We are working with a six year old mare that is working first level. When she gets to shows, she becomes quite tense and tight in her neck which causes her to become brace and quite tight in the poll. This situation becomes worse during the canter lengthenings which makes it difficult to return to the working canter. Looking for some ideas and suggestions to help make and keep the neck more supple. We have been working a lot on broken lines and figures. She usually responds well to the half halt. Thanks for your help.
Can you flip her crest? If you can manipulate the bit so that the bend of the neck changes, you can flip the nuchal ligament from one side to the other. The more you do it, the easier it becomes.
Lots of times when a horse gets stiff in the neck, it is because the nuchal ligament is tight and it doesn’t flip over to the other side of the neck to allow the horse to change the bend laterally through the neck. This negatively affects the horse’s balance. If you can loosen this ligament up so that you can manipulate it at will, you can help the mare to bend through her neck and carry herself in balance. Flipping the horse’s crest seems to relax the horse at the poll, and lowers the neck so that you get that “falling down neck.”
Jennifer Baumert wrote an article in DT a few years ago about this. Here is the link-
http://www.equisearch.com/horses_riding_training/english/dressage/bendcontrol_061404/
Here is another article by a classical dressage historian, giving more technical information.
http://www.artisticdressage.com/articles/flexions.html
I don’t profess to know personally whether it is just the “crest” that flips or nuchal ligament or what the biomechanics are that are involved. I do know that it is a technique for suppling the neck, poll and jaw that is recognized by well known trainers in both classical and competitive dressage.
I’m pretty sure there was just an article about the “falling down” neck in the USDF magazine… Try looking there 
Otherwise… I’m no help 
We have the same problem!
Room in the boat for one more?
I’ve got a similar issue. Horsey gets tense and locking in his neck, and back and hiney goes out the back door when he’s worried (especially true at shows).
I’m pretty sure this tenseness and blowing me off so he can hollow and be spooky at shows is something he’s learning at home that it’s okay to do. Granted we haven’t done a ton of showing…(3 total shows so far!), but I do take him off the property a lot, including hunting him.
What’s been real helpful to me is making sure I always have his attention even at home. Essentially, I’m always trying to keep his attention on me. If something catches his fancy I’m really quick to do little sponges on the opposite rein (like when a new horse is coming into the ring and my guy wants to see if it’s his bff :)). He tries to look left and I’ll play with the right rein a bit and vice versa. And I do something (anything!) to move his feet.
Anyways, I don’t know if that was at all helpful, but at the very least I can relate!
If it only happens at shows, I would think the rider may be getting tense and the horse is feeding off of that. Does it only happen at shows? Or does it happen at home too? At the next show you may want to start with quick transitions- walk two steps trot off. It sounds like it could be a throughness problem, working the transitions will help connect the horse.
An idea for you?
If you can learn to bring your horse to it’s bit with a lateral flexion at the poll,instead of driving him onto it, he will become light in his forehand and then you can allow his neck to extend,and,as he develops more balance you can encourage his head and neck to go downwards,forwards and out but still in light contact,eventually in all three gaits and on both reins. No pulling,leaning or speeding up. This requires unremitting impulsion. It takes time,and a good seat. From that forward,down and out position you can simply,at your will,bring him back to an academic position,again in lightness. No hauling up. It takes time. And unremitting impulsion.This not only loosens the neck,it stretches the entire top line. But it takes time. And a good seat. And unremitting impulsion.
Yuck, I HATE ‘flipping the crest’, the topline is too stiff and rigid when that is possible.
How to soften the neck. Correct bending. Have an instructor help you.
Thanks to all who have shared some ideas. Here is some more information that may help explain what is going on. As for working with a trainer - we live way out in the goonies and I do not have access to a quality trainer very often. The mare’s neck is soft and relaxed at the withers during warm up and through most of the test - even the trot lengthenings. She gets up in and stiff (locked up?) in her neck during the canter lengthenings especially to the right.
The problem is NOT the neck. When a horse feels stiff or rigid in the neck, jaw, or poll, it’s always the back that is not working properly. You will never have true success unless you fix the root of the problem. If you work on the neck, poll, or jaw by itself, your horse may feel better in your hand, but it’s false. As the back is the key to the hindquarters being available.
Correct bending and stretching excercises, getting the horse to properly move through it’s back is your answer.
i agree w/LS, but, while on the road to having excellent access to the hind end , i have found that keeping the horse flexed and bent, tail to poll, soft on the inside rein, connected inside leg to o/s rein is a good way to dissalow the horse to brace.
It is not possible to flip the nuchal ligament. What you see move is the fat deposit on top of the crest. I have done a lot of research on this topic - included two dissections of the neck - and have asked and discussed this training technique with a number of vets, physiotherapists, biomechanic experts and massage professional - some quite well known in their fields in the US, Germany, France and Australia - and the consensus is that it not desirable and potentially harmful. I had been told that this was german classical and french classical but I could not find a single allusion to this in french riding books (I am of french origin) and this was decried by extremely qualified, credentialled top folks including one top level person from Saumur who had NEVER heard of doing this. The german vet and trainer I consulted was perplexed as well.
One thing to know about the NL is that there isnt one. There is two. One on each side of the neck. Its not one main “cable” that is used unilaterally.
I am not saying this to be contrary EclecticHorseman but because this is a misconception that I have run into and spent several months investigating. I am still working on a paper on this, and will make it available when I am ready.
What is the rider doing when the horse tenses its neck during shows? Does the horse not tense the neck at home? There are many reason for a horse to be stiff, a big one being bracing agaisnt ungiving contact. Another is being throw of balance by being asked for more forward than it can give and bracing to keep upright, another is feet tenderness, back tenderness, etc… if this only happen at shows that would be a different situation and to resolve this it would take the rider to be able to keep the horse relaxed throughout its entire body - it may take a few shows for the horse to get confortable. Working on bended lines is a very good way to help a horse supple. Shallow loops with a circle at the top of the apex, large in the beginning, smaller as the horse becomes more supple, serpentines, tear drops, figure 8, there are very many exercices at your disposal. And you can incorporate baby shoulder fore, baby shoulder in. Your trainer should have many different exercices to offer.
And I dont agree that its always the back. Of course the back is the bridge between back and front end and it must be healthy to allow throughness but there are cases where a horse has damaged its poll or jaw, whiters, shoulder, sternum, etc… and it will translate into bracing and must be addressed independently.
karoline… you know… i swear i just read, in one of my odg books, about the crest flipping etc. i will have to see if i can find it - because when i read it i thought “a ha!” it is in the literature!!!
now, to see if i can which odg, and where in the book:)
eta: re: access… one thing i have learned - is that sometimes we (or maybe i should say I) take for granted what a horse is giving when they give full access to their bodies (which is what they are giving when they are soft/supple and allow a HH thru etc) … why a horse might not want to give that are many … sometimes the horse is saying “hey, you are pulling” or " hey, my back is killing me" or “hey, your riding sux today!” and so we need to really be careful and also mindful that when we do demand full access that we treat it with the respect and delicacy that it deserves.
forget about softening the neck - the neck being stiff isn’t the problem…but…
‘the back’ isn’t exactly the problem. The back tightens up as a RESULT not a cause. The cause is the horse is crooked. Everything needs to be more supple, but just thinking about tha twon’t fix the root cause. Crookedness.
Karoline is right. That’s just fat, that is not a ‘nuchal’ ligament that is ‘flipping’. The nuchal ligament doesn’t ‘flip’ or move in that way. The bending of the entire neck, controlled by many very, very flexible muscles working together, is what ‘flips’ that pad of fat.
But that pad of fat shouldn’t be flipping suddenly from one side to another, it only does that when the underlying neck muscles are tightened up.
LOL. I work my tail off to NOT ‘flip the crest’, LOL. The curve of the neck, adn hence the pad of fat on top of the neck, should very gently and gracefully change position.
This MIGHT have been of value when horses had extremely thick, heavy necks, and were ridden in extremely collected postures in the past, and were aged stallions who had even thicker and heavier necks than is the norm for their type/breed. It may have been the only way a very heavy, thick cresty mature stallion neck would bend at all in that posture. Not everything in every old book applies to lighter less cobby horses. Flipping the crest is minutae from the past, madly not following it will not sink the modern dressage ship.
“She gets up in and stiff (locked up?) in her neck during the canter lengthenings especially to the right.”
I actually think the other posts have missed something important.
Your horse is falling in with its haunches angled inward to the right.
She’s losing her balance.
Stand there on a line with the long side at a horse show sometime.
You will see that MOST horse’s haunches nearly always creep inward during the lengthenings, usually more so when going to the right.
In fact, if you watch, you’ll see that the horses are extremely crooked going into the short side before the lengthening, with their front legs making one track more tward the outside, and their hind feet making another more to the inside, and it gets even more crooked then when it goes to lengthen.
Horses don’t like that, so they do what they always do when they don’t like something, they get stiff and tight. Going faster is an instinctive way for them to try and ‘chase’ their balance, like a guy carrying a load of boxes walking down a staircase, when he starts to fall down, he’ll ‘run’ and try to get back under the weight.
The solution isn’t bending in and of itself, but straightening work. Bending is a PART of straightening work.
Seek thee a dressage trainer who can help you with this. Shoulder in work to the right, to ‘oppose’ the haunches will help (as long as it’s done right) as well as general suppling, straightening and strengthening work.
Be very careful the rider isn’t pushing the haunches to the right by holding his left leg further back or pushing harder with it. Paradoxically, when a horse gets crooked, many people tend to push with the opposite leg, without even being aware of it.
Also beware the natural tendency of the rider to lean his weight to one side or the other on a crooked horse. His BODY may be aware of the crookedness without him even realizing it intellectually (because it’s been going on a long time and he’s used to it). The way he weights his stirrups and distributes his own weight might actually be CONTRIBUTING to the crookedness! He may need constant ‘spotting’ from a coach to correct this for a while.
Often the crookedness of the horse and rider go hand in hand, with one reinforcing the other. It becomes a habit and it requires assistance to break the habits.
Clasically, one always corrects the position of the haunches, NOT by trying to ‘push them back over there where they belong’ with the crooked-side leg held further back and ‘relocating’ the haunches (back toward the left in your case). Why? Because it doesn’t work and doesn’t fit in rationally with the way the aids are supposed to work when turning and doing lateral work, but also because it just doesn’t work. It’s just physics.
Instead, classically, you would do shoulder in RIGHT, and ‘oppose the haunches’ by moving the shoulders.
It’s quite possible that when you try to shoulder in, the horse’s whole body drifts inward, and you actually then also have to leg yield to get back to the track. But the shoulder in not only corrects the problem it also is a great ‘kimono opener’ that is when you find out how stiff the horse is and how much he’s falling in.
Horses get stiff, faster and tense in one direction at the canter, because they are crooked.
I bet if you look carefully, she does same when longeing, and it happens at the other gaits as well, but she doesn’t have as much activity/motion/momentum as when cantering, so it’s less of a noticeable speed change at the walk and trot.
Too, mares tend to be much more sensitive and get tense and stiff with even slighter degrees of crookedness. Don’t be totally shocked if she turns out to not be very crooked at all, and it bothers her a LOT.
Why? Just ask 'em. Mares are very important, so they have to be extra careful of these things
Tension in the back is always at the root of tension in the neck, poll, or jaw. There is never a time that a horse is lovely and swinging through it’s back yet tense in the neck.
Yes, crookedness is a major cause of tension in the back. But my point is addressing the tension in the front end only is wrong.
That’s my point, but one does need to fix what’s wrong or other things will crop up.
[QUOTE=Eclectic Horseman;4243331]
Can you flip her crest? If you can manipulate the bit so that the bend of the neck changes, you can flip the nuchal ligament from one side to the other. [/QUOTE]
In all seriousness, please provide the aids for doing this. I can’t even imagine how one would do this. And especially how would you teach someone to do this? I have no plans on trying this with my horses but sure am wondering how you make it happen.
Has to be the oddest thing I have ever heard. No disrespect intended. And I have read the other posts in this thread that refer to it. This is a new one…for me anyway.
Actually appears to be a relatively recent idea. Does not appear in The Complete Training of Horse and Rider, Gymnasium of the Horse (older), or Ecole de Cavalarie(even older), Xenophon’s book (really old) or in the first treatise known written treatise on training horses. So what great old classical wisdom is it from?
The Supreme Court ruled that the tomato is a vegetable in 1893.
I think that I may have gotten my Germans confused. 
I found an article from DT that was about Conrad Schumacher’s technique for “neck control.” I think that this is the article that I was remembering. I seem to recall these photos anyway. Here’s a link-
http://www.equisearch.com/horses_riding_training/english/dressage/bendcontrol_061404/
This article very clearly describes the aids for flipping the horse’s crest.
There is no mystery to it, however. It is simply a change of flexion at the halt. As you will see from the Ritter article that I previously posted, flexions are a recognized technique for suppling the neck, poll and jaw. It is useful for developing flexion at the poll and not disengaging at the base of the neck.
Here is the Ritter article again- http://www.artisticdressage.com/articles/flexions.html It provides details.
The aids used are those used to change the flexion without changing the bend. Since I learned it, I have used it, with the effect of increasing suppleness and diminishing resistance.
It could be mental tension. I have a mare who would be very tense IN THE RING. It was hard to get a nice four beat flat footed walk and especially hard to do the medium and extended work.
It was heart breaking, as she was so good at home and I wanted to show the judges what a nice horse she is. But in the ring she would loose some of the her confidence.
Any way. I just kept bringing her to shows and she is now doing great at 3rd level (her 3rd year showing) Janet Foy gave her a 71% last weekend!
My mare does this.
Establish a warmup routine that you do at home and at shows. Will help with tenseness as horse is “comfortable” and knows what comes next.
I start with 1 lap around arens on LONG rein (nose to ground), then pick up working walk. Fromc “A” to “C” I walk an 8 loop serpentine asking for bend throughout the entire body (my mare holds in neck and entire body when she gets tense - the more tense she is the “loopier” the loops. If she’s good is a 1/2 10 meter circle as I tounch the long side of the arena, if she stiff and holding I make figure eights - adding loops as needed and slowly work way down the arena. I usually perform this twice at the walk (less if she’s good, more of she’s really tense), then I repeat at the trot.
Once she is bending through body at the trot and not holding too much in the neck I trot a 20 meter circle at “B”, asking her to go long and low, and slowly bring her up (long & low to get her back). Add in trot/walk/trot transitions until they’re decent then add in trot/canter/trot until good then finally canter/walk/canter (only a few strides at each as she loves to rush canter and HH’s when she’s tense make her more tense.
When that’s good I switch directions and repeat. If all that goes well I start she gets a break then I re-start with a walk square, ending with walk pirouettes to get her lifting her shoulders and sitting.
Then I’m ready for the real work. If at any time she braces, and I can’t fix it, I go back to warmup routine. Big thing is if you can keep her back up she’s probably not bracing. Plus I use the warm-up and a few other routines to get her attention back on me when she “looses her mind” - which happens at overnight shows more often than show on the day I arrive.
