i’m building in a cue to my mare to remain stock-still when she feels that bit of rein on her neck (on the side opposite of where i gather the reins) I’ll go with the left hand and hold reins and whip in my right. I was trained to move the whip also, and in training, i actually do if i need to wave it around a bit. I’m pretty darn active with my whip at this point. Not ON her, but in her sight. i want to ‘save’ my rein and leg cues for important instructions…so i just use the whip to push her attention away from stuff happening around her. I know i’ll need to turn the volume waaaaaay down, but she’s still learning how to pay attention to what’s IN the ring lol. Silly little hay seed of a mare…when all those other horses at that boarding barn are doing things she is so drawn. I suppose that will go away in time.
I think when it’s clearly a young, nervous horse, the judge would probably prefer to overlook that, rather than preside over a wreck.
Personally, I do switch my whip during a dressage test, so after getting yelled at for saluting with my whip hand at a schooling show, I just enter with my whip on the left and then switch as needed. Just like with diagonals, it’s good to be fluent in using the whip on either side, and being able to change smoothly.
You never salute with the whip hand, and as someone pointed out, you must remove the hand from the rein.
I would not teach a horse to halt when she feels reins on the neck. You may well regret that later as there are many movements where the reins will touch the neck, and you will probably find the reinback difficult to train correctly if you do that. She should halt and wait attentively for the next command, and that is trained like all other things, one moment at a time. It took my horse approximately four years to halt attentively and patiently.
I showed in my biothane/beta bridles for years, I even added a snaffle bit hanger and made it a double. The only comment was “beautiful bridle”.
Eh…if you click on the box, it shows a picture. Not sure why it didn’t like the image tag. Learning the new software.
