Report on visit to Emile Faurie’s Yard 

On Monday September 30th, Cherry Elvin kindly organised a morning for Members (and friends) to visit Emile Faurie’s Yard.

It was an action packed morning with Emile giving us the opportunity to observe the training of six different horses ranging for a lovely 3 year old to Topolino, his GP horse.

The first horse was a 3 year old that he bought as a foal and had been backed approximately 8 weeks.  It was great to see the confidence that this horse had whilst being handled, lunged and then ridden for a short time.

Emile then rode a six year old – Duke Ellington, in a double bridle and explained how he likes horses to start to work in these from this sort of age.  He worked on transitions especially to quicken this horse’s hindlegs and then through some lateral work towards canter pirouettes.

Next up was a 5 year old stallion ridden by Tom.  Emile indicated that this horse is not always very straight forward and therefore, various useful points were raised regarding dealing with spooking and other issues.

Emile then rode again and we watched him developing a floor plan for his Inter 1 Kur at HOYS.

Finally both Emile and Tom rode two GP horses – Tom had the opportunity to gain experience on the grey and Emile gave him helpful tips for improving, especially the piaffe and passage.  Emile worked Topolino and again showered us improving piaffe and passage and also worked with exercises to develop better extended steps with horses that do not find that particular work naturally very easy.

Thanks to Emile and his team for an interesting and inspiring morning.

written by Lynne Baldwin