The Gifted Fund

Jenny Schmitt

USDF Region 2

Once in a Lifetime Experience When spending your regular life working 6 days a week, it becomes difficult to push yourself to ride after a long day at work and also try to get to lessons regularly. The excitement was growing the closer time came to take this wonderful opportunity to leave home with my horse. I would like to take this moment take say thank you very much to the Dressage Foundation for selecting me as the recipient of Region 2 for this opportunity.

I took this opportunity, which is something I have never done, or could have ever afforded to do otherwise, to go and work with Patricia Becker at Fireside Farms in Camp Lake, WI (just outside of Kenosha). The barn manager, Susan, was very kind upon our arrival and through the entire weekend. Once we were settled in, I was welcomed to watch Patti work her last couple horses until our lesson. After she was through with each horse, she stopped over and talked with me about what she was working on with each horse.

Friday: Now it was time for my first lesson with Patti. My horse Jaccman and I have gotten into a habit of letting him hang on my right side and have really struggled with this over the past year. I am such a gracious owner to support him in my hand, but it is time he carries himself. So that became of first objective for the weekend. Patti had given me a different exercise that I had never really worked on before, so it was more difficult for me to figure it out. I don't really know how to put it in words, but I think I got the idea of it. If it makes sense, which you may have heard before, but to bring the inside hind to the outside rein. Overall, it was a matter of me using more right leg to bring his rib cage underneath, but also to control the left hind legs from falling out as well.

Saturday: Today it was absolutely gorgeous out. Mind you this is in April and we are in Wisconsin. It was a beautiful 74 degrees and sunny. I felt like I was in Florida without the palm trees. Patti started working horses at 6:30, so I went out early to watch her ride and teach the lessons before me. I learned so much from just being able to audit the other rides and Patti was kind enough to discuss each horse with me afterwards. In my lesson we continued to progress on what we started Friday. I was still somewhat unclear, and I think we were finally getting the hang of it. The idea was to make him more ‘rideable' or submissive. He needed to be able to bend better off my seat and legs and how important it was to keep my hands quieter and lower.

Sunday: Today felt like a big breakthrough in our training. I woke up at 1:00 in the morning and it hit me, I think I finally understood it and was ready to ride, but I had to go back to bed. We started with opening his shoulders up in his warm-up and then went to work. We worked on keeping him even in both reins and doing 10m circles along the long side and spiraled our way to the short end. Jacc finally felt even in both reins and light. All in all it was a great ride.

Monday: I rode at 7:15a.m. as Patti was riding with Conrad Schumacher at 10:00. Things even got better. We made sure we had correct connection and then went into our canter work. We did a line of 5-4's and 5-3's. I have been having troubling in my counting and straightness in the changes, but with what we worked on and getting him better connected, we nailed them both. After a short break we worked on our canter pirouettes to get better bend and control of the hindquarters. That has been a struggle for us as well. After our lesson, Patti asked me to be her groom and come along to the Conrad Clinic. That felt like the bonus of the week. Afterwards we were on our way home. I couldn't stay Tuesday, because they were all headed to LasVegas for the World Cup, but I felt I learned a lot from this experience and would love to do it again. Now time to go back to my real job. I must say, I felt like we were treated like King and Queen for the week. Thank you again Dressage Foundation.

I would also like to add that I just attended a show at which Patti was showing as well and she was willing to take time out of her schedule in-between her rides and help me in our warm-up. I felt that I was treated like any of her other clients. It really made me feel appreciated and gave me a little extra confidence when heading down centerline. Thank you again.

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