Training on collected rein back and piaffe:

Linda, the sensitive 18 year old mare of licensed EdL-teacher Markus Scaramuzza (Venice, Italy) has tendency to open up too much in rein back and to easily become tense in (or after) piaffe. To help her, we first worked on as smooth transitions as possible within the trot (keeping her round with action-reaction while coming from neck extension to a higher position) and repeated transitions rein back - collected walk - reinback. The result you can see, is that at one point Linda started to collect the rein back so much, that she almost offered a piaffe backwards (which was not the intention). So we asked forward movement again, which produced some beautiful elastic steps of piaffe and a soft transition to trot afterwards. Well done Markus and Linda !

Juni 2019, Open clinic Sylvia Stössel at Circolo Ippico Praello, Dese Venice/Italy