The Art of Natural Dressage

I use a touch on the top of the croup, sometimes with hand, not necessarily whip

And yes, "all the difference" is right, those SH's are lovely

the newest development is trying to change the previously taught mechanics of the SH. Instead of the lean back, with the hock/stifle angle remaining open, I am looking for a truer bend of the haunches. Simply put, the straight line from hip to the hoof becomes shorter. Right now, it's more of a lean back/lower haunch - kind of like the hip moving on a semicircle back and down.
The strategy for this is to install a new cue: hand push on the croup to lower.
We played with it for the first time yesterday and this is how it went:
in our old SH place, I put my two fingers on the highest point of the croup and slightly pressed down. Then I added a whip tap just in front of my fingers. Released both when he offered a slight movement downward (and back as well). After about 3 times, he responded from the finger pressure alone. Next I began to shape the response a bit further, when I would sort of resist the croup moving backwards, just guide it straight down. And it worked! What an incredibly clever horse! It's pretty hard to see from this close to him, so I will have to get it on video asap, but I think this is a viable strategy. I also add a verbal cue of "sit" just before asking for this new way of SH. The possibilities from here are so exciting! yay

I was filming Anna and Mucki doing school halt improvisations together. To study the movement, I'm made two parts of it in slow motion.
On the video, I can see the shortcomings of doing this exercise from a stand-still, instead of out of a collected forward motion. The hindlegs are parked out rather than put under the centre of weight, which makes it hard (or impossible) to lift the front properly. At least not without momentum, as Mucki shows on the left side.
The back often gets hollow, as the weight doesn't get off the front legs completely, especially on the right hand side.

I think the perfect way would be to do the school halt coming from very collected trot, piaffe preferrably . I think the old classical dressage masters did it that way. Now, I just need to learn the piaffe then .

School Halt Improvisations (Slow Motion Study)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OIcih4QbU8

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Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

Yes, they did....

Very interesting, your study and your conclusions.
Didn t Mucki get first ideaglances of Piaffe?
I have to let a friend film, when Zermi and I do this exercise.
How do you get the slowmotion?

Greetings

Well, it was more like a hint towards that kind of movement. Nothing to be excited about yet.

Oh, now that would be just wonderful! You can also put up the camera on a fence post, or something. That's what I do usually... But I'd really like to see how you and Zermi do those things. I think we could learn so much from you two.

I use a video editing software for that.

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Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

So, because I got exited about the School Halt after reading this whole topic, I decided to try and see if we could play with it. Starting with weight shifts. We did a few sessions, I made a rope cordeo from his lead-rope and when I pulled it up a little I rewarded before he could step backwards. In the beginning, it looked like he did not do anything, sometimes a step back, but tonight I could see him clearly shifting back a little!

Also, from this topic I've read about targeting with the back hind, so I am learning Farao to learn what his tail is, and reward him for doing nothing/shifting his weight with targeting my hand with his tail. So, curious where this is leading to.

Sounds great, Arike! This is a very interesting and exciting exercise I think.
You could also try the weight shift while he's standing with his forelegs on a pedestal. That usually makes the horse engage the hindquarters naturally in the right way for school halt.

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Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

this is great Arike,

and if you are already playing with the pedestal (with volker's idea)
you can try to teach him to back on to the pedestal with 4 hooves.
when he is already on it with the 2 hind hooves the effort to carry weight on his hinds to pic up his fronts actually in someways can imitate the SH
it can give you two a feel of how to get there and another way to get the muscles and ligaments stronger (from our experience this can be challenging)

for the pedestal back-up you can look at the beginning of this seesaw play video where we practice backing up on the seesaw with Geronimo - (which is still challenging for him physically)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJc2Kj8IdlU&spfreload=10

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Thanks Volker and Anat!
We do not have anything that is strong enough to hold Farao and where he can stand on, yet.
I am trying to look some stuff up that is large enough (he is pretty large, they sold him as 1.70 meter at the withers, but he is a bit smaller) or safe enough. So looking through all the threads and reading lots of nice DIY ideas.

Backing up on a pedestal, never thought of that. Thanks!

Going to watch Geronimo's video right now
Edit: I love your video, and your Seesaw!