The gringa and her long lines
I long lined my three-year-old percheron Toby for the first time yesterday. We’ve done a lot of free longeing, joining up, and longeing on a single line, but this business with two lines is a good foundation for actual riding, because I can teach the horse both about the rein and the leg aids with the lines. I used a Monty Roberts dually halter.
We worked in the round pen, because that is the safest place to begin. A couple of circles to the left. A couple of circles to the right, with me walking at an angle off of the horse’s hindquarters on the inside of the circle. I left the lines long, trailing behind me on the ground, and somehow managed not to get tangled in them or step on them. (Longeing for some equestrian vaulting practices while handling that heavy, long vaulting whip has helped me become more coordinated.)
While our attempts weren’t real pretty, the outside rein did help to balance Toby. A couple of times the Percheron turned towards the inside, and stopped, as if to ask me what exactly it is I wanted him to do. This the conversation. So I cleaned up my long lines, told the horse everything was OK, pointed the whip at his hindquarters and opened my other arm wide for him, creating a passageway between me and the fence panels, sending him through and back onto the circle. That was my answer. He did just fine.
Then as Toby was walking around the circle, I slowly moved behind him and drove him from behind. He was a little surprised that I was back there, but the amiable guy took it pretty much in stride. The horse stopped a couple of times, unclear about what I was asking him to do. I told him he was doing wonderfully, gave him a couple of clucks and encouraged him to walk on by stepping forward towards his tail. More conversation.
Toby got a little nervous about the lines along his sides and behind him and broke into a trot with a couple of strides at canter, from which I had to slow him back down to a walk. We managed a stop-and-start kind of circle, and then we made two complete circles around the pen. Since we were doing so well, I asked him to drift into the center of the pen, using the outside line like my leg aid, and he got it! We then continued all the way across the pen, and I asked for a halt as he walked up to the panels. Good thing the panels were there.
And then we stopped. Toby ate up my praise like a bucket of oats. He’s a good learner. After we get really good at this (moving to a larger fenced area next), I’ll probably long line him on some of the trails and roads around our place.
When I first got my Andalusian, Caprichosa, who hadn’t been ridden much, I started her in the long lines. We clocked some miles down red dirt roads and arroyos in the Pojoaque valley. My non-horsy neighbors often stood beneath the portals of their old adobe houses, giving me seriously funny looks, even shaking their heads, smiling occasionally, as if they were thinking, “Eeeeeeeeh, look at that silly gringa. She spent so much money on her fancy horse, she can’t even afford a cart!” I just smiled and nodded my head to them politely as we cruised on by, secure in the knowledge that I wasn’t the only character in the neighborhood.
And, just for the record, Toby and I will be getting ourselves a little cart.
I may even get myself one of those fancy driving hats too. With lots and lots and lots of feathers. From London?! Simply de rigueur for trotting up and down Northern New Mexico logging roads.
Images: Tricorn Hats; Hats by Katie
