I’m not sure what happened to the copy I received as a kid but I now have two copies plus a copy of Form Over Fences, so glad that out of print favorites can now be purchased online.
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At a show a couple of weeks ago, since I was there and my horse was done showing earlier in the day, I suggested that I tack up and go for a hack / walk around the show grounds just for us to spend some time together in the show atmosphere and relax. They looked at me like I was an alien.
I’m moving on, and I’m ordering these books to read while I take a riding break!
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One of the things that I loved about a local h/j trainer I worked with was that she would periodically tell a student to bag the lesson and take their horse out on the trails for a hack–they needed a break.
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What stood out for me in the film was the more “European” heel, with the sole of the foot more parallel to the ground, rather than the often over exaggerated dropped heel evident today.
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I’m so fortunate that I have the space and appropriate school ponies that my students can get out of the ring on a regular basis and even do “trail ride lessons” where we can hack out in the fields, up and down hills, cross a little creek, etc. So many riders never get this opportunity.
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I have used Littauer’s training methods for the past ?? years and continue to do so to this day. It works on all different kinds of horses and creates a balanced horse who can accept soft contact without fussing. The emphasis on the horse learning to carry itself allows for any level of rider to feel comfortable.
Using it on OTTB’s - YES! I taught a class for almost 10 years in partnership with an OTTB rehoming barn and all the horses loved it. We started at the ground and moved up depending on horse/rider combination. They all learned weight and voice aids and how to properly apply and react to the leg and rein aids. I found that once the OTTB’s learned that we weren’t going to hang on their mouths, they carried themselves much better than those who were retrained using a “shove them into a frame” method. We hacked out and they all learned natural balance as well.
The biggest problem I see with people who don’t like Littauer’s methods is that they are trying to produce something too quickly. With the emphasis on hurry up and get to the horse show, horses don’t learn to think for themselves and that causes problems when Annie Amateur makes a mistake that the horse can’t figure out how to recover from. Teaching horses on a loose rein makes them learn and know how to react when things don’t go perfectly.
If anyone would like to know more about teaching or training using Littauer’s methods, I can give an entire thesis on them… 
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Well if I had been there I would have hacked out around the show with you!
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This is a minor detour.
When I realized how much my case of MS has truly and thoroughly messed up my body I faced a dilemma. There is NO WAY that I can safely jump a horse, and if I tried I would be abusing the horse’s mouth and back. There is NO WAY I can go on long gallops, it is just too exhausting to me.
But, in my mind, I went over all I knew about the different schools of riding horses and came to the conclusion, that the way I ride–Forward Seat–was the safest, most secure way for me to ride a horse BECAUSE of my horrible balance, incoordination, lack of a proprioceptive sense, etc…
As I sat there thinking I realized that the reason why there was not a truly solid school of riding Forward Seat on the flat is that non-disabled riders were having WAY TOO MUCH FUN galloping and jumping to be content with the boring work of the slower gaits on the flat.
Well, I galloped and jumped a good bit, I am so thankful I did it before my MS crippled me. I still miss it immensely, but I need, need, need to ride horses so my body stays strong enough so I can walk at all on my own feet. So I worked on refining my aids, I worked on learning to time my aids properly, I worked on the lightness of my aids, and I worked on not being an unbearable burden on the horse’s back.
And over 30 years since I was diagnosed with MS I am still riding, still filling the gaping holes in training of a lot of lesson horses, still making the lesson horses more pleasant and easier rides, and my riding teachers LIKE what I accomplish with their horses. My riding teachers also like that I do not abuse their horses, they like that a lot!
I am crippled, but because I still ride Forward Seat I am still an effective rider even if it is in slow motion.
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I’ll take any thesis or words of wisdom you want to give out!
I have the lunging down perfectly with him now. Stands like a statue when I say whoa, goes through all the gaits on voice commands. Have started lunging over "bars on the ground’, moving it up to a raised pole about a foot off the ground this week.
We also have the relaxed walk down and he can stand still on a loose rein while I “smoke a cigarette”. 
(I get a chuckle everytime I read this line)
When I ask for the trot he gets quick and inverted, so trying to figure out how to get that gait stabilized and relaxed without constantly pulling. Is it best to just turn him in large circles to slow it down, sit back and use my voice? I’m all for taking whatever time I need, I am in no rush to produce him in a hurry.
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One would never know, from what the self-styled “hunters” show nowadays, that they teeter on the edge of a long tradition of actual real hunters who were hacked to the meets, hunted across country, and then hacked home again.
But then I’ve known dressage horses and riders who were afraid in an outdoor arena.
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The book Schooling and Riding the Sporthorse by Paul Cronin has two chapters dealing specifically with achieving stabilization. I highly recommend it!
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So what you need to create is what is known as stabilization. It does not start on loose reins for an OTTB, but a soft contact that you can do a check/release motion with your arm,. When the horse gets unbalanced or quick, a steady check followed by a release along with a long slow whoooooaaaa like you use on the longe line helps to rebalance and slow the horse. Also work on teaching the horse slow trot on the longe line by using a slow tone and trying to get a shorter/slower stride. Then use the same tone of voice along with weight and check/release when riding.
I will also work an OTTB in figure eights rather than just circles. That reminds them to constantly rebalance and starts to teach them what their right side is for. I also do a couple of sit trot steps mingled in with posting to teach them the weight aid.
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When I finally got on-line and when I finally had enough money to buy books on line I found copies of Littauer’s first books on riding/schooling horses in the Forward Seat method.
I wish I had found these books earlier in my riding career, I would have become a much better rider. His first two books like this were both issued several times under different titles–“The Forward Seat–Modern Horsemanship for Beginners”, “Forward Riding” and “Riding Forward” all are his first book on his complete system of riding, and “More About the Forward Seat” and “More About Riding Forward” are both his second book–mostly about schooling the Forward Seat. In the first one Littauer himself describes the outlines and ideals of the Forward Seat and I think he does a LOT better job than Alexis Wrangel did in the two chapters on position in “Common Sense Horsemanship.”
Another early mostly unknown book about Forward Riding that would have helped me immensely when I started riding was by one of Littauer’s partners in the Boots and Saddles Riding stable in NYC, “School for Riding” by Sergei Kournakoff, the best attempt at a multi-media book published in 1938, with another identical edition 10 years later. Kournakoff’s main difference with Littauer on teaching the FS was that Kournakoff taught the sitting trot, everything else is nearly identical. I found THREE THINGS in Kournakoff’s book that helped me improve my Forward Seat riding after I had ridden Forward Seat over 30 years.
Another excellent book on Forward Riding is “Forward Freely” by Michael Kirschner, who taught equitation at the Mary Washington College in Va… When I rode at the Forward Seat program at North Fork School of Equitation with Kay Russell they thought that Kirschner was maybe a bit too far forward, probably because Kirschner had his students riding with the stirrups home instead of on the ball of the foot. In this particular book he has absolutely unbelievable pictures of truly LIGHT contact at speed and over fences. The contact the pictures in this book is the ideal I aspire to.
And yet another two books, these by Harry Chamberlin of the US Cavalry who studied in the cavalry schools at Saumer in France and he got to study the Italian Forward Seat at the Italian Cavalry School too. I have learned a lot about riding Forward and Forward schooling from his books “Riding and Training Horses” and “Training Hunters Jumpers and Hacks”. Chamberlin like Kirschner taught his riders to ride with their feet home in the stirrups.
Happy reading, happy learning. Your horses will thank you by becoming calm, reasonable, pleasant riding animals who can think for themselves if for some reason you lose your ability to think (like I sometimes do.)
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Littauer’s methods and books were specifically aimed at helping people ride TBs. He recommended starting off with a half TB, then a 3/4 TB, then a full TB/OTTB.
My first horse was a 5 year old Anglo-Arab with maybe 3 weeks of training when I got him. I trained him myself according to Littauer and often ignoring my riding teachers who did not know Forward Riding.
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I went from a 1/2 TB (Percheron/TB) to an OTTB and skipped that middle step. 
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When I found a second copy of “Form Over Fences” I gave it to my riding teacher telling her that if I ever got secure enough in the saddle again to jump THAT was how I wanted to jump.
I never got secure enough, so I still have not jumped in decades. BUT my riding teacher started to take pictures on her phone to show all her riding students what they were doing over the fences.
She told me that many of her riders had NO IDEA that they were riding “badly” (badly, not abusively.)
Shortly after I bought a copy of Jane Marshall Dillon’s "“Riding the Show Ring Hunter”, published in 1971, I was allowed to go to one night of the Arabian Nationals when we had to go to a funeral in my husband’s family. Of course I picked the night with the Hunter and Jumper classes. Most of these horses jumped, but most did not get up to the ideal that Dillon had in her book, except for one half-Arab Palomino mare who was absolute perfection. She was perfect, I knew she was the National Champion, until she hit a patch of deep sand on a rather sharp turn, her legs slipped from under her and she fell down. Everyone groaned, that mare was so darn good! She was so good that I rate every Hunter round I see against that mare before she fell down, perfect even speed, perfect hand gallop, she met her fences exactly without any drama, rein yanks or jabbing heels from her rider, just pure beauty on the hoof.
Of course that was before the wholesale WB invasion of Hunter classes. Cracking the back? Forward Seat horses do not “crack their back” over the jumps especially in Hunter classes, they happily flow from jump to jump, jump in a wonderful arc with no extra movement, stay calm and happy, and give their riders a really good ride.
I also never remembered a Forward Seat Horse essentially doing a Capriole going over a jump with kicking their hind legs out. If the horse thought it was necessary to clear the jump, fine, but the aim of FS schooling is so the horse does not feel the need to do anything really fancy to get over a jump in a ring with good footing on a nice day. FS competitive riders did value an equine who knew how to pick its feet/legs up to clear the jump.
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Agree and I’ve had it with that. Whatever next horse is in my future, we’re hunting. We have a great one near me. I will hand walk it to get it acclimated if necessary but no more ring queens!
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I have Riding the Show Ring Hunter also, a paperback that I think was put out by one of the feed companies? I was lucky that my trainer in those days recommended School for Young Riders as a sort of “text book” in conjunction with her program and she also had Capt Littauer for clinics (he lived locally) although that was before my time.
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Yes, it was a Farnam paperback. The hunter fences were pretty straightforward to say the least. Not one diagonal.
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I remember those days. Equitation classes were twice around the outside and done. 
School for Young Riders and Form Over Fences were my riding bibles when I was young. I checked School for Young Riders out of the library so many times I think it spent more time in my bedroom than on the shelf at the library.
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