Today we are going to try to answer a question from one of our friends in Denmark who has written to us saying when she tries to stretch her horse she goes on a loose rein, and in her particular case, the horse stops moving and seems to fall apart. So what we are going to try and answer is the correct contact.

The correct contact in the stretch is contact, the weight of the rein, it is not a loose rein (this is one of the biggest misconceptions about the stretch). The horse should be just as much on the bridle in the stretch as it is when up in the working trot, as we see Karen doing here in the video. She is going to stretch the horse correctly first and we are going to watch the horse stretch down and see how she maintains contact with the horse all the way down with no change of rhythm in the horse. She stretches even deeper now and the horse stretches out and forward. Notice how she has not lost contact, the weight of the rein has stayed the same throughout with no loose rein. Now she brings the horse back up to a working trot, see how nicely the horse comes back up? It is just the weight of the rein when the horse is correct (for a moment you might have a little pressure against your hands). But when the horse is correct it should be just the weight of the rein, that’s how the horse knows it is doing the right thing.

Now she will do an incorrect stretch and simply let the horse go. She lets the reins go and look what happens, the trot immediately fell apart, did you see that? It became irregular and the horse kind of poked his nose out (this is the kind of stretch we see in the horse shows most of the time). Now that she has become irregular, she can’t maintain the contact and thus can’t maintain the rhythm of the horse.

Now we are going to ask her to bring her back to the working trot again and we will show you another correct stretch. She engages the horse using her legs (this is another point we are going to talk about in the next blog which is the correct use of the leg and the third thing the leg does, which is missing from most people’s repetoire. That is the leg should be able to ask the horse to engage it’s back upwards, not just to go either forwards or laterally, it has to mean to lift the back as well. So that is another meaning the horse needs to learn about the leg). Now she is going to stretch the horse correctly in the contact and we will see how little change there is in the horse as she stretches the horse down.  Because she maintains contact, the horse maintains balance and stays exactly even and rhythmic. She got a little loose at the end there, so she gets her back into the stretch and in contact. She has nice rhythm and the back end is still coming through. Then she brings the horse back into the working trot again maintaining rhythm, very nice! Look how smoothly she comes back. We will show you both ways again.

So first we are going to do another bad one, watch what happens when she lets go of the reins. The horse just falls apart and falls on the forehand. All of a sudden she even hallows her back for a moment, the trot becomes a little irregular and we no longer have that smooth consistent stride that we had with the contact. Taking that contact back up again Karen develops the working trot again, and just so you can see how this works again we are going to go all the way up into the collected trot this time. A horse at this level, an FEI horse, should still have working gates. Just because your horse collects doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have a working trot. We can’t always go in collection (another misconception of Dressage today, is we expect horses to stay in collection for hours on end, this is what is destroying them). So now she will sit to the trot and bring the horse up into collection. Very nice, look how this horse begins to spring. This is a horse that has no natural ability to spring at all, but look when we collect her correctly after correct back developement she is capable of some suspension. She goes from that into a correct stretch again, notice how the tension on the reins has not increased at all.  She sits to the trot this time, maintaining the contact, the unbroken line to the mouth of the horse. As she gets her to stretch through, she may need to rise a little bit and there she goes. Look how even the horse looks over it’s back and how round the horse is from the pole all the way to the dock of the tail. That’s what we are looking for and the rhythm hasn’t changed between the collected trot through the working trot and all the way into the stretch. It’s exactly the same all the way through except we lost some suspension. Now we bring her back up one more time to the working trot.

So the key here folks is stretching is not done on a loose rein, the horse is just as much in the bridle when it is stretching as it is when in the collected trot, very nice! One more time Karen demonstrates an incorrect stretch from the collection, she just drops the reins, and the horse just falls apart. The back end just stopped moving practically when the reins were let go. Now back to a working trot for a correct stretch. Watch how the horse lengthens and Karen maintains contact going to collection first, then the rising trot, through the working trot (letting the suspension dissipate a little bit and letting the horse get a little flatter) and then she lets the horse stretch all the way down into the contact. Notice the unbroken line from the horse’s mouth to her hands, that is what we are looking for, not a loose rein. So hope that helps with your question, and we will see you next time! Thanks so much!

collection contact Karen Loshbaugh loose rein rhythm San Diego horse training Seat and Aids stretching unbroken line Will Faerber working trot