An interesting afternoon.....

Today I went to Ali's pony club where my friend Tanya keeps her horse. They had an "éthologue" visiting and she'd booked a session to try and improve her confidence and her seat after a recent fall. Being a nosy sort of person, I tagged along. Just as well as it happens because he couldn't speak great English so I had to translate.......

A lot of what he was saying we'd done with Adam already in our passenger lessons, he didn't go into the whole "where are their feet exactly" thing but he did ask her to forget about using her legs and turn her whole upper body where she wants the horse to go, "imagine you've got an extra set of eyes on your chest and they need to face the same way as the eyes on your head" he said. "point your tits to where you're going" was how I translated that......

And above all, be supple, don't tense up and breathe in time with the horse's movement. "Ride like Lucky Luke" he said......it doesn't matter what you look like, it's how it feels to the horse......

Pretty much the first time I've seen a Frenchman riding without hauling the horse around (although he rides with more contact than me, ie any at all) and kicking it to bits, too........He's called Olivier Cayre, his site is here

Could definitely see a difference in Tanya's riding too, she was a lot less stiff towards the end of the session. Would be interested in seeing how he works with horses on the ground.