Andrea Bethge, Huntington Beach, CA, is showing the fast progress a horse can make with her gentle and playful training of half steps for piaffe and passage. Compare this video to Waikato's previous and see for yourself.
You are watching an only 1.60m tall chestnut mare with a short and low neck and an overly heavy topline. However, when riding this mare, she blooms into a beautiful and tall-looking jewel that is trying so hard you don't even notice her less than ideal physique.
Andrea Bethge is showing here some of her training session with her horse Pari. They are playfully moving between a few half steps, and a few steps towards piaffe to maintain his already well established movement.
Andrea Bethge is teaching this talented horse half-steps with the final goal of piaffe in close reach. Note how far the horse is stepping under so that the piaffe will be a nice, natural movement resulting from this training.
Andrea Bethge, Huntington Beach, CA, is working on Pari's already well established half-steps. This horse has a beautiful piaffe which Andrea fine tunes at home by extensively training half-steps as seen here. As you can see, her dressage training involves very light hands only a touch of her leg (and not the usually seen "hang and bang") and lots of praise.
This horses lightness and dancer-like grace shines through with the Passage and direct transition to an extended trot. The contact is light and the rider's aids are invisible.
Andrea Bethge is playfully training half-steps/piaffe on her horse Pari, both staying at Huntington Park Equestrian Center, CA. It's quite moving to see how pround Pari is of his work.
This video nicely demonstrates how straight and with how much throughness a one-tempi change can be executed with the lightness of a ballet dancer and with very subtle contact.
Andrea Bethge, Huntington Beach, CA, is training these already beautiful beginnings of passage and already well executed transitions to a piaffe and back to a passage like movement.