Leg Yield Aid Question

[sascha]

@RedHorses

@sascha (it won’t let me quote you)

I did use the whip every single stride when teaching leg yield in hand. Timed well it signals “that” leg swings sideways and removes the pressure as the horse does so. The horse learned that was what I wanted and we could leg yield many steps in a row.

Putting pressure on to move sideways and holding it would similarly have to be trained one step at a time as holding the aid in place until the yield is finished would initially have the horse trying different things to figure out what was wanted as moving sideways did not result in released pressure and must not be the desired response.

Any aids can be used to teach any response if developed gradually and used with good timing. We have a common set of aids that we teach horses in order to allow many people to be capable of riding that horse, but the specifics of teaching the horse is a process that is variable depending on the horse and trainer.

Meh, tomayto, tomahto. Sort of. I don’t, absolutely don’t, use a renewed aid each stride for lateral work at any level. I find it klunky, repetitive, nagging, irritating, and interruptive of flow of the movement and of the gait. You don’t even need to do it to teach it in hand. For example, to teach the ToF, you would position yourself appropriately and raise your whip, then tap to get the horse to respond. When there is a response of a single step, you would lower the whip and praise the horse. Repeat until the horse understands that ONE step away from the whip earns praise. The horse, all by itself, will notice the change in posture of the whip. From there it is dead simple to leave your whip raised for a successive step. Horses are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. We don’t need to spoon feed them anything every stride. Teaching it under saddle is the same. We don’t ask for a whole long side/open side of the circle/diagonal when we start teaching it, we ask for one step until the horse understands and then we ask for two by maintaining our seat, and then 3 and so on.

That said, I am a lazy rider and expect my horses to go by themselves. I want them wanting to move, not wanting to stop.

Oh hey, here’s another way to think about it. When we teach a horse to longe, do we nag it every stride by waving our whip around, or do we ask with the whip and then leave it be at the “go level” and allow the horse to move all by itself without a regular reminder every stride? For me, it’s the same answer whether asking the horse to go forwards, sideways, or backwards, no nagging allowed

[sascha]

@sascha

Meh, tomayto, tomahto. Sort of. I don’t, absolutely don’t, use a renewed aid each stride for lateral work at any level. I find it klunky, repetitive, nagging, irritating, and interruptive of flow of the movement and of the gait. You don’t even need to do it to teach it in hand. For example, to teach the ToF, you would position yourself appropriately and raise your whip, then tap to get the horse to respond. When there is a response of a single step, you would lower the whip and praise the horse. Repeat until the horse understands that ONE step away from the whip earns praise. The horse, all by itself, will notice the change in posture of the whip. From there it is dead simple to leave your whip raised for a successive step. Horses are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. We don’t need to spoon feed them anything every stride. Teaching it under saddle is the same. We don’t ask for a whole long side/open side of the circle/diagonal when we start teaching it, we ask for one step until the horse understands and then we ask for two by maintaining our seat, and then 3 and so on.

That said, I am a lazy rider and expect my horses to go by themselves. I want them wanting to move, not wanting to stop.

Oh hey, here’s another way to think about it. When we teach a horse to longe, do we nag it every stride by waving our whip around, or do we ask with the whip and then leave it be at the “go level” and allow the horse to move all by itself without a regular reminder every stride? For me, it’s the same answer whether asking the horse to go forwards, sideways, or backwards, no nagging allowed

[wannabedvm]

@sascha

Dressage is already difficult. Why should we make it complicated too?

When we ask a horse to go forwards, do we ask again every stride? It’s the same for going sideways. Our position and seat are maintained and increased/additional aids are used only when the horse has forgotten to maintain the gait or when we wish to change it. For that, the timing should be correct - in the case of the LY question, when that foot is about to come off the ground.

Going back to ToF in hand or LY in hand, I would challenge a rider to apply a whip aid every dang stride to see how the horse would react. Here’s a clue - not favourably because it is absolutely unfair to keep asking for something the horse has already given and continues to give. Most horses will eventually let you know by becoming irritated or just shutting down to those repeated aids.

I think you have to tap each stride with the whip as an aid on the ground; how else do you ask for a ToF? You could push with your hand, but that’s no better or worse.

[wannabedvm]

@RedHorses

In the learning stage it is important to be specific in what we are asking and provide relief from the ask in order to let the horse know they did what was wanted. In teaching leg yield getting the inside hind leg crossing under the horse is key. Holding the aids on for several steps can be detrimental as the begins to wonder what he’s doing wrong. At the walk there is a relatively long time between key movements of the inside hind leg and releasing the aid as that leg moves sideways tells the horse that is what you wanted.

In later stages, after the horse understands we want sideways movement, we might hold the aid for a couple of steps to try and increase the degree of sideways movement, but even then the release of the aid tells the horse he did the right thing.

Where the horse is in training is going to have a large impact on the timing, strength and duration of our aids. And how demanding we can be about the response we will find acceptable. None of these things are absolutes.

I fully agree with all of this. Of course I don’t intend to ask for each and every step forever, but, for now, its how to best communicate exactly what I want and to be able to reward (stop pressure) right when he does it.

[alibi_18]

@wannabedvm

I think you have to tap each stride with the whip as an aid on the ground; how else do you ask for a ToF? You could push with your hand, but that’s no better or worse.

If the horse is properly train to the whip aid, you should only have to tap once and the horse should move until you ask it to stop. That’s the goal.

If the horse stops (or shows signs of wanting to stop/slow down/disengage) during the movement, that’s when the whip comes into play again.

Just as a comparison, western people don’t give a leg aid for every single step when they ask for their horse to spin. The horse start and stop. There might be some spur/leg/seat/rein aid during the movement, but only to go faster/slower/steadier/more centered.