Illustration: Jean-Louis Savart “Nuno Olivera” (Editions Belin)
The Thinking Horseman Part 1
by Chris Hector, Photos Roz Neave
Miguel Tavora is a Thinking Horseman, a curiously old fashioned appellation for what, one suspects, is a heavily endangered species. Miguel doesn’t routinely mouth platitudes about the Great Masters of Dressage – he actually reads, and re-reads, them… in English and, if necessary, in French. Not forgetting his study of the equestrian works of his countrymen in Portuguese, or the writings of their near neighbours, the Spanish.
Does it affect his teaching and training?
Yes, that learning provides a vastly richer variety of responses, exercises and solutions. I remember the best thing about training with Miguel was the way you went away from even a single 45 minute session, with a whole new bag of exercises and figures to ride. Not sure the half halts are getting through? Try riding a trot shoulder in along the long side, make a walk transition without losing the position of the shoulder in? Find that too easy? Try renvers in left canter (on the right rein) along the wall, leave the wall on a diagonal and start the pirouette to the left. During this pirouette make a transition to the walk keeping the horse on the same pirouette.
I guess Miguel was both blessed and cursed through his association with the great Portuguese écuyer, Nuno Oliveira. Poor Nuno, especially after his death in a Western Australian motel in 1989, became the champion of that group of riders who are too sensitive and artistic to ride at competitions, who spend their time mincing around the school at home, usually tricked up in a double bridle with the poor horse hollow in the back and flicking its legs. ‘Wow look at the Passage!’ Pissage more like.
Illustration: Jean-Louis Savart “Nuno Olivera” (Editions Belin)
It was a travesty of Nuno’s life and work – he was a trainer who prided himself on producing horses athletic enough to get out of the way of the horns of a charging bull – and while he is enlisted in an obsessive lovely light French versus heavy hard German fantasy, this ignores the fact, that the first and foremost text at Nuno’s side was the founding text of the modern German School, Gymnasium of the Horse by Gustav Steinbrecht.
When he arrived in Australia, in 1982 Miguel got lumped in the too superior to compete army, although he soon set about confounding those expectations. At a time when none of the Australian horses could passage (we are talking early 80’s here!) he produced Wendy Johnston and the Thoroughbred stallion Runs on Love, and for the first time Aussies could see what a passage should look like.
To hammer home the point, in the 1990’s he produced Australian Grand Prix Champions, Dawn Mitchell and Ballykisteen Sedaka (and yes, like ROL, another Thoroughbred), followed by another classy Grand Prix Thoroughbred for Dawn, Exposay.
Of late, Miguel has been finding a ready audience for his teaching in the United States, and has spent much of his teaching time there, but now, with a new property at Kurmond, he is looking to spend more time in Australia.
He is shocked when I confess that I have stopped riding, saying that to stop riding would be for him, like stopping living – his obsession with the horse has been lifelong…
“ When I was a child on the right hand side of our house where I was born, there was a stable and a man had a horse and a cart to carry furniture around the town of Lisbon. That was the first horse I saw, and since then, I thought horses were what I wanted to do…”
“My father and my father’s family were old fashioned, so of course they had horses. My grandfather was in love with carriages and driving, and he spent a lot of money buying Lipizzaners to pull the carriage – this was in the nineteenth century. My father was not really a horseman, even though he fought in the first world war in the Belgian Cavalry, but he was never a very enthusiastic or good rider. One of my uncles Rodrigo de Castro Pereira was one of the first top showjumpers in all the world, at the end of the nineteenth century, beginning of the twentieth. He was the one who started Nuno Oliveira – Nuno used to work on his arena, he was one of the first to promote Nuno Oliveira. He took me to Nuno to ride when I was eight years old.”
“I rode with Nuno Oliveira for ten years, until I went to the Military Academy when I was eighteen. In the Army I did much more eventing and showjumping – and we were at war in Africa so I didn’t have very much time. After the war I went to the School in Maffra, which is a military riding academy, like Saumur in France, in fact it was established by officers from Saumur. Colonel Saint Andre who was very famous in France, came to Portugal and lived there a long time, and he formed the school in Maffra – which trained not only military but also civilian riders.”
“It was a very good experience because having the basic classical training of Nuno Oliveira and the demanding competitive training in Maffra, helped my career. I competed a lot in showjumping and eventing. I competed a lot in dressage too. I learnt that the classical academic principles should be followed absolutely correctly, in the right time, in the right place, and they are not just a fantasy, they are real.”
“In the competition, you can’t say, ‘oh he’s not right today, I’ll do it tomorrow’. You’ve got to be able to produce at that moment – and that gave me a discipline that with Nuno we never really had. Nuno was more of an artist, a perfectionist but not oriented to competitive riding. To him riding was just an art, and sometimes it was lacking not the discipline of training but the discipline of actually putting together a competitive dressage test.”
“In Maffra, I learnt that from very good instructors in showjumping and eventing. I ended up staying at Maffra as an instructor, and became the Écuyer en Chef, just before I retired. And through that period I was always in contact with Nuno Oliveira, he was my advisor and friend.”
“If I had a problem with a horse I would go to him and ask for his help. He helped me a lot. He started his career training horses to compete, mostly he trained showjumpers – he would train the flatwork to prepare them to jump. He even competed in showjumping when he was young.”
“I decided to retire, I asked Nuno Oliveira to find me a place and he found me a place here in Australia.”
Lesson 1: Starting the Young Horse
Miguel likes to start his horses himself, but he has reached that stage in life, where he prefers to let his neighbour, Matthew Bates actually sit the first few rides – but it should be noted, the horse has been well taught with the lunge line before that…
“Rather than talking about breaking in, I would rather talk about familiarisation, or first stages of training. I assume that the horse has been well handled already, that’s very important, and well handled just means well handled, not confusing the horse by playing with him like a dog, and with too many treats – just teach the horse to go from A to B, to be lead from one side to the other, to pick up the feet.”
“When he comes to the arena the first task is to teach him to lunge. It is on the lunge that he starts working on balance and impulsion – similar to the work he is going to have when he is ridden. He must start to develop his muscles and supple up his joints and his body, to prepare him to be ridden. This is the physical basis of the work on the lunge. At the same time, on the mental level, we are starting to teach some communication skills – whip to go forward, the lunge line to slow down and make the circle smaller or bigger, to begin to having some control, starting to develop the language of the aids.”
“We start to establish that language of the aids by making use of the principle of association, so that when I put the rider on the horse’s back later on, he associates what he knows on the lunge with the aids that the rider gives when he is on the horse. He begins little by little going not from my aids, but from the aids of the rider. If he doesn’t go for the rider, I go again with my aids from the ground.”
“Most important of all is the gymnastic point of view because by working on that outline, the balance that he uses must be different from the balance he uses when he is out by himself in the paddock. With the rider on his back he needs to engage the hindquarters, needs to flex his poll, he needs to come round, and like that he goes in a way that is balanced.”
“With the work on the lunge, the horse starts always with a good movement forward, he starts developing the muscles to be comfortable to be going in this way later on when he is ridden.”
“Then comes the rider – and at first this is very difficult work for the rider. He has to be very well balanced, be able to accompany all the movements of the horse, because what I want him to do at this stage is just connect himself with the movement and do nothing – in order that the horse can get used to that strange weight on his back, and find how to organize his body to go under that weight. We are still lunging him with the side reins very long, just to keep the horse in the correct outline.”
“In the first phase, Matt, my helper, just stays on the horse very quiet, and he doesn’t do anything. He knows that I will control the horse, and stop the horse if it tries to do something stupid. Of course if the horse gets out of my control, then Matt will help himself for sure.”
(Just a week or two before we visited, something startled Felix (by Falst-erbo) – and before he knew it, Miguel was on the floor of the arena. Matt rushed to his side. ‘Are you alright?’ ‘I am only my pride is hurt.’ That afternoon, Matt was riding yet another youngster, and he too hit the deck. ‘Are you okay?’ ‘ Yes, I am, but my pride is with yours…’)
“The second phase we start with the association process. I say Matt push, and he touches with the legs, and at the same time, I push with the whip. The horse knows the whip, but he didn’t know the legs – but because he knows the whip, he learns legs and whip. And I do that many times until I say, ‘Matt push’, and the horse goes from the legs without waiting for the whip.”
But it is from very light leg that he responds?
“Exactly, and if any time the horse doesn’t respond to the legs, I don’t increase the strength of the legs – I use the whip again. I reinforce, I go back to the basics, because if the horse doesn’t go from the light leg, then he doesn’t understand. Little by little, the horse will go from the legs and not from the whip. In this time it is very difficult because the rider can’t touch on the bridle, he must not touch on the mouth. The horse must go forward and I say ‘whoa’ and go forward, push again, just teaching the legs.”
“Then when I say ‘Matt walk’ or ‘Slow down the trot a bit’ and Matt sits a bit and takes and gives without legs, at the same time I go ‘whoa, whoa, whoa’, and with the lunge line I make the horse slow down, and he comes to a shorter trot or a walk or whatever. The horse starts to associate Matt’s hands with my aids, and very soon I don’t need to use my aids, and the horse is listening to the rider. Again, any time the horse doesn’t respond, Matt is not going to start pulling on the reins – it is always take and give, and if the horse doesn’t respond, then I provide the reinforcement from the ground.”
“The next step is to make the circle smaller, and I say, Matt open the inside rein, and as he opens the inside rein, I shorten the lunge – and he begins associating inside rein and opening rein – and he knows the lunge, he starts to understand, open the inside rein means make the circle smaller.”
“I walk in front of the horse, and say ‘Matt open the left hand rein’ and the horse goes to the left, open the right and the horse goes to the right. It starts with the horse going from the cavesson and the lunge, but eventually he goes not from me, now he knows legs, he knows hands, it is time for Matt to ride him and for him to go free.”
“I still stay on the ground, and normally I have another helper down the other end of the arena, the horse is still working on the circle, I still help him from the ground with the whip. He still remembers the lunge, and he is very controllable – then he starts going more from Matt. Little by little I withdraw, and Matt takes more control. Any time the horse doesn’t respond, if he doesn’t respond to the legs, then Matt doesn’t increase the legs, I go with the whip, so the horse stays light to the legs.”
“The second part is to teach the horse to go from the rider’s whip – and Matt starts carrying the whip, he touches with the whip, I reinforce with my whip. After he associates Matt’s whip with my whip, then he goes from Matt’s whip.”
“Next with the spurs. Matt asks with the spurs, I ask with my whip on the ground, because sometimes with the spurs the horse will curl up instead of going forward. Spur and whip, spur and whip, then the horse knows it that the spur is to reinforce the leg, and to go forward. Everything is very simple. Circles, then go large, circle, go large…”
“At the same time I am starting a little bit of mobilisation in hand, turn around the inside leg – then the horse starts to learn to go from the inside leg, and that is what breaking in is. Everything is very simple, very confident, the horse knows the aids, knows the balance, he knows his ABC, and we start to ride the horse, he is ready to do the exercises that he needs to continue developing his body, making himself strong, and obedient.”
When do we start to take a contact?
“The horse already has contact with the side reins, and he accepts the side reins. Once he starts to go from the legs forward, and the rider starts opening the inside rein, the horse by himself is in contact, we don’t think about it – it happens, he is there. Without thinking he passes from the side reins to the reins, and when I say ‘Matt, slow down the trot’, Matt takes and gives, takes and gives, and with my cavesson and lunge I slow the horse down. The horse begins to accept that hands are to slow down, to take contact, and little by little without Matt having to think about it, the horse accepts the contact by himself.”
When do we switch from the horse accepting the opening rein, to the horse accepting the outside rein?
“That is much later on. When I start working with a bit of the shoulder in on the circle, we ride the shoulder fore, and then the outside rein happens. If I keep my outside rein, and very quietly open the inside rein so the horse bends, then he accepts the contact. It happens, I never tell him go to the outside rein. Open the rein, make the circle smaller, bend him a bit more, the horse bends a bit more, stretch, and he begins to accept the outside rein. Never go to the outside rein, because if he goes to the outside rein, he shortens up and jams the neck.”
“Aids are the way we communicate with our horse. They are not instinctive, they have to be taught to the horse. We start in the first phase of the training on the lunge, and after we sophisticate and combine the aids. The most important thing of all is that I have two basic aids: my legs and my hands. My seat and my back are going to make my legs and my hands more effective. What my seat does is make my legs act on the right time and the right place. My back helps my hands work at the right time, in the right place.”
“In the past, they used to call these ‘weight aids’, that by putting the weight to one side or the other, the rider would help the horse. I don’t think that is quite true. What is very important, for example, in a half pass to the right, is not for me to put my weight on the inside stirrup, because if I put more weight on the inside, I am going to make the horse unbalanced. What is more important is not to let myself put the weight on the outside stirrup.”
“Sometimes when we say put the weight on the inside, it is not really to put the weight on the inside, it is NOT to put the weight to the outside. The rider has to try to be in the middle of the horse. Of course you might have a horse that is resisting going to the right in half pass – then I might lean a bit more to the right, and help the horse to go more to the right. But on the other hand the horse can then start running to the right, rushing to the right, because he loses the balance because of my body. Better to ask, why is the horse not going to the right? Because it is not bent, not engaged? Solve that problem and try to keep your weight in the middle instead of finding a trick and putting the weight more on the inside.”
“Right from the beginning of the training we have to teach the horse to go by himself. He has to learn to go in self-carriage. I tell him to do something, and the horse starts doing what I asked, and I stop telling him what to do. It’s like teaching the horse to bend to the right, if I ask him to bend to the right, and he does it, and I keep asking him to bend to the right, then he doesn’t understand – then he becomes numb or he starts resisting to get away from the aids. The aids have to cease when they are obeyed. That is the most important principle of all – we don’t support the horse.”
Next month - Iberian horse or Competition horse?
Miguel on Felix
“When I am riding this three year old horse, I am mixing rising and sitting trot but I stay very light in the saddle. I occasionally ask my wife, Di, to push with the long whip from the ground. At this stage, I am still working legs without hands, hands without legs. First he has to understand this, then we put it together. I don’t give a damn about having him round at this stage, just going forward because I know that when he goes forward and responds to my legs I can immediately make him round by the bend (on the circle), by transitions and ultimately by the half halt. If he is not responding to my legs, then Di comes with the whip, and I will end up with a horse that is light to my legs, light to my hands.”
“Now I can ask a little shoulder in on the circle. This is the first and last lesson of de la Guérinière. With a young horse like this in the first year of his riding, this is serious, we are not playing, it is very serious, but we are considerate, he is a young horse, he is immature – he’s ours, so we don’t need to hurry.”
“Now I am concentrating on transitions with him. He is sensitive but not stupid. Usually with a horse this age, they are clumsy, losing balance, drifting in and out in the canter – he has never had this problem. He has always been balanced and strong on his feet. He can stretch down with good movement and he is never on his forehand – but if he curls back, then I need to do something to correct it.”
The first balance we are working is horizontal (round and more or less down). When he flexes the poll, the nuchal ligament stretches and I can make him engage the hind legs. Sometimes I have to ride the horse right down. I will put him in whatever position I need to feel his back come up. The back is the bridge and connection between the forehand and the hindquarters, this bridge must be strong and supple in order to always have a good connection. It is through this connection that my horse will be able to respond to my half halt and become ‘durchlassigkeit’, which is the quality in the horse that permits the aids to pass through his body and achieve lightness (which is the horse obeying to the slightess aid of the rider).