arabs esp can be weak in the neck, which makes them prone to getting BTV. Obviously try to correct, but sometimes it just takes strength and time no matter what else you try.
Spiral in and out in the walk and trot is excellent to connect to the outside rein, and gets the poll up.
What I was taught on my first horse, an Anglo-Arab.
There is the regular stretched neck for forward riding on contact.
Then when the rider asks for more contact the top of the neck from the poll to the 3rd cervical vertebra should be flat and HORIZONTAL from the poll back to the 3rd cervical vertebra.
If the neck goes down from the 3rd vertebra DOWN to the poll the horse is behind the vertical and behind the bit.
Then there is perfection, when the neck comes up with a graceful curve directly to the poll, which is the highest part of the neck. The horse can get really light, the poll and the jaw flex easily, and it often feels like the horse is reacting to your thoughts rather than to your hands/legs/seat.
I have ridden several pure and part Arabs following these guidelines, and the horses never go behind the bit for very long when I ride them. If I see the top of the neck going down to the poll I use my legs and loosen my fingers/move my hands forward simultaneously, and I keep doing this until they are no longer behind the vertical. Arabs learn quickly, if I do this every time the neck goes down from the 3rd cervical vertebra to the poll it does not take long for them to realize that it is much more comfortable to do it my way.
I have also noticed that these horses rarely get behind the vertical at all IF I relax my hand aids BEFORE they come to the full halt. They reward me by flexing some at the poll, flexing their jaws, and their tongues loosen up and āplayā with the bit, with the strength of my contact a few grams at the most (not a few ounces.)
If I use strong contact the horses stiffen their necks, polls and their jaws turn into cast iron, and they often invert and gape.
This works on horses with HIGH croups too. With these horses it does help to get my seat bones as far forward in the saddle as I can. Right now I ride a 24 yr. old QH whose croup is maybe 2-2 1/2 inches higher than his excellent withers, and he stays light in my hands and my riding teacher is pleased with how he is developing.
YMMV.
Riding my 1/2 arab is like pushing a cooked spaghetti noodle up a hill. Itās a challenge getting parts that arenāt supposed to even be capable of bending all in line.
I disagree a bit with not pushing over tempo. If she isnāt in your contact and is curling I am fine with periods of over tempo to drive the neck more open and forward. I drive overtempo until the horse is taking contact and isnāt behind the bit and then I work on getting the tempo back where it belongs. I would work a lot with down and OUT and not down and IN which is pretty common when you ask arabs to stretch down.
For my horse, I have found reins with stops to be incredibly helpful. She is weak to the right and can shift bit pressure off the right side in almost invisible degrees. When I bought reins with stops I actually measured them because I thought it was impossible she was that crooked. Now I can tell easier when she gets noodly, although of course she hates me knowing this.
Oh, and on the worry about flexibility in the base of the neck.
My newest interesting paranoia/conspiracy theory (even though it is all just casual and contemplated from my arm chair) is about cervical arthritis in horses. Just as ulcers became A Thing once endoscopy got cheap, Iāll bet that if/when we start x-raying horsesā necks, we find a heck of a lot of arthritis in there. So I was thinking about the possible long term consequences of riding a horse in just one posture all the time. And I recall hearing someone tell me once that horses who were ridden with that constant demand to ātelescope out from the baseā eventually got stiff there. Oh, and Iām not sure feeding 'em from haynets all the time does them any favors, either.
In any case, this was the basis for worrying about any permanent stiffness or OA I might be inadvertantly creating in the base of the neck if I donāt teach/allow the horse to go around in different positions.
I donāt believe in holding them in one position. However, telescoping is going to put less pressure on the bones there than compressing - and on the spine as well. Building supporting muscle is easier on bones. The side to side stuff at the base of the neck is just putting pressure on the vertebrae in a way itās not meant to really get constantly worked.
Also - if you didnāt see, I sent you a PM. Notifications on this forum are so weird.
MVP your conspiracy theory about neck arthritis isnāt off baseā¦I personally know of several horses that have had promising careers at FEI shortened due to neck arthritis that eventually produced neurological issues. There is no doubt the riders heavy hands and continual behind the vertical riding contributed to the horses neck impingemet issues although this person will claim and tell anyone who listens the horse must have had a genetic predisposition etc.
Netg, I just saw your PM. Iāll dig more deeply into it.
And a small update for yāall. I rode MareHead today along the lines suggested. She produced some sweat in the right places-- mainly the upper trapezius and quite close to the top/an inch or two below the roots of her mane. Man, if I could just find that balanced place with my heels, hips and ears in alignment and no stiffness in my hips faster, sheād spend more time in balance. When I do finally get it and she gets more easy to ride underneath me, I make a big fuss over her. Whether sheās learning conceptually what I want or is just getting stronger, weāre getting there faster.
I will say that I when I bought her (and she was quite physically immature for her age), she at least had a smooth topline up from her wither. As a kid, I was taught that a horse who exhibited a dip ahead of his withers would build that muscle last and lose it first. More recently, I rode (and didnāt buy) another Arabian x WB who had this neck conformation. He tended to pose with his neck: He always tucked his chin and might nod the whole head/neck up or down from the withers. To be fair, he wasnāt fit and I donāt think he was ridden or trained the best. But I found it hard to change anything about his neck and, by extension, the way he used his back.
All this is to say that Iām pretty gung-ho to not wreck this āblank slateā horseās way of using her neck.
Those are very clear instructions. Thank you. I think this is a good guide to riding a young horse-- just wanting the neck to be horizontal, not curled, from that 3rd vertabra to the poll. Others might mean something similar when they talk about an open throat latch, but I can visualize that whole part of the neck. Good, uphill hunters look this way in that top 1/3 of the neck. And I have seen pictures of some very wrecked, older horses who have a distinct break ahead of C3 due to being quite curled up there.
I am learning so much about how to ride the neck āoutā from my elbows and, of course, enough leg to support the push from behind that encourages the horse to venture out with his neck. I used to be able to get this done quite reliably in HunterWorld as well, but the feel in your hand and how you used your hands (rather than arms) to get that neck silhouette and a somewhat lax rein was different. So if I can keep the feel and posture of the uphill hunter in mind but ride with my arms rather than my fingers, I think Iāll have a good start on being a reliable rider for young horses like this mare.
On this note, Iāll put in a plug for the long stints of walking I have had to do. It was there that I could teach the horse (and myself) about how the contact was going to be. Or at least I could let her know while things were slow and very balanced (since sheās always got 3 feet on the ground), that my hands will be still and close together ahead of the withersā¦ pretty gosh-darn predictable for her. She learned something with all of that repetition. I would not have done this if her rehab had not forced me to. But I canāt tell you how much that helped us when we started trotting. The mare is so much more stable in the contact at the higher gait, even though sheās weaker this year than last. Each session starts with 10 minutes of walking and walking her on the buckle does nothing to help her get over that āwobbly wheelbarrowā balance she comes out with. So she is ridden with some contact.
Iāve ridden a lot of different breeds of horses (and the last super nice one I made up was 1/4 shagya arab), and I honestly have now idea how you would ride or apply the aids differently based on the fact that your horse is 1/2 arab.
It is like when people want āottb specificā advice (which ftr drives me bananas), as if the fundamental nature of the half halt would be different on a horse that used to race. It just isnāt. In the end, a half halt is a half halt, and the rider needs to teach whatever horse they are sitting on how to receive one.
The training scale is the same no matter what breed of horse you are sitting on. It needs to develop a metronome (whatās first on the scale again?), a loose, swinging, long and low gait where pace control happens from the seat and steering from the legs and outside rein, and then it needs to learn what a half halt is and how to start rebalancing upwards while maintaining ita metronome and relaxation. Whatever breed it is. If it wants to rush it needs to go slower. If it plods around it needs to go faster.
We all (well, most anyway, no need to be ableist, but take my point here) have two legs, two arms, and one @$$, and there simply arent enough appendages or places to put them to have a friesan toolbox vs an arabian toolbox vs an ottb toolbox. The whole point of training is you take what youāve got, and you turn it into something else you want more. You adjust the horse, and itās natural tendencies TO YOU, and what YOU want. You donāt sit there and make 75 accomodations because well this oneās grand daddy was a QH. If itās wiggly, you make it less so with the same aids you would use on anything else.
People can write paragraphs about the alleged distinctions and do back flips trying to come up with something to respond to you with, but in the end, a horse is a horse and the training scale is the training scale.
Ride the training scale, not the breed.
over-tempo was why I hit the second level collection wall, but to each their own! I use LEG just not faster than the front can handle before closing- it can cause a horse to go more BTV.
Arabs, as I said, tend to have weaker necks for longer, so holding a proper stretch FDO is hard. I didnāt stretch much more than a few inches at times, they just canāt take more.
Yeah, but I watched Christine Traurig make the point this weekend that the conformation of the horse** meant you might have to spend more or less time and emphasis on one element of the training scale or another for young/still growing/unmuscled horses.
**And I mentioned the breed of my horse in the topic so as to attract the people who have more experience with the kind of conformation that is common to Arabians than I do.
Again, I started this thread mainly because I have not ridden very many horses who seem so wobbly in front and I wanted some help figuring it out rather than trying to reinvent some wheels others already knew about.
Really, this was an innocent thread.
If a horse is wobbly in front I start to play with head to the wall legyields at a shallow angle to start to develop separate control of the shoulders vs the hindquarters and help stabilize the horse laterally between my aids.
Iām not really an āArabian expertā though as called for in your thread title so not sure if you will find that exercise useful.
In my experience it works on any horse who is wobbly but who knows.
So what, specifically, did Christine Traurig say to do with respect to various conformation issues? Did she say anything other than you might have to spend more time on x and less time on y as examples?
You are an astute enough rider to be able to ride the horse you have. You know how you like your horses to feel. Some people like a heavy feel in their hands, some people like a light feel. Some people like to go forward, forward, forward before anything else; some people prefer to get balance first and then go for forward. Ride the horse you have toward the manner that feels good and right to you within the parameters of the training scale.
If her neck is noodly, work on framing her bend so that she has the boundary of the outside rein and understands that is a place that can help her with balance. You can do this with shoulder fore, spiraling in/out, walking the short side and corners. When they are far enough along I also like to do figure eights in bend and counter bend.
For people whose horses feel straight as a board, they may want to play around with more bending than you would want to or need to given your horseās flexibility.
You may be overthinking the issue. The training scale can help you frame how to move forward.
All of these things can be considered at all times when developing a horse. Not having heard what CT had to say but taking into consideration the differences between my horses, I can say that with one I really have to work on suppleness, whereas with the other I have to work on straightness. You (or at least I, maybe Iām doing it wrong) donāt wait until you get to X level to work on straightness. You work on straightness in conjunction with the other things. Yesterday perhaps suppleness was a struggle so that was the main goal of the day, but today suppleness has improved so I can work on impulsion. Or for another horse, straightness was great yesterday so that allowed me to play with rhythm but collection (in the form of a half-halt or transitions within a gait) was a bit difficult.
It is all interconnected, not discrete pieces.
It sounds like you did a good job rehabbing her and really set her up for some good learning going forward. Maybe turn off your brain a little bit and let your feel tell you how to proceed.
Youāre welcome. Itās funny how much better they go when you insist they carry themselves properly! I do get not wanting to mess up by asking for something the horse finds āunnaturalā even if it is the more biomechanically sound. You have to put that little bit of trust that the process works. The nice thing is that it is self-rewarding because good riding feels good and you can feel your horse going better as they find the correct balance, even if they lack the strength to hold it long.
Work in hand is often underrated and youāre wise to introduce more challenging things in hand first so she doesnāt have to worry about the new movement plus your weight and balance.
āāāāāIt looks like you have gotten some good advice on what to look for visually already to be sure she isnāt overbent.
IMHO, arabs struggle more to get training level down, and need a rider who can really get them between the seat and hand- a little too much this or that becomes overblown and you are fighting a war on 5 fronts- shoulder goes left, haunches go right, horse stalls, then gets deep, all in 2 seconds. Really. Le Sigh
So it takes application in a new way, if you ask me. The fundamentals are the same but you canāt get too busy or fiddly, but provide a nice āchuteā for the wiggles.
As I said, ride forward with energy but not just leg flinging- arabs might feel like and free, but many cases this is just faster legs and too light of a feel on the bit.
Ride with a LONG NECK- how far can that thoroatlach open in the proper contact? Send into the reins and take the hands out past the withers. Short arms, elastic elbows.
10m circles are very helpful to create and refine the energy. It keeps the ārun and flingā from happening and creates a natural outside rein.
I like to do shoulder fore transitions, too. Its hard but you can tell if the haunches or shoulders start to move, which is cheating.
Those who can get the arab on the bit, really on the bit, definitely know their stuff.
This horse canāt do those leg-yields yet, given the rehab going on from a stifle thing. But gaining control of this mareās shoulders is my focus, even at this early stage of our riding. Or, to put it another way, I need to make sure of two things:
Her neck is staying centered between her shoulders. Even more so than other builds of horses I have ridden, over-flexing in the neck is really disruptive to her balance.
To the extent I can move the shoulders left of right, that comes from where I put my seat and the mareās ability to āanswerā or move off a leg that Iām using to ask for something lateral. What I have to accept is that sheās so weak. If I close my leg and she doesnāt move over some, on donāt get to āhand rideā and pull her head in the opposite direction. I only get to ask again in the next stride to move her body over.
Iām not sure these finer details help anyone but me to describe. But I do learn to anchor in a way of riding a horse by translating back and forth between what I do and feel with my body (and feeling the resutls) and trying to describe all this conceptually.
Either way, your point about getting alignment between the front and hind pairs of legs is well-taken. Bending the neck doesnāt count! Again, I donāt think I have ridden very many horses who were quite this wobbly side-to-side.
Another suggestion I will make is to take the contact even if it is BTV. Arabs are quick to both stick their noses in the air to avoid contact and to stick their noses on their chests and go boneless to avoid the contact that way. I will take enough contact with the mouth that I have control, and then work on moving the horse more forward (because forward helps with straight) and moving the neck longer as the reins slip through my fingers until the nose is where it belongs. It helps offer the horse support and some direction and makes them more stable. Later on I find I can get the horse to take the contact off of looser reins once they realize that it is a more comfortable position.
a horse can be BTV but on the bit. Donāt confuse physical placement of the neck being too closed as the same thing as being behind the bit. Totally different. No Iām not advocating BTV or allowing this, but as enjoy the ride said, its a stage and donāt freak out and ride too light.
Yes, the shoulder will still be restricted if itās BTV, but the contact might be nice in the hand, and plesant enough. This often happens if the rider canāt let the neck out enough, but has a good enough handle on things to create decent contact.
Make sure there is enough stability in the chest and sternum to counteract the wiggles and overly supple nature of many arabs. There has to be some traction so they can balance off something, otherwise itās trying to create bearing down on sand. Doesnāt work.
OP, I think itās wonderful that you are being so careful with your mare. I will say that I think you are over thinking the whole ābreedā thing (I say this as someone who competed an arabian/pinto cross for 20 years, and currently has a WB, a GRP and a AQHA - so I ride all kinds of horses). I pretty much ride the horse - itās never actually occurred to me to adjust per breed. I deal with one horse being on the forehand vs one being braced in the neck, etc. I suppose I could trace this to conformation but honestly itās all about feel and what each horse needs on a given day.
Ride the horse according to the training scale, adjusting to whatever is happening at that phase in training. I think you are getting caught up too much in details of the breed and not enough in the feel of where you horse is, what you need to strengthen, and how to fix it in that moment.
IME horses who are wiggly and easily distracted (mine arabian cross was, and very dramatic in all things!). So for me, that means even more focus on a standard daily program and less experimentation. Get them strong and in a balanced package where they can focus. That means more focused riding, less second guessing yourself and over thinking. Have a plan, work with an excellent trainer and stick to the plan. Then they stop wiggling around and being dramatic 
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