Getting a young horse on the bit

[DappleGreyDaydreamer]

I have a 5 year old Connemara who I really would love to progress further with in dressage. I only got him 6 months ago and we've focused mainly on jumping, as he was a hunter in Ireland right before I bought him over and we had to calm down his jump. Anyway, he's barely done any flatwork and I've been working on improving his transitions, forwardness, circles, responsiveness and voice commands for the last 4 months. He's doing really well in all of these now, and my instructor told me that when I had achieved this he would be ready to start being asked to drop onto the bit and knuckle down to some proper, balanced flatwork.

Would you agree that this is the right time to start some heavier training with him? He's pretty fit, but he doesn't enjoy being in an arena all that much if we're not jumping anything, so I've kept flatwork short to avoid him getting bored and teaching himself bad habits. Any advice on other things we need to improve on first would be great!! I'm currently training him to back up under saddle and understand pressure from one leg aid rather than both.

I'm aware I'm taking everything very slowly and carefully with him, but he's my first horse and I really don't want to mess up and do something wrong as he has real potential as a jumping horse. I just think we need to improve our flatwork before progressing further in jumping. Thank you

 

[Mooseontheloose]

I think you should think more about asking him to 'accept' the bit, 'on the bit' is something that horses become when muscled and trained and able to carry themselves properly with their weight shifted back.
It is important that any horse accepts the contact and gradually works into a correct rather than forced outline. Pulling or forcing the front in will only result in all sorts of evasions and discomfort, but quietly asking him to work from your leg into a soft hand, (that's not a loose rein) is very important to build up his muscles to enable him to carry himself properly.
Five is not too young to start this, in fact they should start this from the beginning, and it sounds as if you're doing the right things with circles, transitions, getting the horse to go forward from the leg etc.
If you continue to do this and encourage the horse into a soft, elastic but consistent contact I'm sure you will make progress. If you find yourself in a pulling match it probably is going wrong!

 

[DappleGreyDaydreamer]

I think you should think more about asking him to 'accept' the bit, 'on the bit' is something that horses become when muscled and trained and able to carry themselves properly with their weight shifted back.
It is important that any horse accepts the contact and gradually works into a correct rather than forced outline. Pulling or forcing the front in will only result in all sorts of evasions and discomfort, but quietly asking him to work from your leg into a soft hand, (that's not a loose rein) is very important to build up his muscles to enable him to carry himself properly.
Five is not too young to start this, in fact they should start this from the beginning, and it sounds as if you're doing the right things with circles, transitions, getting the horse to go forward from the leg etc.
If you continue to do this and encourage the horse into a soft, elastic but consistent contact I'm sure you will make progress. If you find yourself in a pulling match it probably is going wrong!

Thank you!!! I've been having a confidence crisis lately worrying I'm messing everything up, but I really appreciate your advice and will certainly work more on establishing a soft contact with him. I'll admit, my previous attempts at an outline have turned into pulling matches so I must be going wrong somewhere.

 

[AdorableAlice]

You need a good instructor, forget the jumping and get your basics in. Return to the jumping when the horse can win a novice dressage and is working at home at elementary.

 

[Dizzydancer]

I agree with AA regarding needing an instructor however I wouldn't knock jumping in the head until a horse is at that level.
My mare needs to have variety- I worked solely on flatwork For 5months as we had a few issues and our flatwork went to pot with hacking and she was so bored by it that she stopped being compliant, so we started jumping and polework again and now she is sweet and compliant.
Plus not every horse will ever work to elementary at home!! Try and mix it up a bit- use your jumping to strengthen his top line (poles/grid work) and keep plenty of variety. But yes definitely get an instructor!!

 

[honetpot]

I think you should think more about asking him to 'accept' the bit, 'on the bit' is something that horses become when muscled and trained and able to carry themselves properly with their weight shifted back.
It is important that any horse accepts the contact and gradually works into a correct rather than forced outline. Pulling or forcing the front in will only result in all sorts of evasions and discomfort, but quietly asking him to work from your leg into a soft hand, (that's not a loose rein) is very important to build up his muscles to enable him to carry himself properly.
Five is not too young to start this, in fact they should start this from the beginning, and it sounds as if you're doing the right things with circles, transitions, getting the horse to go forward from the leg etc.
If you continue to do this and encourage the horse into a soft, elastic but consistent contact I'm sure you will make progress. If you find yourself in a pulling match it probably is going wrong!

Good advice.

 

[kc100]

Pole work in the school is a great way to keep a horse entertained (especially one that prefers jumping) - raised poles, trot poles, canter poles....all great to keep things varied, and is a brilliant way to build muscle and improve fitness. I used to ride a great big 17.3 former hunter who loved jumping but I was doing dressage with him, so I'd have a cross pole up in the school for every schooling session, when I felt he was losing interest we'd pop the cross pole (just in trot) then go back to what we were doing. If he'd been attentive throughout the session I'd save the jump until the end, then we'd have a few goes over it.

I dont agree with the other poster who's told you to forget jumping until you can work at elementary level dressage at home - ultimately I believe you should do what the horse enjoys, otherwise the horse becomes sour and dis-interested, and that's when you start to have a battle on your hands forcing a horse to do something they dont enjoy. There's a connie x at my yard, the owner has been forcing it to do dressage for years when it clearly loves to jump, and every time she takes it out to a dressage competition its awful, the horse refuses to work in an outline (despite being able to) and the rider just has an argument with it for half an hour before giving up, doing the test badly, then going home complaining.

A horse has to enjoy its job - if it doesnt, then you will find the horse becomes more argumentative and you have a big struggle each time you ride. The horse is much bigger and stronger than you are, so if you force it to do something it doesnt want to do the horse will ultimately win.

Now of course flatwork is important for jumping, not saying it isnt, but with a horse bred to jump and gets bored easily with flatwork you have to find clever ways of working on your flatwork without boring the horse. Hence why polework is great; horse thinks its doing jumping related stuff when actually you are improving its way of going on the flat too. There are plenty of books with loads of pole work exercises so it might be worth getting a book so you have lots of ideas at home.

Transitions are king in flatwork - again helps to prevent boredom and keeps the horse thinking. A tricky horse I used to ride responded really well to transitions between poles - the poles were set out like a clock, with a pole at 12, 3, 6 and 9. Between each pole you'd have to transition to walk, then back to trot, before the next pole comes up. Really gets you both thinking and working on your upward/downward transitions. Get your instructor to show you this first to make sure you have the poles sized correctly (you dont want them too tight together otherwise the circle will be too small and this will be too hard for a young horse).

Transitions within the paces are just as important as transitions between the paces - so dont just think about walk/trot/walk, trot/canter/trot etc, think about lengthening the strides a little in all the paces, then bringing it back to a working pace and so on. There is a great exercise that really gets the horse using its back end that my instructor uses a lot; first establish a good working trot, then go into sitting trot maintaining the working trot, then bring the trot right down to the point where the horse almost walks, then push on back into a working trot and start rising again. This really helps them engage the hind legs and works on the effectiveness of your aids. But make sure you are comfortable enough in the sitting trot not to hang onto the reins too hard and affect the horses mouth. This should all be done through your seat, the hands are just there to keep the neck balanced with a little half halt to get the horse to come down to the 'almost walk' before you push on again.

You can do loads of flatwork practice out hacking as well, young horses should be hacking lots so get out as much as you can to avoid boring him in the school. Straight lines are better for young horses especially those in the early stages of their schooling, because they havent quite finished developing endless circles really damages their joints so straight lines are better. So out hacking you can be working on your leg yield, transitions, stretching....etc.

On the stretching note - make sure you are teaching the horse to stretch if it hasnt learnt this before. When a horse is fairly green and new to flatwork, stretching the neck down is far more important than trying to force it into an outline (on the bit as you call it). If you can, watch Carl Hester's fantastic elastic masterclass (part 1 will be most relevant for you as this is with the young horses). The really important lesson to learn (and Carl demonstrates it so well) is that you cannot keep the same outline for an entire schooling session. You need to vary where the neck is in order to prevent boredom, injury and to develop the correct muscles. So Carl will work his horses in what some people call 'long and low' - basically a stretchy outline, where the rider still has some contact but the rein is being taken forward and down. He alternates the stretchy outline with a more 'uphill'/competition appropriate outline, again this varies depending on the age of the horse and what level the horse is working at. A young horse at prelim will never have the same outline of a horse working at PSG for example.

This image is a good illustration of the scales of training in dressage - http://pre04.deviantart.net/49d7/th...sage_in_drawings_by_arabian_alice-d67mvyx.jpg

That shows that the first step is rhythm, so for your horse who is new to all of this the main focus you want is to get a nice even rhythm, with him going forward and responding well to the leg. Suppleness shows the stretchy neck I'm talking about, this also helps with relaxation. Once you have these 2 steps nailed you should be able to take more of a contact as per the 3rd image, but that takes lots of time and work so dont rush it and dont expect that to happen quickly.

This is months of work before you can think of getting what you'd call an 'outline', and if you have been trying to get him 'on the bit' by forcing him thats only going to have given him a negative idea of contact so you need to be really careful not to do any further damage there. If its a battle to get him to do something - he's not ready. A young horse's mouth is a very delicate thing, so you need very delicate soft hands in order not to damage the mouth and make him resistant to the contact. Be as soft and elastic as you can with your hands, let him find his own balance and that will dictate where he is putting his neck. If he is going around like a giraffe with it way up in the air then you can take a little more contact just to ask him to soften a bit, but dont expect a 'competition' ready outline for a while. As he gets stronger and starts to understand the work a bit better, he should start to offer you a softer outline and you can develop that when he starts to offer it to you. Again the stretching will really help with that. If you feel unsafe giving a longer rein on a young horse then use a neck strap so you can grab that rather than the reins if you feel a bit unsafe, that way you are not doing any damage to the mouth.

Good luck with him - make sure you have a good instructor who knows their stuff about flatwork to guide you with all of this!

 

[peanuts1984]

dont worry it will come, get a young horse going forwards, and make sure they have straightness, a good rhythm, and balance and the "working on the bit" will come, dont rush them so many riders think its a race to produce a "made horse"

 

[JillA]

Two things to remember - help him to relax his lower jaw, and so-called "outline" comes from the balance of engaging his hocks and working from behind. "On the bit" really just means responsive to the contact, as opposed to "above the bit " head in the air or "behind the bit" head in their chest, both of which mean he is evading it.