The Art of Natural Dressage

I just realised that a friend took pictures of Mucki last weekend which nicely illustrates his current state of the School Halt on both sides.

This is his better side, lifting his right foreleg:


And here's a picture of the other side. It is not a School Halt at all and he can do better on that side, but you can clearly see that he is not at all as confident on this side than on the other. I believe it's got to do with his right hind leg, and/or his right hip. It is slowly getting better though...


Originally I started to plant the idea of the School Halt in Mucki by cueing first for the leg lift, then for the weight shift back. Recently, I started to work on the weight shift again by trying to keep all fours on the ground.
I have the impression that while the leg lift helped greatly in Mucki's understanding of the exercise, it put too much emphasis on the lifted foreleg. Now, I want him to fully concentrate on his hindlegs.
So far, I have only asked for a little weight shift back while keeping all feet on the ground. He understood quickly and I really think it will benefit the School Halt in the long run. I'll keep you posted...

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Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

lovely pictures. It's interesting - the position of the front leg - especially the angle of it. My horses tend to back up with the front legs and lean back over the (stationary) hind legs. I never cued the front leg lift, but encouraged it when it happened - and because the concurrent SW training - it seems the leg lift is offered with everything .

The "side to side difference" - is it that you stand on opposite sides of the horse? or lifting right vs left front? I don't see much directional/bend difference in Mucky in either picture... And his RH looks like it's doing an equal share of it's work in the first picture... as far as that's possible to see something like that

So I wonder if it's your body language difference? I would love to see it on video, hint hint

here's a picture of little Indy, who completely took me by surprise with this pose...

ok, re-read your post and of course - you are asking for a lean back without any feet moving backwards... I think that produces a subtly different movement - when the horse is not allowed to shorten his base of support - bring front legs back. I would worry about how much of the lean back/sit is coming from the front leg pushing the body backward - a bracing use of the muscles of the forehand. Which would actually tend to increase the weight on the front leg instead of putting it on the hind legs... love your level of "control" with your body language conversation with Mucky - would love to see you play with the different SH's .

Hmm... I think you have a point here... I know the hindleg engagement from Lily and it is a totally different thing. She really tucks her legs under and lifts herself at the front. With Mucki I suspected that something is missing, but couldn't put my finger on it.
I will try to sandwich the weight shifts with the GOTM exercise and see where this will take me. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

Well, I don't think it's a matter of my cues. In this picture for example there's someone else cueing him, who has never done it before and she's standing two meters away
In the second picture, I think he should put the greater part of his weight on the right hindleg, but he is putting it out behind, thus avoiding weight there.

_________________
Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

you're welcome Volker. I didn't mean to suggest that what you were doing was not right in any way! Just different

And to be precise - my understanding of the GOTM is that the hind legs come forward towards the fronts - which may result in the opposite "problem" with the angle of the front legs - leaning over them.

I find the way of "parking the hind feet" and allowing the fronts to do whatever they want works best for me. I would love to see the change it your SH when you incorporate the GOTM stance.

Just a short update which I already mentioned in another thread, but I wanted to put it into context here.
I have just achieved much better results with Mucki in School Halt by changing a little, but important detail. Up until now I have worked on the School Halt mainly as a stationary exercise, trying to isolate parts of the exercise and then combining them.
Then I realised that the exercise is called School Halt for a reason and tried it out of an energetic walk. It worked much better! The energetic walk put Mucki in the right mood for collection and also caused him to stop with his legs more under the body. As a consequence, the weight was already on the hindlegs during the halt and with a little backwards tendency right after the halt, Mucki lifted his forequarter up .

So - this might be a no-brainer for most of you, but it helped me a lot

_________________
Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

Not a no-brainer at all for me but an extremely valuable information. Thank you! I will try this with Summy asap - just wondering whether I can inspire him to hold the posture when it is done out of a movement, but I am sure there will be a solution to this as well.

I don't think you have to hold a posture from walk to halt, because the right posture actually results from the change from engaged walk to a halt with backwards/upwards tendency. If done with too much energy it even made Mucki rear beside me, which never happened before .

_________________
Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

I wanted to test it before replying, but last night I did and for me holding the posture does matter. When I ask for the SH from standstill, Pia slowly shifts her weight back and then holds it (ideally, although at the moment it does not work that well either). When we do it from walk, the correct posture directly results from the movement, just like you say, but it only does so for a split second - almost as if Pia throws herself backwards into that position, perhaps adds a little rear but then immediately flips forward again. We don't have duration when we do it that way. I do not mean to say that it is not possible to hold the SH for longer when done from walk (of course it is), but at least for Pia it is much harder that way. Probably not physically harder but harder for her busy little pony brain to combine these two parts of the SH, with one being about movement and change and the second one being about duration and strength. But we will work on it and then I'll report back.

Yesterday Mucki was all into School Halts and rears, so we could improve on that front a bit. It was very windy, which added some extra energy and engagement to the movements .
I noticed that when Mucki had enough energy that there was the idea of rearing in the School Halt, he began to really tuck his hindlegs under. Either by stepping backwards a bit with the front legs, or by stepping under first with the hindlegs. It resulted in the same effect as when done from an engaged walk.
Also we could improve a lot on his weaker right hindleg, which Mucki uses a lot more now . I guess the increased riding we did lately strengthened his hindlegs?

I managed to get some parts of yesterdays session on video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuxR2DDDJ0U

_________________
Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

I just want to report on a significant improvement on Mucki's school halt.
We had been practising constantly a little bit in almost every session, as it still is one of Mucki's favourites. But last weekend we got a nice leap forward in terms of quality and understanding, which was initiated by also greatly improving our cue for the mountain goat stance.
Mucki was so ready to offer it, that I could easily sandwich the mountain goat and the school halt cue. Which in turn resulted in Mucki nicely stepping under before doing the halt - especially on his weaker left side.
As soon as he had felt how the correct school halt should feel on his left side, he wouldn't stop offering it. and even better than that: he immediately offered rearing from a left school halt! Previously, he only did it starting from the right side.
I will ask Anna, if she can make some pictures of that today...

_________________
Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

So nice! With Pia I got a similar improvement when we first started sandwitching the school halt with kicking. Somehow this made her focus on the hindlegs much more, so that she also started stepping under before every school halt. Looking forward to your pictures or video!

The more I play around with the school halt, the more all the different pieces in other exercises fall together .
Cueing it from different starting points (out of walk walk, trot, mountain goat) and with different levels of energy (calm, or with a rear just before), has implanted the idea of hindquarter engagement and bended haunches in various other exercises.
Most notable effects are: better and longer levade-like, low rears, rearing from out of the school halt so I can cue it from beside Mucki instead of in front of him , much more and better collection in general, going even so far as first signs of piaffe in Mucki's trot.

This is such an exciting exercise!

_________________
Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

Well done Volker!

I too, appreciate the SH more and more. The one thing I try to pay attention now is how much the lowering of the hindquarters comes from lean back/bend LS joint/hip, and how much the stifles/hocks close their angle.
I sometimes find the leanback/pelvic tilt dominates the exercise, especially in the beginnings. I suspect this would be much more difficult to move out of, I think it kind of locks the horse up - as yes, the croup is lower and weight is back, but the stifles/hocks are open....

any thoughts?

In my training, I either use a touch on the croup to bend the lower joints, or sometimes just thinking of it and maybe bending my knees more... not sure. Also the cue has become more upwards rather then back and up.

You can see exactly that difference between the first two and the second two school halts in this video of Mucki. It makes all the difference. I've worked a long time to get it

I have never really tried to use a whip on the hindlegs in school halt - rather I sandwiched different complementary exercises with the school halt: rearing, mountain goat, backing up, energetic forward movement. That, and continued training did the job so far...

_________________
Volker

The horse owes us nothing.