Simple Horsemanship

05/08/2024

“The basic techniques, or what they call the basics, are more difficult then what comes later. This is the trap of dressage. Correct basics are more difficult then the piaffe or passage.” -Conrad Schumacher

But what are the basics?

It depends who you ask.

If you ask a horseman, someone who spends their career putting a solid foundation on a horse they will give you one set of answers. If you ask a dressage professional, they will likely give you another sub-category of answers. And neither are necessarily wrong.

One is talking about the education of a grade school student, the other is likely talking about the education of a high school, or possibly even college level student.

They are both equally important, but one does come before another.

Everyone needs a grade school education no matter what their profession becomes, and many horses are missing a good grade school foundation before being educated in a highschool or college level conversations.

In my opinion, the basics are the ingredients; the fundamental and individual pieces that go into said movement, exercise, or issue. For me, the key to basics are isolations, understanding, and relaxation.

Everything is made up of something. So it’s always helpful to ask, what are the BASIC parts to the movement I am trying to achieve?

The basics of a horseman:

• Walk, trot, canter, on the buckle, the horse stays relaxed and can come down just off your seat.

• The horse understands how to follow the soft feel of a single rein.

• How to move to the side off each leg independently.
• Halt and back up with lightness.

• Find forward in all gaits softly and easily.

• Has excellent ground control of all its basic body parts in hand, and online.

• The horse is mentally and emotionally relaxed and confident in all these conversations and working environments.

I consider this a very brief overview of a grade school education that each horse should have before entering any discipline.

The dressage professional might talk about the training scale. (Despite some differences of opinion, its still a universally well known guideline for the sake of conversation).

#1 Rhythm/Relaxation
#2 Suppleness
#3 Contact
#4 Impulsion
#5 Straightness
#6 collection

The training scale is basic high-school guidelines, but still far from basics themselves. Each one of these categories has a large context of understanding, that is largely produced FROM a grade school education.

Here are some of the gradeschool basics that are required to produce the basics of the training scale.

#1 RELAXATION

• Can you put your horse on the buckle and walk, trot, canter in a relaxed consistent stretch, and come down off the seat alone?

• Can they hack out on a loose rein? Are they confident and comfortable in contact? In the environment you work in?

A horse who is responsive and relaxed is naturally rhythmic. A loss of rhythm or erratic rhythm is almost always a sign of tension, pain, or emotion. You can’t force rhythm, it is organic to relaxation.

#2 SUPPLENESS

• Does your horse understand isolations of the aids, in a relaxed yet responsive way?

• Can you pick up a single rein and your horse softly and easily follows the feel? Is their jaw clenched, grinding, or chomping?

• Can your horse yield softly to the leg on a loose rein and maintain a soft back?

• Can your horse easily follow the seat into lateral movements at the walk without holding anything in your hands?

• Does your horse maintain a stretch on a loose rein in all gaits?

• Can you pick up contact and there is no brace, tension, or change in throughness or rhythm of the gait?

#3 CONTACT

• What is the quality if your contact in all gaits and maneuvers? Is it heavy?

• Can you halt with just your seat at any given moment without brace in the hand?

• Can you reinback with ease and softness?

• If not, you’re likely using your contact for control instead of communication.

• What does your school halt look like? Can you talk to your horses balance at the halt, in all 4 feet?

• Is there always a quality stretch to the buckle that lives inside your contact at any given moment? If not, your likely holding your horse in inversion.

#4 IMPULSION

• How is your horses forward off the seat and leg on a loose rein?

• Is the leg or seat aid almost invisible to someone one the ground?

• How well does the horse engage in all gaits on a loose rein?

• How well does the horse maintain engagement, are you begging with the leg?

• Does the quality change when you pick up contact?

• Does the horse understand how to step up to hand with a hind leg and not brace in the jaw or rein? If not, slow down. Don't push a lack of understanding or ability into the hand.

#5 STRAIGHTNESS

The quality of the lateral maneuvers determine Straightness. Lateral maneuvers correct imbalances and release a horse into straightness if done correctly.

• Can all the lateral maneuvers be produced in balance, self carriage, and lightness at the WALK first? Does the balance, self carriage, or suppleness change in the trot?

#6 COLLECTION

• How is your halt? At any moment, from any gait? Was hand needed?

• How is your reinback?

If your horse is unable to do this well, no amount of half halts in the world will fix heaviness, collectability, or balance issues.

• How are your transitions?

MINDFULL transitions teach balance and collection, IF they are done well and off your center of gravity.

• Is your center of gravity connected to your horses center of gravity, through the seat alone?

If your contact gets heavy in transitions there is a loss of balance.

• If your horse struggles with engagement in collection go back to the basics in principles #3 and #4.

To understand basics there has to be a core understanding of how to ACHIEVE basic principles. The rest does (as annoying as it sounds) fall into place.

GYMNASTICISING movements in sequence is many times a COLLEGE level conversation.

Movements are only gymnaticized upon the self carriage, balance, and understanding of the maneuver.
Which is directly based on the quality of the gradeschool and highschool education.

It is a common approach to try and ride a horse excessively forward through a sequence of movements to gain improvement in a multitude of things.

But more times then not the horse isn’t educated enough for that level of conversation and it becomes a pushing, bracing, struggle of tension that lacks quality, understanding, relaxation, suppleness, balance, proper engagement, or biomechanics.

A horse cannot catch its balance, "come over its back", find relaxation, or understanding by being chased more and more forward, or if too many aids are talking at the same time. This approach breaks down the body and the mind.

It is amazing that taking the time to SLOW DOWN and teach the horse step by step, that in just a matter of days the horse can understand a lateral movement, position, or posture, and is able to carry themselves down a long side or in a figure with balance, lightness, and relaxation, simply because you took the time to break it down.

From that level of understanding it is then far easier to develop, build strength, or carrying power of that maneuver, posture, or balance point.

If the horse struggles as you progress (and they will) you simply slow down to clarify as needed.

The point is people are usually doing WAY to much to fix issues or produce results.

Have you asked your horse if they understand your aids in isolation first? You might be surprised what you find.

If you're getting stuck or struggling…..congratulations, your being called to a higher level, the master level of revisiting and polishing the basics. And you will keep getting called back, over and over.

Until one day, you may find that your basics effortlessly produced a glimmer of piaffe hiding under the surface, and you will be blown away because you didn’t even try… you just had really good basics.

And the best basic of all…..slow down.

17/07/2024

When riding lateral movements many riders follow the FEI rule book that defines specific angles for the shoulder-in, haunches-in, or half pass. There are often heated debates about whether lateral movements should be performed on 3 tracks or on 4 tracks. These riders are discussing the finished product without considering the road that leads to it. And they are not thinking about the gymnastic considerations that play a role in this.

Lateral Bend

All true lateral movements are ridden with a lateral bend (the leg yield is not ridden with a lateral bend, which is why it is not a true lateral movement in the classical sense of the word). The lateral bend allows the horse to step underneath the center of gravity with both hind legs while he is moving forward and sideways. That is to say, it enables him to stay functionally straight. If the horse doesn’t bend, one hind leg will step away from the center of gravity (i.e. the horse gets crooked). In the shoulder-in it’s the outside hind leg. In the haunches-in, renvers, and half pass it’s the inside hind leg that will move next to the body, rather than stepping underneath it.

The lateral bend always corresponds to a circle of a certain size. This is the reason why the Spanish Riding School in Vienna used to ride a volte in the first corner of the long side to create the necessary bend before starting a shoulder-in or a half pass.

If you picture your horse being aligned on a circle line, with the left pair of legs on the left side of the line, the right pair of legs on the right side of the line, and the spine forming a segment of the line, you can see that the lateral bend has to increase as the size of the circle diminishes.

The smaller the circle, the more the horse has to bend, and the more the inside hind leg has to support the body mass and flex its joints. In other words, there is a correlation between bend and collection as well as circle size and collection. More bend requires a higher degree of collection, and a tighter turn requires a higher degree of collection as well.

Bend and Angle

How does this relate to lateral movements? In each lateral movement one leg of the horse is placed on the line of travel, while the opposite end of the horse is moved away from the line.

In the shoulder-in, the outside hind leg is on the 1st track, while the front legs are moved to the inside.

In the haunches-in, the outside front leg is on the 1st track, while the hind legs are moved to the inside.

In the counter shoulder-in, the inside front leg is on the 1st track, while the hind legs are moved to the inside.

In the renvers, the inside hind leg is on the 1st track, while the front legs are moved to the inside.

In the half pass, the outside front leg is on the diagonal, while the hind legs are moved to the inside, just like in a haunches-in. That’s why some trainers say that a half pass is essentially a haunches-in on the diagonal.

Alternatively, you could think of the half pass as a renvers on a diagonal. Some classical authors view the half pass as a renvers because the horse arrives on the opposite long side in a renvers position. In that case, the inside hind leg would be on the diagonal, while the front legs are moved towards the outside of the bend.

Bend, Angle, and Collection

If you visualise a horse in a shoulder-in on the long side, you can draw a circle in your mind that corresponds to the lateral bend of the horse, so that his feet and his spine would be aligned on this circle line.

You can visualise the horse either from above or from directly in front or behind. Depending on the moment of the footfall sequence in which a still photo is taken you may not even be able to tell from the picture whether the horse is in a shoulder-in or whether he is shown in the first step of a circle because the outside hind leg is on the long side and the shoulders have already turned towards the inside.

If the horse is aligned on a 20m circle, the bend is relatively shallow, and his front legs are relatively close to the 1st track. This will be more of a shoulder-fore.

If the horse is aligned on a 10m volte, the bend is more intense and the forehand will be farther away from the 1st track. If you are looking from the front or from behind you can probably see 3 legs.

If the horse is aligned on a 6m volte, the bend is even more intense, and the forehand will be much farther away from the 1st track. If you are looking from the front or from behind you can probably see 4 legs.

Similarly, the haunches-in corresponds to the last step of a volte. The outside front leg is already on the long side and the haunches are still on the volte. When the bend corresponds to a 20m circle, the haunches may only be a hoof breadth to the inside of the front legs. When the bend corresponds to a 6m volte, the horse is moving on 4 tracks.

Practical Repercussions

This has serious practical repercussions for the training of the horse. We had seen above that there is an inverse relationship between the turn radius and the degree of collection: the smaller the turn radius, the higher the degree of collection needs to be because the inside hind leg has to support a larger share of the weight in a pirouette than on a 20m circle.

We had also seen that the turn radius has a direct correlation with the lateral bend: The tighter the turn, the more intense the bend needs to be.

This means that in order be able to bend more, the horse has to collect more. Collection (i.e. flexion of the haunches) requires flexibility and strength in the hindquarters, which is why we don’t ride small voltes or canter pirouettes with green horses. Due to their lack of strength and flexibility, It would break down their hocks and damage their tendons.

And since the degree of the angle in lateral movements is directly tied to the bend and the radius of a specific circle, a steeper angle corresponds to a smaller circle with a more intense bend and a higher degree of collection.

Homeopathic Doses

In competitions, the angle of the lateral movements is fixed, which means that the horse has to have reached a certain level of training before he is able to perform them with the required angle, bend, and degree of collection.

However, you don’t need to wait that long to take advantage of the gymnastic benefits of lateral movements if you modify them by reducing the angle between the horse’s body and the line of travel. A shallower angle means that the corresponding circle is larger, the horse has to bend less, and he has to collect less.

This is where the idea of “homeopathic doses” comes in. If you don’t think of lateral movements in rigid terms, i.e. that they absolutely have to have a specific angle, like 33 degrees or 45 degrees, but if you think of them, rather, as being on a continuum between 0 degrees and 45 degrees, you have a lot more flexibility. This means that you can start to introduce the concept of lateral movements much earlier in training without hurting the horse.

You can move the shoulders or the hindquarters sideways by one hoof breadth or half a hoof breadth so that the angle of the horse’s body is perhaps 10 degrees or only 5 degrees and the corresponding circle would have a diameter of 20m or even more.

When you are introducing half passes you can make the diagonal line shallower, e.g. from A/C to the end of the long side, so that the horse moves 10m sideways for a length of 40m or 60m. Or you start at the beginning of the long side and ride only to the first quarter line, so that the horse moves 5m sideways and 40m or 60m straight.

When you adjust the angle, you're not riding a full-fledged shoulder-in, haunches-in, or half pass. But you get all the gymnastic benefits without any negative side effects. It also helps to ride these movements only for a few strides, and then turn onto a volte or return to a single track.

Conclusion

Lateral movements in homeopathic doses are great straightening and suppling exercises, even for less advanced horses. They are gentle, yet very effective. In some ways, lateral movements with shallow angles are actually more difficult to ride because they show you immediately if or where the horse tries to evade.

Some horses like to go very steeply sideways. They are typically short-backed, with a very round rib cage. Bending doesn’t come easily to them, so they compensate by swinging their haunches sideways. This makes them crooked. One hind leg steps away from the body mass, and the rib cage can stay straight, without bending or rotating. They benefit from riding lateral movements in homeopathic doses in order to develop their lateral bend and to become more supple in their spine and hindquarters.

Combinations of lateral movements are often especially useful because you can engage one hind leg after the other for a few strides each. When you add voltes or corners, you bring the outside shoulder closer to the inside hind leg. This shortens the main diagonal, which helps the horse to lift his back. Due to the natural crookedness, the hind leg on the hollow/concave side and the front leg on the stiff/convex side tend to repel each other like magnets of the same polarity. This leads to a lack of balance and engagement. The closer these two legs can be brought together, the straighter, more balanced, and rounder the horse will become.

Dr. Thomas Ritter
www.artisticdressage.com

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What's Coming up next in "Ritter Dressage Land"?

👉 July 22-27, 2024
The Canter Seat Workshop Challenge
In this 6-Day Workshop, we will guide you through 5 of the most common “seat mistakes” riders make in the Canter, and you will learn what you need to do in order to improve your seat in the canter and truly help your horse to develop a better canter.

Sign up here for FREE and we will see you there!!! ->
https://courses.artisticdressage.com/2024-canter-seat-challenge

16/07/2024

The Great British Summer Time

©️ Emily Cole Illustrations

16/07/2024

"The Bond"
In twilight's gentle, fading hue, An ageing rider and her horse, so true. Years they've travelled, side by side, Through seasons' change and time's long tide.

Her hands now worn, once strong and bold, Still find his mane, their story told. With every wrinkle, every line, A testament to love's design.

They've seen the dawn of countless days, Shared quiet nights and moonlit rays. His steadfast gaze, her soothing voice, In quiet harmony, they rejoice.

No need for words, their bond is deep, A promise made, a vow to keep. Through life’s long journey, thick and thin, Her horse, her heart, her dearest kin.

As twilight fades to evening's rest, They stand as one, forever blessed. An ageing rider and her loyal steed, A friendship timeless, pure indeed.

16/07/2024

*Shake Up* - Band stallions Lansa & Tishamingo! 🔥

McCullough Peaks Wild Horses

All Rights Reserved 2024

15/07/2024

15/07/2024

Keanu by artist Lee Mitchelson Art

Another beautiful son of Blue!

15/07/2024

Rugged and handsome perfectly describe our beautiful Onyx, son of Rose & Blue. His looks certainly depict wildness!

John T. Humphrey - Photography

15/07/2024

Sometimes you just need a good stretch! *Stallion, Ponca*

McCullough Peaks Wild Horses

All Rights Reserved 2024

15/07/2024

Did someone say loophole!?

The ‘Surprise! I bought you a horse’ greeting card. The considerably cheaper and less injury inducing option to the real thing.

That being said, we did have someone purchase this card because they actually HAD bought a surprise horse! (We tried not to be too jealous!!)

15/07/2024

Trying to sort your life out when you have animals is easier said than done!

©️Emily Cole Illustrations

11/07/2024

Croissant Horse

11/07/2024

Who Remembers Mr Ed? :-)
The main character of the show "Mister Ed" is a horse named Mister Ed, who is owned by Wilbur Post. Mister Ed has the ability to talk to Wilbur, but no one else. This causes various problems for Wilbur, including jealousy from his wife due to the attention he gives to Mister Ed.

There are different theories about how Mister Ed's lips moved during the show's eight-year run in the 1960s. According to the website "Wide Open Pets," initially a string was used, but after training with Les Hilton, the horse formed a strong bond with him and learned to move his lips whenever his hoof was touched.

The lead horse in the show, Mr. Ed, was named Bamboo Harvester, a palomino. However, his stunt double, Pumpkin, was a Quarter horse. Despite their similar appearances,

Pumpkin had a gold spot on his white patch, which was covered with white make-up during filming. Hilton, the trainer, had to be present for every shot as Bamboo Harvester only responded to his commands.

Additionally, actor Alan Young had to dye his hair a darker colour to avoid blending in with the horse on the black-and-white screen, Bamboo Harvester would simply walk off the set when he felt his work was done for the day.

“A horse is a horse, of course, of course, and no one can talk to a horse, of course. That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mister Ed.”

11/07/2024

Which Jimmy are you this week?

11/07/2024

Need a sweet name for this baby

10/07/2024

Wow! Hazel is just stunning! And Liam sure loves his sister, he’s a looker too.. Can’t wait to see them fully shed their baby coats.

John T. Humphrey - Photography

10/07/2024

“The Outlaw” - Muskagee ❤️

McCullough Peaks Wild Horses

All Rights Reserved 2024

10/07/2024

A grazing beauty. Hazel and her lovely roan coat is growing to be a real looker!

10/07/2024

WILD UNFREE

20,000 wild horses will be rounded up by helicopter in 2024
10,000 will be removed this summer
1,000 have been removed from N Lander since July 1

The BLM claims there is a 'tax saving' each time a displaced wild horse is adopted, but fails to highlight the unnecessary roundup and short term holding expenditure required before that lifelong 'running cost' is avoided.

In effect, you have to spend $1000 to avoid a further $700, or more realistically you have to spend a billion to avoid a further $700k. These are not costs that go away, of course, they are simply passed on to the public and sanctuary community which is heavily reliant on the generosity of donors and grants.

Even in the (sadly) highly unlikely event that the American public and sanctuary network adopts 1,000 of the 2,700 horses being removed from N Lander, the operation will still cost taxpayers more than $100m over the lifetime of these horses.

The real *saving* is to be found in in-the-wild conservation solutions which are 36x cheaper per horse than the cost of removal and a lifetime of confinement.

10/07/2024

Heading into the new week like …

A small sneak peek at the drawing board as I’m working on the final 2025 Calendar pieces! I cannot wait to share the new drawings with you!!

10/07/2024

The KING💙 offering shade to his Lady🤎
What a guy!

John T. Humphrey - Photography

10/07/2024

Stallion, Tonkawa 😍

McCullough Peaks Wild Horses

All Rights Reserved 2024

07/07/2024

No BS here. You'll get it straight every time. We can only make you as great as YOU want to be!

07/07/2024

ROAM
Apollo, Skydog Sanctuary
June 2024

07/07/2024

What's the longest it has taken you to load your horse? 🙏🐎

©️Emily Cole Illustrations

07/07/2024

"Tahlequah & Running Bear"

With the tension rising between band stallion Tahlequah and Running Bear, this is like a story renewed. What's going on between the two has happened before. One of the few times when Tahlequah would take matter into his own hands and Thor took the band away from the conflict, when most of the time it was the other way around. Running Bear has been pretty persistent and I'm not sure how long Tahlequah can sustain fending him off. Tahlequah does have the size advantage over Running Bear, but Running Bear has that scrappy nature about him. It's been a couple years since I have seen this side of Running Bear, so seeing that he still has the s***k and fire at the age of 18 is pretty cool to see.

McCullough Peaks Wild Horses

All Rights Reserved 2024

07/07/2024

SPACIAL AWARENESS

4% of US public lands (27 million acres) are available to wild horses (down from 54m in 1971)
62,000-82,000 wild horses (BLM 2024 estimate)
329-435 acres per horse
PhotoAdvocacy

07/07/2024

Where on the Sugarplum scale are you sitting today?