Meg and Heatherton Park Chemistry
Eventing rider Meg Klayssen (Ferguson) didn’t start riding until she was 21 years old but now, in her late thirties, it occupies much of her time despite the fact that she runs her own fast growing IT business near Melbourne, Victoria. She manages to ride six days a week and calls it her ‘second job’, riding from 5am until 11:30am and then heading into the office and, although eventing is her passion, she also rides dressage horses for Heatherton Park whose owner Emmie Schmul is one of her coaches. Emmie and her husband Jim at Heatherton Park have found some nice horses that are now emerging on the eventing circuit as well as in the dressage arena and Meg’s Heatherton Park Chemistry (Capone/Another Gift), also known as Alfie, is one of them.
2014 was a quiet year on the eventing competition scene for Meg due to work commitments and getting married but she spent the year working on the basics in flat work and jumping with Alfie and her other four young horses. Although Alfie looks very warmblood in type and has some obvious talent in the dressage area, he is 50% thoroughbred and Meg hopes he will step up to compete at Melbourne International Horse Trials in the CCI1* and thinks he could possibly be moving into 2* by the end of 2015.
“He’s eight years old, which isn’t exactly a young horse, but he’s very established in his training” says Meg “He’s been a bit held back competition wise because of my work and personal commitments but he just needs the competition experience now and hopefully we can move up the grades. I think that probably warmbloods need a little longer than the pure thoroughbreds that I used to ride and luckily his temperament is fantastic – it makes going out very easy although he hasn’t done much of it. He’s very relaxed at competitions and if he does feel the atmosphere, he just points his toes a bit more in the dressage arena which is quite helpful!”
“But he does need a few miles under his belt now and hopefully that will happen this year. I’m just hoping that the going at events in the early part of the year is reasonably good as I like to look after their legs and, although he looks very warmblood now because we’ve been doing mainly strengthening work in collection and jumping which beefs him up a bit, he does lose it when we start the galloping work”
As well as training with Emmie Schmul and Lone Jorgensen, Meg takes lessons with Megan Jones ‘whenever she is close enough for me to travel to’.
“I really like training with Megan because she understands how getting the balance right in your flatwork can affect your jumping, especially on cross country. I’m not big so I can’t make a horse of this size do what I want by strength – they have to be working with me and that comes from their balance, their ability to come back to you and step underneath themselves when you ask. The horse has to know what their job is which is really important for little people like me!”
In a recent lesson with Megan, Meg asked to work on a specific problem she was encountering with the half pass on Alfie.
“During the half pass I’m losing the rideability and Alfie starts to back off my aids. He becomes a little bit sensitive about it all and it’s definitely worse on the left rein than the right”
Megan started by simplifying the movement “You need to reassure him that it’s not anything to worry about, all we’re asking him to do is to move his elbow over” and introduced two little techniques to help Meg work through the problem; the toe on the shoulder and the ‘butt cheeks’ (yes, that’s one you won’t hear often!)
The idea of using the toe on the shoulder is to help the horse stay more upright and lift his shoulder in the movement.
“You don’t want to use too many weird aids” says Megan “But generally the problem starts in the shoulder-in as you prepare for the half pass. Often the horse runs through the inside leg in the shoulder-in so the rider needs to get the inside elbow and girth area of the horse nice and soft, to help the horse bend around the inside leg. To help to move the shoulder across, start by lightly using the whip on the shoulder and then replace it with your toe aid near the back of the shoulder. The horse usually becomes more sensitive to this and it reminds him to stay more upright through the shoulder”
Megan claims that the ‘butt cheeks’ concept came to her because she is too lazy to kick a lot!
“I like to have my legs there but I hate to kick so I try and train my horses to respond to my weight aids as much as possible using my seat and back”
“When I want to sit to the inside of the saddle, I find it helps to think about separating your buttocks, so that you don’t just lean one way or the other. Imagine scooping one cheek of your bottom around the saddle to hold your weight to that side. The horse will feel that weight and will step underneath it and carry you more in the shoulder-in, which you then simply have to guide into the half-pass”
For Meg and Alfie, who started the exercise at walk and trot, the unusually named concepts seemed to hit the spot.
“Tackling this problem today made me realise how much the rider’s position can affect the horse’s balance and how they position their body underneath you according to how you are sitting” said Meg “Working with Megan is a bit like unwrapping a present; you start off with one problem and they you keep delving down through the layers of wrapping to find that actually that problem there is caused by this other problem here”
“I’ll go home and work on this concept for a few weeks now and drill down through the various problems and ‘sticky areas’ we’ve found today. I need to keep working on how my position affects his balance and his ability to step through and stay soft”
Due to some technical glitch (called the video operator), we lost footage of Meg and Alfie working on the half pass but it seems that this may be a blessing in disguise as Meg has continued to work on the exercise and tells us that ‘ It’s so much better now than in the video!” Luckily we didn’t lose the video of Megan’s own description of these exercises
Meg's groom Kellie Walsh, who now rides Meg's former 2* horse, Conspiracy Theory at Prelim level, also had a great lesson with Megan and took care of Meg's impressive team of cattle dogs as well as the horses!
