Team Pegasus Update from Judy Weber

Team Pegasus dressage rider Judy Weber is training hard to take her lovely horse Bello up the levels into Intermediare I.  She recently trained with internationally renowned dressage coach and FEI 5* judge Lilo Fore, and shared her thoughts about the experience.

Bello and I were fortunate to have two lessons with Lilo. In the first lesson, Lilo worked on thoroughness, collection, and connection within the movements, particularly the canter pirouette.

For the second lesson, coaches were present for observation and discussion. Lilo was happy with the progress of the training, and told me Bello’s training was correct, so I chose to work on basic transitions within the paces and accuracy within the circle.

I found this to be especially helpful, as working on the movements doesn’t help basic way of going. During the lesson, we achieved a better degree of collection through many, many transitions. A few exercises were especially helpful.

One involved the trot shoulder-in down the long side, making sure to start from a really good corner. Choose a marker and walk a few strides in shoulder-in and then back to trot, repeating the exercise several times until you can achieve a soft, engaged, and uphill trot. The proof of this exercise’s effectiveness occurs when you come from shoulder-in to half-pass and can maintain a parallel and smooth collection across the arena.

The exercises were interspersed with breaks for Bello and discussion with Lilo.

The other exercise I thought was especially effective involved pirouettes. First, at walk make the half-pirouette off the long side and proceed straight, not deviating back to the wall. Then in canter, through a perfect corner, turn on quarter line, canter straight then turn a quarter pirouette back to the long side; in other words, ride a very long rectangle. Concentrating on accuracy and turning on the quarter line meant being able to have Bello more engaged and making sure the collection followed through.

Lilo commented on what a beautiful horse Bello is, on how clean his changes are, and on his great ability for collection as we aim higher. We keep Bello in top performance condition with Pegasus Sweetmax and nutrition advice from Michelle Meylan.

Lilo reinforced everything I strive for when training Bello, and I finished the lesson feeling more confident with some great tools to use. I am very lucky to have been able to enjoy this memorable experience and cannot recommend her highly enough. A huge thanks to Dressage WA and all the people who worked so hard to bring her here.