Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Allegra,

How old is this horse - how much base?  how soon do you intend to take
him to a distance ride?

'MY' (and I'm no superstar rider or anything) inclination would be to
avoid working the horse in his old, hollow frame unless you really
feel that you need the miles to get his legs (tendons and bone) ready
for what you plan on riding in the next few months.  You're trying to
break his habit of traveling like that. 

Now - I know you dont really want to hear techniques, and I'm not sure
just what sort of "draw reins" you are using.  I think of draw reins
as being attached to the cinch, running thru the bit and up to the
riders hand.   I feel there is a safety concern with them, although I
think they are better than a running martingale for teaching the horse
to round in a conformationally correct matter.  - running martingales
can end up strengthing the underside of the horses neck when you want
to strengthen the topline from poll to tail.   So what I like to use
as an aid for this sort of thing is a german martingale - which has a
similar action to the draw reins but is regular reins with small D or
O rings sewn into them, and a split martingale fork which attaches to
the cinch or breast-collor, splits,  then runs thru the bit rings and
has snaps that attach to the d-rings on the reins.  With this set-up
if the horse has his head where it should be he's only got the rein
pull, but when he sticks his head up or nose out the maringale will
engage like a draw rein. 

Now also you want to use your aid(s) for as short a time as possible
and try to develope other techniques to get the horse to round for
you  (as in all the dressage lesson suggestions)- otherwise it is very
common for the horse to learn to seek out the spot where the aid will
engage as the spot to carry his head - so with no aid the head goes up
and up and/or the nose goes out and out.  AND you WILL likely have
situations like when you expect to cross water where you'll want to
avoid having these aids on.  With a GM you can set it longer once the
horse has started rounding and work on rounding him with just the
reins but the GM will engage if he sticks his nose/head very far out
or up - but horses are smart and they will know whether the aid is
there or not even with setting it different lengths and so on.    

THere were some good emails written maybe 2-3 years ago on ways to get
a horse to yield to the bit and round w/o aids  - if you're interested
you can peruse the archives.  Sue Brown had some excellent posts so a
start would be searching for her name.  

Cheers,
Teresa

 




-- 
Teresa Van Hove
Associate Scientist GST/UCAR
vanhove@xxxxxxxx
---------------------------------

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