get him off the forehand!

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beetlejuice

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My horse is built slightly croup high so doesnt help the situation.

He is quite downhill in his canter but very sharp so lots of transitions will blow his brains!

Whats the best way to get him off the forehand?
 
how about transitions in walk, hopefully he wont get too excited. a good excercise is to walk in large squares and halt at each corner then turn but have forehand leading(not hindquarters sidestepping) if he is calm you can do away with the halt and continue to walk. if this goes ok progress to trot but dont make the square too small and do a trans to walk for each corner. can then do this in canter and trans to trot for corner or if he is resisting go back to walk or even halt...

would leg yielding help, this can be done in trot and canter or maybe circling in canter and spiral in then out may help to take the weight back....

im no expert but have found all of the above have worked with different horses so might be worth a try if you havent already..sometimes the most unlikely things work...good luck :D
 
Ultimate for this - especially if they're forward thinking is rein back into canter... gets all their weight backwards so they have to sit and then canter on -- great exercise... otherwise transitions with in the pace - extend along the long side and collect at the short ends (with an extra circle if necessary)

Blitz
 
My Beast is a devil for being on the forehand, since doing jumping lessons and practicing standing/reinback to canter, this seems to be improving things, being a clever sausage he knows when I am going to practice it, and gets quite fidgety when trying to get him to stand before doing it :)
 
I find turns on the forehand or haunches then straight into canter gets my mare sitting back on her hocks. She had big shoulders and a low set neck.
 
Transitions can also be good for forward going horses too! It can keep them interested and distract them from trying to go faster. I would also suggest you include lots of circles, serpentines, changes of rein, etc to keep her listening to you.

Lots of half halts should help to get her off the forehand. Practise extending and collecting within a pace.

The one exercise I was told you should never do with a horse on the forehand is turn on the forehand. This just encourages your horse to carry more weight on it's forehand.
 
have to agree tranisitions can be very good for forward horses, my girl is very forward going and can get wound up about about the slightest thing and then take ages to settle. I find doing a lot of walk to halt transitions gets her mind back onto the job without stressing her plus transitions within the walk so a really forward walk and then slowing it right back then asking her to almost halt and then just before she does halt ask her to push forward to walk.

Once she is settled into this and listening to me then I start to introduce walk to trot tansitions, but only doing about 4 strides of trot before bringing her back to walk plus still doing the odd halt to walk transition. Then gradually build up the length of trot before a walk transition and then moving up into canter trot transitions. Also bringing in flexions, shoulder fore and a bit of leg yeilding.

If at anytime my horse starts to get het up again and anxious we go back a couple of steps and just go back to walk / halt work. All this is done using serpentines, circles of differing sizes etc as well as using the whole school or if there are jumps out in the arena then I also work around the jumps too.

Really anything to keep her brain engaged, my girl is still quite young and has the attention span of gnat so coming up with new ways to keep her attention and working properly has been and still is a challenge, and I find the more her brain is engaged the less stressy and 'forward' i.e. running on and through the bridle and the more forward but engaged she becomes.
 
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