I’m sure I know the answer to this but tbh, I’m cranky today and don’t feel like expending the energy to actually remember it…
Are horses trained in Europe taught different signals to cue a lead change?
TIA for humoring the crabby old lady
I don’t think there’s a National or Continental method; I think there are a lot of different methods, and for hunters, once they understand and respond to the cue it really doesn’t make any difference.
I once had a really lovely hunter whose cue for a change was lifting your inside hand. No use of leg, no change of bend. Just head across the diagonal, and as you approach the long side, lift the new inside hand. Perfect clean change.
Dressage riders and trainers have a strong preference for the cue to be changing the inside bend, because it their view it is most correct and the most likely to allow you to keep the horse on a straight line and change, as an upper level horse will need to do for tempi changes. (Dressage peeps, please feel free to correct my smurfy and possibly too simplistic explanation.)
So no, it’s not that all horses in Europe are taught a canter depart from the inside leg, and a lead change from changing the bend. It’s likely that ones with a dressage focus are, however.
Since hunters are usually asked for a lead change approaching a bend, and are not penalized for not being perfectly straight when they change, it’s kind of an academic argument.
If I have trouble getting a change on a horse that’s supposed to have them, I ask what their cue is. Again, *once they understand and respond to the cue it really doesn’t make any difference. *
There’s a hysterical video on Boyd Martin’s Insta account, where he’s trying to ride one of his wife’s dressage horses, which he did very well, he just has as trouble with the tempi changes. He gets the twos pretty well, but struggles a little with the ones, while Silva and the other dressage riders heckle him.
He rides towards the spectators and says “You do realize that I’m never going to have to do more than one change in a row in my entire career, right?”
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So, I was auditing a clinic with a dressage trainer from Portugal, and he was telling people to cue the canter from the outside leg. Not a windshield wiper motion but a simple (but meaningful!) touch behind the girth while the inside leg remained quiet at the girth. The changes were cued similarly, if I recall correctly.
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I had someone ask me recently about changing leads on a stock horse (AQHA).
Our horses are asked to change very intentionally, where I find a lot of H/J horses will auto change across the diagonal. Sometimes I want to counter canter and it annoys the heck out of me.
It will change across regions, across disciplines, and even across trainers within the disciplines depending on their background.
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OMG finally someone else discussing this. I am US based but brought up by classic European dressage and showjumping trainers. Most of the horses I learned on were imported from Europe and all of my AA lease horses were “Euro trained”.
Canter transition for me is inside leg asking with outside leg just behind girth to have control of hindquarters. It’s so funny watching me canter US horses and flying changes are always hysterical the first 20 times I ride an US trained horse. I get them cleaner on a course when I am thinking about it less and the horse changes due to my change in bend, but flatting and doing flying changes on US horses - OMG it is so comical.
It is rarely spoken about but my current trainer is working to get me “Americanized” on the flat.
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