To collect her in the trot, I have to ride many transitions within the trot and it improves as every transition takes place. However, I cannot quite convince her to move from a walk to a collected trot -- the collection seems to take place only WITHIN the gait, not during transitions from walk to trot. When I ask for a collected trot from a walk, she gives me little half rears and then starts her collected trot (from which I can ride any other gait, it really is a good collected trot, but she gives half-rears into it.)
How can I correct this problem?
She is an "old-fashioned" type mare with a flat croup and a long back. She is very lazy, but can be explosive. (She hates stumbling -- it always initiates a buck or two.)
Thank you for your advice and time.
- Emesa
ANSWER:
Hi Emesa,
If your horse half rears in each walk-trot transition, you are losing the
hind legs for a moment and the horse's back drops and stiffens while the
croup is pushed up against you. There can be several possible reasons. On
the one hand, it could be that you are not releasing the reins enough during
the transition, so that the horse fights your hand in an effort to obtain
more freedom than you are giving her. In that case, the hind legs would be
blocked by the hand, they cannot step under enough, which results in the
inversion. On the other hand, if you make the opposite mistake and throw the
reins away, the horse will lose her balance and may toss her head up and out
in an attempt to regain her balance.
In general, you can say that the quality of a transition depends entirely on
the quality of the previous gait. That can be the source of your problem as
well. You say your horse has a long back and a flat croup. This type of
horse often walks with very long strides and finds it difficult to bring the
hind legs close enough underneath the center of gravity to lift himself up
into the next higher gait, because the hind legs actually spend too much
time on the ground behind the vertical, i.e. pushing the load forward,
instead of carrying. If that is the case, your horse will try to walk faster
with longer, flatter strides during the transition, before the trot is
achieved. It is imperative that the rhythm and the stride length at the walk
do not change at all before the transition, which is not always easy to
accomplish. By insisting on the same rhythm and stride length, we insist
that the horse sits down and carries weight with his hind legs, which makes
it possible for the upward transition to develop uphill with a round outline
and a raised back. I would try to engage the hind legs more at the walk
before the transition, so that I feel the back rise more. The walk becomes
more active, almost bouncy. This becomes so difficult for the horse that she
volunteers the trot with her hind legs underneath herself. Then all you have
to do is let the trot come out with your hands and seat. This way, you are
allowing your horse to trot, rather than asking her for the transition.
Conceptually, that makes a big difference to the horse.
Another important aspect is that many riders forget to ride during and after
the transition. We have to accompany the upward transitions with little half
halts, so that we are able to shape the transition as well as the following
gait. We never ride any old walk, trot, or canter, but we always ride a very
specific rhythm and stride length in each gait. If we don't have a very
clear picture in our mind of what this gait should be like, we will not be
able to communicate it to the horse, and the horse will most likely produce
a flawed gait. You may have to go through the cycle of drive, half halt,
release several times before, during and after each transition, in order to
drive the hind legs more underneath the center of gravity first. Then you
bend the grounded hind leg underneath your weight, and into the release of
the aids the horse will round herself more. You may also have to follow up
each half halt with a driving aid so that the hind legs don't start to drag
as a result of the half halt.
To sum it up, if you can engage the hind legs more in the walk before the
transition, without getting faster, your horse should stay round in the
transition.
- Thomas Ritter
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Last Update: January 13, 2007