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With each horse that Kyra Kyrklund rides or instructs from the ground,
she has a set of expectations the horse ought to fulfill - reactions
she expects from him in response to individual basic aids. Without
these proper responses, it is unreasonable to think that more complicated
combinations of aids will work the way they are designed to. Kyra
calls the test of these basic aids her "ABC"s. Understand that whether
the horse's obedience to these aids needs to be reinforced is immediately
evident to a rider like Kyra as soon as she gets on. If you are
less experienced, you may need to go through the whole routine more
often, as much asking your horse the questions to observe his reactions,
not just to reinforce his responses.
 Kyra
begins by asking the horse to stand relaxed and on a slack rein
contact. Initially he does not need to be on the bit, but especially
he must be willing to stand immobile and confident without the restraint
of the rider's hand.
Then with first a small leg aid (and an allowing hand) she urges
the horse forward into walk. If he is too slow or "cold" to the
leg she reinforces her request with a more demanding kick with her
lower legs. As he answers the leg correctly, she allows him to go
forward freely for a handful of strides before bringing him back
to walk with hands and voice. If the horse over-reacts by trotting
or cantering forward, she does not punish, but rewards his response
and then goes about refining it. It may take some practice for you
to read your horse's reactions and know how much strength on your
part is appropriate and how much response from him is desirable.
Clearly, it will vary from one horse to the next and according to
the situation in which you are working. The point is to avoid having
your schooling session become a long-winded monologue with your
"student" if his attention is elsewhere and he has no interest in
what you are trying to tell him.
At the Symposium, Kyra repeated the "go" and "back to standing
quietly" commands until she was satisfied that the horse she was
working with was motivated and understood her expectations. She
also drilled the same basic relationship between walk and trot.
She emphasized that at this stage her immediate goal is not to get
the horse's nose in. Many riders, she explained, fall into the habit
of trying to "trap" their horses on the bit rather than creating
the preconditions that make the horse feel rewarded and comfortable
in his acceptance.
Kyra's introduces her second expectation of the horse in the walk
on a square or rectangle. At each corner she asks the horse to make
a "box turn," which is really a primitive relation to a quarter
turn on the haunches. The bend and rhythm, in this case, are of
lesser importance. Her main interest is that the horse's shoulders
will turn easily without her pulling him around with her inner rein.
As in the first exercise, if his response is inadequate, she reinforces
her aids, this time displacing the forehand with an aggressive outer
leg, which may be moved forward to the girth or even towards the
horse's elbow. When he will turn his shoulders smartly and without
stickiness, she begins to work the same exercise in the trot. If
the horse anticipates the turn and initiates the corner on his own,
Kyra stops him on the original straight line, makes him wait for
her aids, and then proceeds through the corner on her terms.
 With
these relationships proven and not just assumed, she then can ride
the horse on a circle and begin to connect him from her pushing
leg, which he now understands, into a receiving, shaping hand which
he also respects and understands.
In the basic circle work, her first goal is be sure that the horse
will respect the boundaries imposed by her outside aids, even if
she must temporarily position him to the outside of the figure to
do this. It is not that she necessarily wants him counter-positioned.
She knows, however, that if she has to force the bending with her
inner rein, the horse is only likely to stiffen against it and want
to pop his outer shoulder in the opposite direction. By making him
turn-able with her weight and her outside aids, while at the same
time making the horse push (stretch) from his outside hind leg forward
to the outer rein, Kyra makes him susceptible to her inner rein's
invitation to wrap around her active inside leg at the girth. In
this way, the horse will offer to bend with less objection. On the
demonstration circles she rode, Kyra called to mind a figure like
a diamond or an octagon, momentarily using aids reminiscent of her
walking work on the square, to unload the horse's outer shoulder
and enhance his alignment and balance. As she said, "I'm teaching
him to go, to stop, and to turn correctly. When he does these things,
it's easy to put him on the bit."
In another exercise on Day 2 of the Symposium, Kyra asked the riders
to school their horses to move forward from the seat without simultaneously
using their driving legs. This is done with a momentary tilt of
the pelvis, produced by the rider contracting his abdominal muscles.
If the horse did not answer, Kyra called for a reinforcement with
the whip until the seat alone made the horse go forward.
Normal technical riding, she explained, is composed of numerous
small inputs, many times overlapping. An unwary rider will often
rely on one part of his aids to carry the whole message, failing
to notice that other parts of his aids are going unheeded. Kyra's
purpose in isolating individual aids and their results, in this
case, was to make the riders aware of the inadvertent "crutches"
they were allowing themselves to use.
Dealing with horses and riders in this way, Kyra intends not at
all to deprive them of the use of the complementary interactions
of the finished aids. Rather, her goal is to make riders always
mindful that the complicated "words" and "sentences" that they expect
their horses to react correctly to, all spring from an honest and
complete understanding of their constituent elements, namely, her
"ABC"s.
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Underlying
Relationships - Kyra's ABC's From the May 1999 issue