you’re just teaching your horse to go forward to the “correction” not from the light leg aid.

For more tips for training a Happy Horse, go to: www.janesavoie.com/happyhorse

Happy Horse Tip #4

Happy Horse Tip #4:
If your horse gets nervous in the walk, here’s a tip that might help him.

Think about how relaxed you sit when you’re finished with your work. So, if you’re walking, and you feel like your horse is going to get tense or jig, sit in the same relaxed way. Say to yourself, “We’re done. We’re finished. Work is over.”

Inhale. Exhale. And dissolve into your horse’s back. If you sit with less positive tension or tone in your body, your horse can feel you relax and will mirror that.

Elastic Contact with Your Horse’s Mouth in the Canter

Happy Horse Tip #3 In the canter, your horse telescopes his neck forward and back in the same way he does in the walk. You need to follow with your arms in the canter. If you don’t, your horse can’t use his neck as balancing rod. So, he struggles, gives up, and falls into the trot. He’s not being bad. You’re just putting him in a position where it’s very difficult for him to continue to canter.

Imagine that when you pick up the reins, your arms don’t belong to you anymore. They’re an extension of the rein, and they belong to your horse.

Here’s an exercise to help give you the feeling of an elastic contact in the canter. You can even practice this exercise in the halt first to get some muscle memory.
• Get up into a two-point position.
• Pretend you’re a jockey galloping down a track with your hands pushing your horse’s neck forward every stride.
• While doing that, notice how your elbows open and close with every stride.
• Then sit back down, and keep your elbows opening and closing in the same way.

For more info on the Happy Horse Course, go to: www.janesavoie.com/happyhorse/

How To Freshen Your Horse’s Walk

Happy Horse Tip #1: Here’s a great exercise called “breathing the legs” that you can use to freshen your horse’s walk.

Try this exercise at home first. You might be surprised by the reaction you get. So you don’t want to do it for the first time at a horse show.

• Take your legs off your horse’s sides.
• Move them back an inch or two.
• Place them back on his sides lightly.

This tip is excerpted from The Happy Horse Course. For more info on how to train a happy horse, go to: www.janesavoie.com/happyhorse/

Happy Horse Home Study Course Is Live Until May 3

A Happy Horse course is available now for the next 4 days ONLY until May 3 (or sooner if we run out of inventory first). You can check it out here:

http://www.janesavoie.com/a_happy_horse.htm

By the way, I know it’s a pretty long page. I tried to keep it short, but describing everything in the course took a lot of space.

If you’ve already made up your mind that you want one, just skip to the bottom where you can claim your copy right away.

Here are some sample clips from the Happy Horse course:

A Happy Horse Home Study Course About to Sell Out Again

I just wanted to give you guys a heads up that A Happy Horse Home Study Course is about to sell out again. The original sets sold old out in 1 month when I first released the course last February. So, I produced a bunch more, and right now I’m down to 78 courses.

That probably doesn’t sound like a problem except when the fulfillment house reprints, they are going to charge more for production which means that the price of the course will increase.

I just wanted to let you know ahead of time so you don’t get a nasty surprise. I realize that $597 is a big chunk of change, but many people are sharing the course (and the cost!) with a few friends to make it more affordable. They even tell me they have a “Happy Horse Party” once a week where the watch a lesson, discuss the content, and have a fun dinner! (Who says dressage can’t be fun!!)

They also tell me that they’ve figured out that when they divide the cost of Happy Horse by the 44 discs in the program, it only comes to $13.57/session (and that doesn’t even include the manual!). That’s a whole lot cheaper than a lesson in most any part of the country. Plus they still have it in their library for reference anytime they need help!

Click or copy the link below to get A Happy Horse at the original price while they last.

http://www.janesavoie.com/shop/a_happy_horse.htm