Hilary Clayton’s work, along with other equine biomechanics specialists, established that there is no suspension in the pirouette canter and that the very collected canter has four beats. They did this using force plates but also by slowing videos of a wide cross section of horses’ pirouettes down to frame by frame (which any layperson can now also do to see it.)
This result was published more than a decade ago and is by now fairly common knowledge.
A bunny hopping canter pirouette with both hind legs pushing off the ground at the same time is a big fault, usually the result of attempting too small a turn with too few strides.
But a pirouette without a suspension phase at all and therefore a subtle four beat footfall is not a fault. As mombc4 quoted from the guidelines. Because we now know that is what horses do.
I am aware of Hilary Clayton’s work. Here is the layman’s version published in USDF
The “4-beat canter” I was discussing is when the diagonal pairs dissociate and the front leg in the diagonal pair steps down. I was talking about this dissociation happening in an overly restricted pirouette. Clayton calls it a “lateral canter” which exists in some horses with that tendency.
The photos on page 26 are taken
from a video of a horse with a lateral
canter. The problem is initiated when
the trailing forelimb leaves the ground
too early, which precipitates its foot-
fall. As a result, the diagonal footfalls
are dissociated and the canter has a
four-beat rhythm, with the front foot-
fall occurring earlier.
I think, in all your brilliance, you’re getting stuck - or just want to confuse your audience. There are two separate things being discussed - a 4 beat canter, which no one will disagree with you about - and a canter pirouette, which had 4 beats - and is not penalized for having 4 beats.
Honestly - it is easy. Not for an amateur boarding, maybe, if they don’t have their own trailer, and as a guest on someone else’s property - but professional programs choose not to give their horses this exposure. Some of them probably don’t think of it. Others are just too busy doing what they are doing.
You can create a busy atmosphere at home. You can haul out to places that are busy. And I think there’s honestly nothing more important to do for your horse than to make them safe to be around in difficult situations, no matter what your discipline. You don’t want the one time you’re on the biggest stage of your life to be the first time your horse experiences crowds. You also don’t want a crazy reactive horse when you’re evacuating/evacuated for a fire. You don’t want your horse to pull loose and hurt himself when you have to tie to a trailer and someone leaves the property gate open. Crazy reactive horse that isn’t good enough for the Olympics can’t step down to an amateur.
Do weird things with your horses, they will be better for it.
i’m confused. When you collect a horse at the walk are you not asking the hind to come under and engage more? And, if so, wouldn’t that tend to push a horse into overtracking? I have a few horses who overtrack at liberty…i’m just now beginning to put a leg over one of them. Is he going to have a self-canceling walks?
short back/long legs and open angled hip/short croup…this is the basic structural reason why my three horses naturally overtrack. How common is that sort of structure in purposefully-bred dressage horses?
You want the hind leg joints to fold in all joints - so the haunches lower and hooves come more up and down. Not for the leg to straighten and reach forward. My gelding used to get 9s and 10s at walk in eventing because he has beautiful natural swing and reach. It took him 3 or 4 years in straight dressage work (because I choose not to jump since I don’t have depth perception) before he could really collect the walk - he naturally had that reach, and not the folding of all hind leg joints, so an attempt to artificially shorten/heighten steps would have simply broken his walk rhythm. 3 hoofprints overtrack isn’t a biggie for him, but collected walk was a challenge!
Good point and I will also add that is why knowledgeable riders and trainers are cautious about bringing young horses with big walks into contact too soon in their training - and esp. with trying to “collect” the walk. It is so, so easy to ruin a big swinging and rhythmical walk with good overtrack by asking the horse to shorten/collect the walk before he has developed the musculature needed to maintain the “bridge” as he folds the hindleg more underneath himself.
There was a bit of a hullabaloo some months back on another thread about a horse that had been described by a very BNT as having a “10” walk. The video that was posted showed some unevenness and not a pure rhythm at the walk, and some posters on the thread were sure the horse was either unsound or even neurological. But another video of the horse showed a nice, forward, flowing, rhythmical, and pure walk. I pointed out that the video with the good walk showed the horse in free walk, but in the other video, the rider was asking for some contact, which absolutely can affect the quality of the walk, esp. in a young horse (the horse in question was young - 6 y/o, IIRC). I also pointed out that the horse was a stallion and if he had been doing some breeding, could be a bit tight and sore in the back from jumping the phantom (or mare if doing live cover).
So a long post just to say that it is certainly true that big natural walks can be “ruined” by rushing to push a young or green horse into too much contact at the walk and to shorten/collect the walk too early in the horse’s training.
(And I do believe that although this does not fall under the heading of “horse abuse,” it does relate to training and even judging practices.)
There’s no pressure on those nerves if there is no noseband or the noseband is fitted with two finger’s worth of spacing between bridge of nose and leather.
What do you think nosebands were designed for, if not to keep the mouth shut…?
I thought it was also to help keep the bridle on and more stable on the face… don’t really know for sure but my nosebands definitely do not keep their mouths shut but perhaps help keep the bridle on when shaking away gnats and deerflies (keeps the crown from lifting up too high). Having a bridle actually shaken off, it is rather panic (me) inducing…
It served as a halter to tie/lead the horse after the bridle was removed. Remember, the original equestrian when Coubertain started the Olympics were cavalry officers. So the tradition of the tack that is used today evolved from what was used in mounted cavalry. Here is the bridle of an officer’s horse from the web siteworldwar1centennial.org
Note that the bridoon of the double bridle is hung from the cheek pieces and the halter is underneath the bridle. Eventually this “halter” evolved into a noseband. Thus then “noseband” is really just an evolution of a halter and was never intended to keep the horse’s mouth shut.
The cavalry colonel that I learned to ride with was a stickler that the noseband be loose enough to put the palm of your hand under the noseband at the bony prominence of the nose.
