A year ago, I received the Carol Lavell Advanced Training Grant from the Dressage Foundation. It was a huge honor to receive this prestigious award and the funding was used for training my horse Harvey with Joh Hinnemann.
Dressage is a beautiful, complicated, and incredibly expensive sport. This grant allowed me to take monthly lessons with Mr. Hinnemann and to work towards developing Harvey to the Grand Prix Level.
Education and learning is a huge part of the journey in Dressage- you cannot get to the top of this sport alone. Having Mr. Hinemann’s expertise is incredibly helpful. My favorite part about training with Mr. Hinemann is that while he is very demanding and has high standards, he always gets the result in a way that does not cause stress or tension in the horse or the rider.
In every single lesson, Hinemann works on the basics – rhythm, suppleness, and connection and has us ride hundreds of transitions. He’s very creative in how he works with each individual horse – we try out an exercise, change the frame, play with the tempo and the positioning and see what works for that horse. Hinemman has trained hundreds of Grand Prix horses and I’m incredibly grateful to get to learn from him.
This past year, Harvey has developed a ton of strength. He’s gotten much stronger in his topline and his passage has improved a lot!
Once again, thank you to the Dressage Foundation for awarding us this grant. If you want to learn more about the Dressage Foundation CLICK HERE. This is a wonderful organization that is dedicated to supporting education and Dressage.
I made this little video with come clips of Harvey training.
Happy riding!
Amelia
