Pennywell - Oh, I get that it is the ideal, but when you go watch Derby round after Derby round, winning rounds, and the vast majority of the winners have the same late change that as in the earlier linked video, the reality is that the late change is rarely penalized. I also had to quit watching those for a while and focus on dressage changes only to re train my eye.
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Disunited canter, wrong canter lead, skip change, or horse breaking stride definitely gets/should be penalized (usually score of 55-ish).
What there seems to be confusion/argument about is whether that half-stride is considered “late” or “clean” in the hunters (definitely not for dressage), and if that should be or is penalized.
I was taught it was “late” and “incorrect”. But enough horses swap that way (and apparently a lot of hunter riders are taught it’s correct! :nonchalance:) that it doesn’t seem to matter too much as long as the canter remains the same. I personally prefer not to train it that way, but if I acquired a hunter who already learned to change front-to-back, it would depend how difficult it would be to teach the correct change or let well enough be.
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As many posters have agreed and is almost anything you compare with dressage and hunters. They are totally different disciplines. You wouldn’t do well with a flowy hunter change in dressage and won’t have the same cadence to get around a 3’6 hunter course. Again, penalized in hunters is different in dressage as they are not getting scored on individual movements. If a horse was late every time, every change it would most likely be noted on the card and weighed against the other rounds. Just one of many differences between disciplines- and neither are right or wrong if it is a clean change as it is dependent on your respective discipline. You seem to want to make it seem like it is magical for one discipline over the other (maybe I am inserting tone into text so I may be wrong). It isn’t. It is a change executed based on discipline.
Nope, not trying to make anything magical. Just stating the fact plainly that they are different despite being the same movement. 
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This is kind of my point. The video I posted of Kelly Farmer is 2 years old, so maybe things have changed, but she showed two 1/2 stride late behind changes and came in THIRD overall in that $100k derby (with that kind of prize money, there were probably quite a few entries). So clearly, despite what is the right thing, people are not getting penalized for half stride late changes.
The overall criteria for success in the hunter ring is different from that in the dressage court. I have no idea if a hunter is penalized for being late behind. In dressage, it’s a scored movement and if you’re late behind, you’re lucky to get a 5 depending on the judge.
I used to ride H/J and have retrained a few hunters to dressage. The primary difference is collection. People are talking about the “hunter canter” vs. the “dressage canter.” Nope. Correctly ridden, a hunter should be going around the course in a hand gallop (not a canter) - hence the “period of suspension” somebody mentioned. As was pointed out a couple of times, in some upper level tests, you do the extended canter across the diagonal, necessitating a flying change at the end. The directives are clear that you must collect the canter prior to the change.
It’s for this reason that we don’t even DO flying changes before third level, and even then we only do single changes, not tempi changes. The canter must be very collected to do a flying change. A hunter cantering around the course in collection wouldn’t have enough umph to get over even a small fence, so of course they aren’t collected.
To answer the OP’s question: it is actually a fairly simple matter to teach the flying change for dressage to your ex-hunter. Assuming that his changes are on demand and not automatic “swaps,” all you have to do is put in the work to teach him collection and get him strong enough to stay in the collection. You might find initially when you go to ask for a change, he wants to bolt off after, but IME by the time they understand and can offer you collection, they will offer a change when you ask and stay with you. Good luck.
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Thank you!!! Exactly how I see it as well!!
I posted this earlier, this video from the 1970s (at 2:03 and 3:10) shows a horse swapping the same way, and getting score of 90, so I guess it’s been ok/not-penalized for a while, regardless of change being correct/clean or not. I have no idea if that was considered “unconventional” at the time or if many horses were lead changing that way back then also.
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thank you that was a nice video. And obviously the Hunter discipline changed a lot over the years. But I would like to bring something to your attention… I think Rumba with John French was quoted here twice. And I watched both videos. He is lovely and his rider is great and his changes would also score well in Dressage. If you watch what the rider is doing, he is giving correct aids (as one would do in dressage) specifically in the second video. He is engaging his horse from behind and then actively riding the change. I might know nothing about Hunters but I know some things about dressage changes and that horse would have no problems to switch to dressage… The TB in the video were lovely and they had a great canter but I think they were ridden different. thats why they did not do the changes over the back as Rumba does.
Different canter = different change. A collected canter looks different than a forward canter or hand gallop and, consequently, the change from that canter will look different as well. The difference is greater when the collected canter you’re looking at is in a GP test.
And, yes, I have ridden both hunters and dressage (shown thru 4th; schooled through I-1)
This questions has come up approximately Avogadro’s number of times on this board.
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Late to the party here but I just wrote an article about teaching the flying change and the expert we featured explained the difference in her opinion is that desirable hunter movement is as flat as possible , whereas in dressage we want to see jump and expression in the canter. Hunters are not necessarily penalized for a change hat is slow behind, which can make the changes harder to retrain on them.
Jumpers, on the other hand, must transfer their weight to the back and “push” in order to clear the jumps, and are generally trained to go much more forward and with more expression than hunters. In her opinion it is much easier to retrain the changes for dressage on a jumper than a hunter.
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I think the point is that a change you might consider “bad” is only bad when looked at from a dressage perspective. From a hunter perspective a good quality dressage change looks “bad.”
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did you watch Rumba and John French doing the changes?
Thats one horse, who is built more uphill and moves more " Jumpery’" on a big International Derby Finals course (IIRC) that is bigger and more " Jumpery" . But he didn’t get any bonus points for it as individual movements are not scored, only pace and style over fences and that horse on that day was just plain spectacular across the board.
This is kind of a rabbit hole discussion. The whole point of each discipline may have common basics but is asking horses to showcase different specialized skill sets, one for long forward paced gallops over fences with little rider input, one to display precise control of every step. It’s not right or wrong, it’s just different questions.
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Rumba has a more jumper way of going (as stated above) and in the high performances classes would score below a flatter moving, flatter changing horse. The purpose of a hunter is to show how easy and comfortable they are to ride over the long distances of the hunt field (yes it’s moved far away from a true field hunter that’s a topic for another day, another forum and lots of vodka). Those types of springy changes are not sought after and usually horses with those types of changes, score better in the derbies. You do not want a horse who screams “look I’m doing a flying change” with its body. You want one who makes it look seamless and effortless.
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:lol::lol::lol:
Also, I just discovered a 26 year old trained response in my brain, as I read the words and my brain immediately said “6.02 x 10^23!”
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Peggy is right. Do not over complicate it. Different canter will produce a different change. Watch a top reining, dressage or a hunter round. The horses go in a different frame and pace and thus a different change. My horse can do a clean hunter change, a clean equitation change and a clean 3rd level collected dressage change. He can also land on each lead over a jump and counter canter with ease.
A hunter class is not judged on each movement. There are deductions for mistakes, but if a horse has a fabulous jump, his overall score may be high enough that one late change or one swap at the base of the jump with not keep him from placing high. A cross canter for several strides, a rail , a major chip, etc will drop the score significantly . Also sometimes a judge misses the late change or swap at the base due to their viewing location. This is why you can see a discrepancy of scores with more than one judge.
i do not get why people continue to debate this? Different disciplines are viewed, ridden and scored differently. It does not make one better than the other.
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Yeah, Rumba has more hock action than the “floaty” ideal in hunterland, but it obviously hasn’t deterred him from any success, even in non-derby/normal over fences hunter classes. Probably didn’t/wouldn’t win the hack, unless the judge really liked him.
My point was that both types of changes are fine in hunters (but not dressage) – neither are penalized nor rewarded in and of itself, necessarily; the important part is that the horse swaps leads with minimum fuss – even when you have some hunter people saying late changes are not great. But I am not sure if they’re counting the front-to-back hunter change, though, since apparently it’s been around since the 1970s and not hindering scores then either. Or if they just mean late change to be any more steps than the single one before the hind end catches up to the front (so you have more steps at a cross-canter), or late as in past the first corner after a jump.
Horse CAN change “clean/united” and not look like it’s doing too much for it: Osczar at 1:11. Like I Said at 1:49, though the next change at 2:12 is a front-to-back change. Social Hour at 0:50. I think those three have less “jumpery” way than Rumba. If horse changes this way, I don’t think trainers are going to unschool it for the “front-to-back hunter swap”. If someone has a hunter that does a nice/quiet united change, I don’t know why they’d want to train it to do a front-to-back change, even if a lot (though clearly not all) hunters do that.
Yes. And that horse is a perfect example of my point. Though his changes may be considered “good” when viewed through a dressage lens, they are not necessarily “good”'in hunter terms.
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