Good morning this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and I am here in Orange County today with Tanya and her horse Soleil. Soleil has been working with me for about six months now. Soleil started out not so good and unsound due to bad feet and a bad back. I wanted her to help you a little bit today.

We had a question come in asking for help: “I feel my horse stretching down but it feels like it’s on the forehand”. It’s going to feel a little on the forehand in the beginning but the main thing is whether the horse is swinging through behind or not. That will tell you whether or not the horse will develop correctly or not. Tanya has just begun to be able to do this and today is actually the first day that she has had her horse completely over the topline all on her own, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to see her.

Tanya is going to let her stretch all the way down and notice how the diagonal pairs (that is the inside foreleg and the outside hindleg or vice versa) are swinging nicely together and she has a nice active swinging trot. The diagonal pair swinging together is the biggest tell whether the horse is just loping along on it’s front end or whether it’s coming through enough to develop. Tanya is now going to slow the horse down to where she loses the rhythm a little bit. Can you all see in the video how the back end fell apart, stopped coming through and she is on the forehand? Look how the back comes up hollow. See how the back end isn’t moving any longer?

Now Tanya puts her back into a working trot again and gets her swinging forward and active. Very often we find that people are simply not moving the horses actively enough forward, and that’s what we need to do in the very beginning. Now she has gotten her to stretch! This is also a horse that had been broken at the third vertebrae, and today is actually the first day that I see this horse flexing at the poll and not flexing in her neck at all, this tells me that her back is developing beautifully and all the right sorts of things are happening.

Now Tanya is going to bring her up as high as she can and maintain the same trot. She has to add a bit of leg, as she brings her up she tests the water. How high can I bring the poll without losing the back? As you can see in the video that is pretty good for her! Now to help out our online viewers Tanya will now bring the horse’s head a little higher to show you what happens. See how we begin to lose the back end as she brings the head up? See how the rhythm is lost? Now she lowers the head and neck back to where it needs to be and reestablishes the swinging trot. Tanya lets her stretch all the way down. Remember this is a horse that is just developing, no matter how old they are it takes two to three years to fully develop a topline to the point where you can develop collection.

Once again, this is Tanya and Soleil here with us today in Orange County this morning helping us out! This is Will Faerber from Art2Ride, hope that helps! Keep the horse swinging actively and look for the diagonal pairs moving together. This is the cardinal rule of all great Dressage, when they come into collection those diagonals remain united, if they separate that tells you that the horse is hollowing in the movement.

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