“In the walk you should feel a lovely tension on the reins, it should feel as if the horse flows through his whole body, that everything is very fluent. Try to imagine nice clear steps of the hindleg, stay centred on the hindlegs, and don’t hang on to the reins – walk on a bit. Your leg doesn’t have to do anything, just be there. Two really nice hands really feeling the horse, look after the horse’s rhythm with your hands. Feel for that lovely elastic feeling.”
“Now trot, a big trot with lots of balance, feeling the horse’s mouth all the while. That’s your means of communication, that keeps his neck soft so the aids can flow through – where your back joins the seat, that’s the inner core – allowing, adjusting, feeling. It is very important that you are absolutely square on both sides of your horse…”
As Judy’s gentle wisdom flows, so does Freecell, the rider is so tactful, the horse so light and responsive, it is all in keeping with the ambience of the arena and its setting.
Afterwards Sally tells me that her friends all ask ‘oh isn’t it scarey having lessons with Judy, doesn’t she yell at you?’
Judy is a rider’s teacher – a teacher who spends as much time in the saddle as she does dispensing advice from the side…
“I want to see very clever half halts. The half halt adjustment brings the horse into balance and the allowing lets the horse move. Half halt, adjustment, allowing. Very good Sally. All the adjustments have to be that subtle, but the most important thing is that you allow the horse to do what you’ve asked for in the adjustment. Supple in the neck, supple in the neck, no resistance, everything flowing through the horse. Nice outside rein, watch your own balance, be very still there. You must have your balance organized there, and allow the horse out in front and under behind. Keep the neck soft. There will be moments where the horse will naturally feel a bit awkward and it is the job of the rider to keep the horse soft so he can do the work in balance and not lock up.”
“Gentle half halt, then light and ride on…”
“It is a simultaneous aid between your seat and your hands. Good very good trot…”
You have the wrong impression if you think Sally has been going endlessly round the track of the arena, she has been riding all the school figures, three track work, half passes, transitions. At this level, Judy is content to let her talented pupil set the agenda, while the instructor fine-tunes the aids…
“Lighten the forehand, where the rein rubs on the side of the neck you have to see that the muscle there is working soft.”
“And always listening to the back rhythm of the horse, one/two, one/two, the same rhythm, through your seat, through your back, into your hands, where the reins rub on the neck. The same rhythm in the neck. If you don’t have the same rhythm in the neck as you have in the back, then the horse is not anywhere near truly through. You have to feel that rein rubbing on the neck with a lovely elastic spring.”
“Try to engage him, get him that bit off the forehand, get him used to that little bit of compression and little bit of lift. You have to get comfortable and strong with it.”
And suddenly Freecell is showing some lovely shortened steps, the beginning of what will be a very exciting passage in the future.
“Well done, now out into trot again, good. It is important to break it up into little sections to keep the work interesting. When you ride a test there are so many figures, transitions, that come up so quickly – if you are clever with your training, you will make the work interesting, so that your horse is always going somewhere, always making a transition, so that when you ride a test you are comfortable with that rapid succession of movements.”
Freecell moves into canter and into a few half pirouettes. Judy is chanting in the rhythm of the movement, “left hind leg, left hind leg, left hind leg, nice outside rein, two thirds more outside rein. It doesn’t mean you don’t indicate with the inside rein, but it is the outside rein that gets the horse around.’ And this time it is a full pirouette.
“If you don’t ask, and ask for the horse to carry himself and be supple, if you don’t ask, you can’t train. As long as you ask nicely and you are correct and in control of your own body, then it is fair. But if you struggle to sit well, it is hard to set the horse up. Up with the horse, your inner strength and balance, make your adjustment, and allow. Good. The most important thing you are doing there is with all your skill and knowledge, you set the horse up so he can go the best he possibly can. That’s all you can do.”
“You can expect when you start to train working pirouettes, that there will be a little bit of confusion.”

Now it was time for the flying changes:
“Just ask and keep your reins very neat. If the rein is neat you get the feeling that you almost have to give the hand – if the rein is too long, then you start pulling back to keep the contact. Pulling back is the wrong action on the rein, you are better off with nice neat reins and a lovely hand.”
Lovely hand, lovely seat, and lovely changes!
“Now another transition, some nice trot work, back to canter, making the transitions all the time. Making a transition you really have to have a good seat – after a lighter seat that allows the horse to go on, you have to bring the horse back, you can’t do it with your hands, it has to be your seat, seat, indicate with your hands, and allow. Super…”
“His crest is lovely and soft, so you have the chance there to make half halts, adjustments, simultaneous aids there, get the horse up, get him nicely balanced. Let him do the figures without falling onto the forehand, onto your hands. It is the early set up, then allowing the horse to do the figure, then you won’t have arguments. Very good, seat, seat, seat, seat, make sure your shoulders are directly above your seat. You adjust your riding to the horse, you must not adjust the horse to you, we have to find the best way that the horse is able to go and you have to sit to it and allow it. Move him around, ask him to flow. Good. Same trot, same rhythm.”
“When you are organized, ask for canter again. He doesn’t have to go for that long a time, it is only that when he does go, he goes well, he is working through the body, over the back. The lighter you can get him, not necessarily so light on the reins that there is no contact, but the lighter you can get him with your skill, that he steps light over the ground – that’s what we are after. When a horse is light, we talk about light steps. When the horse steps off the ground in light steps, then he cannot be heavy. It is the steps and the self-carriage that we look at when we talk about ‘light’.”
Sally and Freecell have moved on to some impressive extended trots over the diagonals. Once again, it is ‘Well done Sally, and take a little break…’

Time for some work in walk:
“It’s a big walk and you have to train it in a subtle way that you bring his balance back, so he is ready to start on working sized walk pirouettes. It’s a lovely big walk, little half halts to prepare the pirouette. Good, make the reins long, give him a pat.”
Judy explains that she tries to keep the working sessions short: “The trick is not to spend the training session to get the horse going. The trick is to be clever enough that the minute you get on your horse, to have him going well, so you can start to train. Then you don’t have to grind around and grind around on the forehand for too long. Get the horse out, work it in a nice way, in self-carriage as much as possible, and put the horse away. It depends on the horse’s temperament, but if possible, I don’t want to work them too long. It’s not necessary.”
“A competition horse will have a long life, years and years of grinding away – you don’t want to add to that. It’s better to ride them consistently each day, but not for too long.”
“This is a lovely horse, he has all the conformation and the temperament to train on. It’s just a matter of repetition and giving the horse confidence and building strength. This horse has a good character, and Sally must look after that character because that’s what gives him that eye catching presence.”
“Finish up with a nice rising trot, let him relax, keep him soft. What you want is a horse that likes to work. If you work them too arduously, then you can take that out of the horse. With some horses that are working a bit too much on nervous tension, then you have to work them a bit longer, but this horse’s character is very solid, and he just needs to do what he has to do, without overdoing it. Give him a pat – and the rest of the day off.

 

A word from Judy...

“Sally is really working so hard. She is not a person who talks big; she is just studiously working away. She has her goals, but she knows those goals will not be achieved without really hard work. Coming from Tasmania all the way up here, is a big move, but she is really dedicated and fantastic to give lessons to. You ask her to do something and explain it to her, and she understands. I never have problem with her. She has a good temperament for training – rider temperament is as important as temperament in a horse. I’ve got some really super students at the moment, and Sally is one of them. I think she’ll continue to improve and she has a great horse to ride – they make such a good combination.”

“Sally is really working so hard. She is not a person who talks big; she is just studiously working away. She has her goals, but she knows those goals will not be achieved without really hard work. Coming from Tasmania all the way up here, is a big move, but she is really dedicated and fantastic to give lessons to. You ask her to do something and explain it to her, and she understands. I never have problem with her. She has a good temperament for training – rider temperament is as important as temperament in a horse. I’ve got some really super students at the moment, and Sally is one of them. I think she’ll continue to improve and she has a great horse to ride – they make such a good combination.”
“Teaching is always give and take and there are always difficulties. With some combinations, maybe the horse isn’t suitable – then you can only try to do the best you can. But when you get a combination of horse and rider, that’s as enjoyable to teach as having a great horse to sit on and ride. You can see the possibilities to grow and get better and better. I do like teaching; you get a lot of reward out of it. I like riding and training the horses, I get a great deal of joy out of that, but teaching I try hard to give them what I’ve learnt over the years with my riding, and give the riders as much as I can.”

Like many of the better dressage riders, Sally Latona started out as an eventer, training with Stuart Tinney before she moved to Tasmania, where she attended a Clemens Dierks clinic down there…
“Clemens said to me, as he does, very nicely, oh you could get that horse to Grand Prix. So we got all keen on dressage, and my parents were keen because I wasn’t going to crash and burn on the cross-country any more. Then we brought the horse up to Sydney where I had lessons with Judy. Finally I sold the horse – he was coming up to Prix St Georges, and I thought, oh little Thoroughbred, he probably can’t do any more… And I’ve been with Judy ever since. For the last four years I have been up here more or less full time.”
And getting your Florestan gelding from Germany, that was pretty special?
“I love him, I think he is the best horse I’ve ever had. I’ve read where the director of the Westfalien horses, Susanne Rimkus says that Florestan is really cuddly, well Freecell is just the same, he’s pretty cuddly, he’s got a real personality. It shows, he cocks his ears forward as he trots around, he just looks like a real character.”
What have been the issues you have been working on – what was the focus in this lesson with Judy?
“He can be a bit lazy. When we first got him he wasn’t strong through the body at all, and he didn’t have much of a top line, he just been doing the PSI auction thing. He wasn’t very strong for dressage training, so we’ve just been concentrating on getting the trot. He came through with a second strength in the trot, some time before the nationals last year – the canter was still a bit weak. We just worked on bringing it forward, taking it back, working on the cadence and the expression, and I think it is starting to come.”
“It can be a bit difficult. If you bring him back too suddenly and make him really carry, he thinks that is all too hard and throws himself up in the air. Not anything major, just a little protest. , Then he says ‘ok I can do this, it’s not that hard, I’m strong enough to cope’ – I think he is coming good, like slowly slowly.”
Judy seems to be a very quiet encouraging instructor?
“Yeah, which is probably a real surprise to a lot of people. When I went down to Tasmania last, everyone said to me, ‘I don’t know how you could train with Judy, doesn’t she make you cry?’ Not at all! The brilliant thing about Judy and Clemens if you listen and put in 100%, they’ll put in 100% If they can see you are really trying, they won’t yell at you and get all cross.”
What’s the ambition for Freecell?
“I’m hoping to get him to FEI. I know it is a long process – hopefully one day I’ll be up there in Grand Prix.”
Was it a big sacrifice – packing up and leaving home in Tasmania to come to Sydney?
“I suppose not because I’ve live here most of my life. My mum lives here – it’s just dad with his business in Tasmania. The hard thing is you reach a stage where your parents say you do have to work. You can’t just spend my money on horses and spend all your time riding! I do marketing for my dad’s Bay of Fires Walks from here, which is working well at the moment. Dad keeps saying, you keep on competing well and you can stay up there, that’s the deal.”