Training to stand still at the halt

[Toblersmom]

I’ve been having issues recently with my guy not wanting to stand still after a halt. Just shifting and stepping forward or to the side a step or half step, then he’ll stand for another moment when I remind him to whoa, but I can feel the tension in him and then he’ll shift/step again. Standing still is not an issue in settings where I am not asking for a halt as part of an “exercise”. He stands for mounting (although he’s been a bit more “shifty” with that than I’d like lately, too), tack adjustment both mounted and dismounted (and tied or untied), trainer convos during lessons, being “monkey in the middle” during the semi-private with my daughter when I want to watch her doing something before we take our turn. He very quickly figured out the expectation that feet are not to move during “carrot stretches” and when we do those his feet are cemented to the ground. But if we are doing walk-halt transitions or he thinks that I am asking for a halt prelude to something else like a back or step or two of turn on the haunches, he’s Mr. Shifty. I haven’t figured out how to get the same lightbulb moment I got with the carrot stretches (offer carrot in a way that he barely had to move his nose, get carrot, repeat—offer carrot a bit further, remove carrot from any hope of acquisition the moment any foot shifting occurred) from the saddle. I use verbal praise and rubs as rewards in the saddle, normally. I’ve tried offering treats from the saddle but so far he’s been rather comically inept at taking them and does a lot of foot shifting, which seems to defeat the purpose.

Anybody have any thoughts? Standing still for the halt and salute seems to be a nice way to get “easy” points, and given his generally phlegmatic nature it really should be easy for him.

[KBC]

My go to for standing still is to move!

And HALT, if she moves, OK, halt to trot, and Work…rinse and repeat until they get that halt is a great idea.

Also it is worth remembering that a horse who has discomfort makes it hard for them to stand still, so the usual disclaimers apply!

[OverandOnward]

My thought is that this is about the timing of the reward for standing, and the reward itself. A treat is way too big and disruptive, and by the time it is delivered I doubt he knows why he got it.

I’m also on a shifty horse and standing still is a #1 lesson, in all situations and settings. Glad to see that you have taken the same approach. But I would ask, how long is the horse asked to stand and not shuffle even one foot when you are asking on the ground?

There is a different way of thinking about the halt without lots of verbals, petting and treats. A halt is not a halt unless the horse is holding himself in halt, without the rider applying pressure through longe line, reins, voice or petting. You can use all of those cues to keep his attention on the fact that he is halted, but really that next shuffle is just being contained by you, it’s still there in his mind. Or, he can learn to halt and turn off his inner shuffle/fidget. Instead of not-moving-but-almost-moving, he is truly altering his own mindset to hold himself still, waiting patiently for the next command. However long the wait is…

Work on a longe halt, and other ground halts, for a minimum 30 seconds, solid performance, and count the seconds to be sure of the length. When this is perfected, you are still, giving slack, and not giving reminders. My guess is that although you and he both feel as if he’s been parked forever in your current halts that work, you are actually only holding him in place for 5 or 10 seconds. That feels like a long time to active creatures, but he isn’t really in a halt mindset. Work up gradually, from 3 seconds, to 8 seconds, to 15 and so on. That will introduce the mindset of a true self-contained halt (to both of you).

Make sure that whenever a halt is ended and he moves again, it is you who end it and move him. Never him. Read his body language, and even if he’s only been halted for a half second, if he’s about to move and you can’t stop him, then you move him first. Makes sense? He never, ever is the one who initiates a move. Only you. With major manipulation!

Also, halt exercises are not true unless he is standing with no pressure from you. No tension in the line or the rein. No verbals or petting. Those things are not really rewarding him, insteady they are holding him in halt, so that he isn’t holding himself in halt. Without that pressure reminder, then yes it is so much harder to initially train compliance. But that is the thing to work through, gradually. He isn’t truly, solidly parked unless he parks himself, as it were, without you anchoring him through pressure and reminders.

Reward with release, while he keeps himself in halt with the release. The release must be immediate to be recognized as reward. Recognize even the slightest instant of halt, every single tiny try or accidental stop. It takes absolute consistency and many repetitions to get it across, but be consistent consistent consistent. This is a major reward that he will want to repeat! I promise that he will respond better to the release reward than to all the “good boy’s” and pets. Don’t reward with a lot of verbals and petting, which are distractions, and ‘cheats’ as reminders that he is still being asked to stay, rather than true rewards that he recognizes (plus illegal in dressage competition). It’s like the pressure on the line, he isn’t really self-halted, you are holding there with these distractions. Instead, give some slack and let him stand on his on.

This will be a bit more complex than what you are doing now and it is in many ways a different way of thinking about what a halt is. It works, though !!! A horse that is self-halted and has it in his mind that he is still and waiting for you is an honest halt. (And then you train the prompt transition to the next gait, from the halt. )

It takes time, it takes perseverance, and it is so much more a solid gold extended halt than is sitting there at X on a horse that is about to do something other than halt!

Before telling yourself that you don’t think your antsy horse can learn this (especially after the first couple of tries), go watch some reiner videos. Those horses are high-energy, they fly at the touch of an aid, whip around spins, blaze through the fast work. But when they halt, They. Are. Halted. They are on a totally slack rein, planted and going nowhere until the rider asks. Not because they are bred differently than your horse, but because they are trained differently than your horse. Anything they can learn, your horse can learn, too.

[Foxtrot_s]

Salinero had great difficulty at the halt - Anky just did the most fleeting of halts.

[CHT]

@Foxtrot's

Salinero had great difficulty at the halt - Anky just did the most fleeting of halts.

Tests require 3 second halts on current tests.

OP:

How does your horse do with halt on the ground?

Will your horse stand “ground” tied/parked? When leading, does your horse wait until you tell it to move, or does it follow you? I think a lot of people confuse their horses by expecting their horse to wait for a go aid under saddle, but have go as the default when leading. I work on my horses leading forward/back from a stand still, and teaching them to stand if I walk off with no halter/bridle pressure. I want their default to be to stay in whatever I last told them to do.

My guess is that your horse is also anxious about what is about to come next. Do you give your horse a subtle warning before making a request out of the halt?

It also could be a reflection of general training anxiety though. Nobody likes to stand when anxious. is your horse struggling with it’s current training?

[x-halt-salute]

@Toblersmom

I’ve been having issues recently with my guy not wanting to stand still after a halt. Just shifting and stepping forward or to the side a step or half step, then he’ll stand for another moment when I remind him to whoa, but I can feel the tension in him and then he’ll shift/step again. Standing still is not an issue in settings where I am not asking for a halt as part of an “exercise”. He stands for mounting (although he’s been a bit more “shifty” with that than I’d like lately, too), tack adjustment both mounted and dismounted (and tied or untied), trainer convos during lessons, being “monkey in the middle” during the semi-private with my daughter when I want to watch her doing something before we take our turn. He very quickly figured out the expectation that feet are not to move during “carrot stretches” and when we do those his feet are cemented to the ground. But if we are doing walk-halt transitions or he thinks that I am asking for a halt prelude to something else like a back or step or two of turn on the haunches, he’s Mr. Shifty.

This sounds very familiar to me after struggling to really get solid halts from my very forward, sensitive horse, and I used a very different approach than is being promoted in a lot of these responses. I don’t think groundwork or ground tying or longeing is a sure-fire way to fix the halt if specifically while riding he’s trying to figure out what you want next and do it. And I don’t think trying to figure out what you want is a bad thing – it’s a crucial component of most positive reinforcement-based “behavior shaping” in training. So the question is, how do you get him to consider “be still” as one of the options to try in his quest to figure out what comes next. IME bridging that behavior from ground to saddle isn’t the most effective approach for all horses.

For my horse, there were three obstacles to overcome:

1. When there’s contact on the bit, she is in “work mode” and interprets every single thing I do as communication (for better or for worse depending on how well I happen to be riding in a particular moment). She could get totally relaxed during those minutes when we halt in the middle while trainer explains an exercise or principle, but for a very long time, contact meant “on” and alert, to the point that it was incompatible with immobility or physical relaxation.

2. She wants to please, and is often/always trying to figure out what comes next. If we always halt and trot off, she’s preparing for a trot departure the moment her feet are still.

3. She’s happiest going forward, whether she’s being ridden or she’s out left to her own devices. She’s more relaxed after a medium canter than after a long halt.

So the things that were helpful to me were:

1. Mixing it up so she never knows what comes next. Sometimes we moved off in a trot, but sometimes in a walk-to-free walk, sometimes we backed a couple steps, sometimes I dropped the contact while still halting to elicit the “trainer’s talking, you can relax” mode. Doesn’t matter what I wanted to do next, we started with some random exit from the halt and then moved into whatever gait I really wanted.

2. Checking my aids. I relax a lot more when my trainer is explaining an exercise than I initially realized, and it took some work on me as a rider to provide a real release in my aids (seat) while keeping bit contact. I guess I’m as guilty as my horse of the whole contact=work time/think ahead association.

3. Making “relax and check out” with a lengthened rein (simulate the trainer explanation halt) the element that follows the halt with increasing frequency for a while, then moving toward “relax but don’t check out” while gradually keeping the contact more. And once that was solid for a couple seconds, extending it longer.

4. Working toward a higher level of floppy-eared relaxation in all work. For me this has been a long journey and a big part of it has been ruling out sources of minor discomfort and giving her more opportunities to go forward in a productive way (because forward is her happy place). I use forward as a reward – after some good work or work that includes a good solid halt, I’ll let her go forward into a medium.

YMMV, of course, but thinking of it more as a self-contained behavior shaping problem than a matter of transferring ground manners to riding worked better for me.

[maybesmom]

How old is your horse? It’s pretty common for young horses to have issues holding halts. If he/she is young, I would not push for a long halt. If your horse is obedient and halts even momentarily, I would reward and immediately move off. I would also not try to square them up if until they are halting and holding it as this can be confusing to a horse that is learning to halt. If they stop moving completely, they need to be rewarded promptly and then move forward again before they can start jigging or get restless. My trainer has also suggested with my young horses who either side step or back after halting that I go with the flow and say “okay, if you want to back, let’s keep backing” or " if you want to move laterally, lets keep going laterally". Once you tell your horse okay great , lets go with what you offer and what they offer is more work than standing still, they frequently start to realize that standing still is less work than either backing or moving laterally and they get happier about just halting and staying there. When you mention that he stats to get shifty as though he is expecting you to ask him to back, he sounds like he is anticipating. This is usually a good sign becasue it means your horse is trying very hard to please you. If he anticipates that you are going to ask him to back, STOP practicing backing him/her. Limit the amount of movements you are doing out of the halt. It is also important for you to be quiet and balanced in the saddle during a halt and not to be moving a lot in the saddle as a horse that is anticipatig being asked to do something may interpret your moving around in the saddle as asking him for something.If he is older and anticipating, I would do lots of walk-halt and trot halt transitions with brief halts and promptly moving off from different parts of the ring so he does not think you will always ask for a halt at B or X for example.

[merrygoround]

When you ride into the halt, you may relax your closed fingers but your body must remain in halt. If you halt, relax, shift weight, move your legs, the horse will shift.

You must ride the halt. When it’s time to move off, add leg, lift your chest, tighten your core, and lift into the trot, or canter.
If it’s relax time after the halt, drop reins and relax.

When you’re on the horse, you gotta be consistent.

[Dressage_Strider]

Ask your horse for the halt as Merrygoround describes, and then allow the horse to make the mistake of moving (Don’t drop the reins, just don’t hold on to his mouth)

Some horses get anxious in the halt - every chance you get pet your horse in the halt - breathe and tell him good boy - if you are stiff in the saddle it will only add to the anxiety.

• when he moves, immediately ask for a turn on the haunches a step or two, then ask for the halt again. Repeat as needed and LOOK FOR AN OPPORTUNITY TO REWARD

I would suggest, be able to pet him in the halt for merely a second - do this a few days until he sighs, tosses head, chews or otherwise acts relaxed THEN start to ask him to halt for longer.

Do this for a week (I’m serious, a week) and you will have a horse that can halt and stand

[kcmel]

Teaching verbal cues may help. I find it works well for the walk when my horse gets jiggy. You should be able to phase out the “whoa” once he understands your other aids.

[Toblersmom]

Thanks for the discussion! I can’t do anything other than think about things (and continue to do groundwork) at the moment after the fence escapade. He’s recovering well but I’m not going to ride him for a bit, not until the ventral swelling has died down and he’s had a thorough clearance health-wise. I think the root of our current issue (before the fence accident) is that I have been recently working with him on being more forward/in front of the leg/responsive to driving aids, so that when I’m actively riding he’s thinking that I’m going to give him a driving aid ANY SECOND NOW AND I’D BETTER BE READY. We’ve had similar issues with canter depart anticipation. He’s a lot better with that after a lot of work kind of “setting the stage” with the precursors to a canter transition, letting him get balled up and anxious about that, then not asking for it and doing something boring like little circles until he relaxes, then give him a verbal reward, pat, and walk on the buckle. I like the idea of working backwards on the halt, taking advantage of his sessile periods (which can last a lot longer than 30 seconds, I have video of us being monkey-in-the-middle while kidlet struggled with keeping her pony cantering an entire lap which took several attempts—he may well have dozed off), taking up just an eensy bit of contact, then rewarding him by letting it back out again and letting him continue to stand if he’s still, then gradually build up the amount of contact and attention-paying I expect without asking him for anything else if he continues to stand quietly. I’ll stop asking him for a standstill halt outside of those types of casual settings for the time being, until he’s got a firmer grasp on the nuances and is a little more relaxed about responding to the driving aids, so his default response is more likely to be relaxation and stillness rather than tension and energy.