I’ve ridden a few and they can be very comfortable to ride if they are taught to use their abs and backs correctly.
It’s not the knee action that makes a high-stepping horse uncomfortable. It’s the dropped back and trailing hindquarters.
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That is sort of what I figure. If I ride a horse I ride Forward Seat, and do my aids according to Forward Control (ala Littauer), and I have a pretty good record of bringing the heads of inverted horses down with their nose stretched out, thus relaxing their backs.
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Consul was by Cottage Son xx? Is that also the line of steeplechasers Cottage Rake and Cancottage?
Consul I believe was by Nimmerdor. The Dutch don’t name foals like the German registries do by giving the foal the first letter name of the sire. The Dutch do it by alphabet: each year a different letter.
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The “behind the vertical” problem exists in other disciplines as well…I stumbled upon a YouTube video of an Arabian western pleasure class and was sickened to see those beautiful horses mincing along with their noses BTV and their necks broken at the third vertebrae (I think it’s the third anyway)
They call it “head set.”
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My horse was like that (arab xhanoverian). it was like having twin pile drivers out the back. Those days are in the past, thankfully.
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A lot of Arabs are really easy to get behind the vertical.
That width between the jaw bones makes it easy and relatively comfortable for the horse as in they have no problem with breathing in this undesired position of the head-neck.
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You just described my distance bred thoroughbred perfectly.
My modern bred warmblood (UB40xContango, out of an ISF mare who was top KWPN dressage mare in the country her year) has taken training to get forward thinking to be her nature, and has a short neck with which she’d rather be above the bit than behind it.
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Welcome to the forum!! Lots of great and experienced people here.
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On the topic of BTV, I was scrolling through the FEI TackApp and saw this (pool noodle or PVC pipe on the throatlatch):
Has anyone ever seen this? Is it to discourage the horse from curling, or…?
OR…to compensate for not knowing how to correctly train a horse or because you are impatient?
I have one that can curl. We are spending his basic year teaching him to stretch out to the bit (he is coming 4). Sometimes this is the thing that takes time to train; sometimes it’s something else. But you’ve got to take the time that the individual horse dictates to train. Self carriage is the result of correct training; NOT of gadgets. It helps to make a training diary; record your daily progress. Review it every now and then to see that you are making steady progress (even if it doesn’t feel that way) so that you won’t be tempted to try and accelorate the timeline…
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It took me a long time to learn this, but my short necked mare needed to be relaxed in order to be on the bit and slightly IFV. My warmup was uberstreichen, uberstreichen, uberstreichen.
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Yes, obviously it’s not the correct way to fix curling but I was wondering if anyone knew whether that’s what it’s for. Thankfully I don’t ride in gadget-y circles so I don’t know.
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This pool noodle or pipe on the throatlatch is a gimmick, no doubt about that, BUT since modern horses that are trained by current dressage methods are trained to go behind the vertical from the beginning it may be a tool that would allow a rider not to use spur, spur, spur while riding. There is NO WAY that a horse lunged with side reins will stay at or in front of vertical while lunging at the walk. I did try, I did fail, I failed because the horse’s mouth would hit the end of the reins since the surgincle or whatever the side reins are attached to do not move with the horse’s mouth, and I DID use side reins with elastic. I would not use this gimmick while lunging the horse.
Since these horses are actively trained to and actively rewarded for walking behind the vertical it tend to carry over to the other gaits even when side reins are not involved.
If I were physically stable enough to train a horse right now I could see my way to temporarily using the pool noodle for maybe 3 rides, and during those 3 rides I would, with legs(!) and forgiving contact work on “seducing” the horse to stop curling up in front by actively stretching its neck out front to keep contact with my hands at a walk since that is where the problems started. THEN I would have to be good and sure to NEVER block the motion of the horse’s head again while keeping my fingers super soft and loose. Eventually the horse may get the idea that he is ALLOWED to keep his face before the vertical at a walk, something that the side reins prevent. Then I could dispense with the noodle on the throatlatch and work on encouraging the horse to voluntarily reach forward for contact with the bit, keeping my fingers relaxed and sort of loose, and ALWAYS moving my hands according to how the horse moves its head. My hands “belong” to the horse’s mouth, always.
Forward Seat training, at least how I learned it, does not use side reins EVER because these reins do not allow the horse to actively stretch into contact into a supple and forgiving hand that adapts to the horse’s mouth as the horse moves. The horses I owned and trained did not go behind the vertical (LEG! with forgiving hands) but if I run into a lesson horse that has this in their tool kit of evading the bit it looks interesting, for a very short time.
I have not yet run into a horse that is so bad that I would need something like this but I do not get to ride horses trained in dressage, thank goodness. If I was put up on one I would probably spend anywhere from one to three months just teaching the horse that when I am riding it the horse is free to move its head as it needs to move its head according to the gait, starting at the walk and not going beyond the walk until the horse fully UNDERSTANDS it can move normally now and that it can trust my hands. The tool noodle would be a temporary tool to “tell” the horse that now it is allowed to open its throatlatch when moving.
It would be sort of an interesting prospect to see how well I could accomplish this. I would be repeating to myself over and over again “I have plenty of time.”
And I do know this is heresy for dressage training, one of the many reasons why I do not ride or train horses for dressage.
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100%
We always start on getting relaxation through her whole body. She’s not naturally flexible in her body, but getting her bending and relaxed everywhere is the prerequisite to everything else.
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In Standardbred racing there’s a thing called a choke plate. Some trainers just use something like the pipe. Works with horses that curl up and start cutting off their wind so you don’t have to check them high.
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[quote=“Jackie_Cochran, post:37, topic:795980”]
There is NO WAY that a horse lunged with side reins will stay at or in front of vertical while lunging at the walk. [/quote]
Sure there is, if the side reins are adjusted loosely enough…I use side reins when longing and ground driving my babies, adjusted loosely, to keep them from putting their noses down low enough to try to stop and graze. Once the horse learns to go forward and relax, it naturally wants to stretch forward and down into a soft contact, but side reins adjusted the way that I use them do nothing to force that posture.
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Yes, I read in an older horse book long ago that very loose side reins were good for introducing the horse to the bit, so loose that they did not operated within most of that horse’s normal movement.
This gave the horse the opportunity to voluntarily explore the actions of the bit and rein when the horse wanted to. A decent way for the horse to learn how the bit feels without an active rider distracting him or having an unforgiving pull on his mouth every minute when the reins were attached to the surcingle.
Of course I would want someone knowledgeable in the ring in case the looser reins got hung up on something. Accidents can happen so someone needs to be there.
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Christine Stuckelberger and Harry Boldt riding in the 1976 Olympics:
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Both horses totally in front of the vertical
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