to produce this for a minute or two at a time, to keep his freshness and enjoyment in his work, then he would go back into the trot or canter he was born with, then Charlotte would again ask for a little more of the more expressive work for a brief time. Achieving a trot that is really off the ground was trained through some passage-like steps, but quite a degree of strength and submission were required to get to this point. Transitions into passage steps taught him to have more suspension in the trot, but riders needed to ride with great feel, and had to be very quick to correct or reward their horses, and not to ask for too much at a time. Flying Changes The chestnut had not had a lot of training so far, and had only begun flying changes a few months earlier. Carl explained that horses could become nervous about flying changes if they had been overcorrected. They could learn to worry about changes because they had got it wrong. He believes it is better to just quietly repeat and repeat until the horse gets it right. The chestnut was working a little on sequence changes, but at the stage he was at, Carl asked Charlotte to ‘move the shoulders a bit out of the way’ to make it easy for him to change clean behind. Reactiveness Carl was clear that a whip must never be used just to keep a horse going, ‘we don’t use a whip except when we are teaching him something; when a whip is used, getting a good reaction is very important.’ Neither Charlotte nor Katherine rode with a whip until quite late in their demonstration rides, when they started the horses in some half steps or piaffe. Carl explained that he liked to spark up the reactiveness, not simply by riding traditional transitions such as walk-trot-canter, which could create anticipation, but also using a canter zig zag using leg yield and half pass, all on one leading leg, an exercise he asks all the horses he trains to do. This could be a 6 x 6 x 6 x 6 stride exercise, which also teaches the rider to count. The zig zag could also incorporate some forward and backward transitions to get a horse sharper. arena, he said ‘How do you tell a horse in that quiet situation that he’s about to go into the atmosphere of a stadium filled with 25,000 people?’ His answer was, ‘all you can do is take every opportunity to put a horse in situations like this.’ He continued, ‘real expression only comes from taking a big risk’. To be able to take the risk, horses have to be used to pressure in their training, and at the same time, relaxed enough at the competition so the rider can successfully take that risk. Katherine Bateson-Chandler rode Alcazar, an 8 year old KWPN gelding out of a Contango mare (x Polina x Ferro). ‘He has beautiful hind legs and a great work ethic. We need to keep a lid on it and produce it slowly,’ said Carl. Alcazar’s program consists of four days of arena work, a day of hacking in the English countryside and two days off so as not to push the horse too fast. Katherine rode for USA on Nartan (now retired) at WEG, Kentucky 2010. With Katherine, Carl showed how he taught horses to cope with more risk and pressure by developing more forwardness and energy in the trot on the wall. He uses the wall to provide more support for the horse, that teaches him to take a risk ‘so when the rider asks for it in a test to get a 10, it is not a shock’. Carl explained ‘We want hind and front legs to get more suspension, by developing more activity in Alcazar’s front and hind legs on the wall through some steps of medium trot then a couple of passage steps, we will get more suspension.’ As he said, a Dressage horse’s job is to use his hind legs, to push, especially in extended paces and in passage, and to carry, especially in piaffe and in pirouettes. Both horses showed some really confident and expressive exercises, and fantastic enthusiasm for their work. Carl keeps the harmony and trust in partnerships, and has the talent to bring out the very best out in horses and riders. Carl and Uthopia at Olympia 2012 Photo courtesy of Kit Houghton/FEI Risk and Pressure Carl explained that at the major events ‘You have to be a brave rider’ because to win, riders now need to take risks so they can earn over 80%. He described the warm up in London for the Olympics as very quiet, with only about 20 people around the