Horse evading contact

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Kazbing

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16 August 2014
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Ok, so, I've had my horse 9 months now - he's an ex hunter from Ireland. I was initially having problems with him evading (head in the air, to the side and mouth open with a choppy action below. He goes into a weird canter when you apply the leg instead of forward) I had his back checked which was all clear, got a new saddle and he's had a blind wolf tooth out and teeth up to date. There were slight improvements but we can't seem to get past this.
He is fine in walk, beautifully soft, fine on the lunge and on the gallops but as soon as I ask for trot in the school he reverts to this! His ears pin back and his tail swishes. He can work through it and come into an outline but he will only remain like that for a few seconds. I've cut his feed right down to de-fizz him which has stopped the desperation to canter but he's still evading. I ride him in a loose ring snaffle with a lozenge but I'm wondering if he even likes that bit.
Any ideas?
 
I'd probably want a second opinion on his back as a start.
If still all ok, I would get an instructor out to help.
 
This could of course be so many things, but I would suspect that the bit is fine as it sounds similar to my story.

For me there were 2 many resolutions

The first was to learn to ride properly and with absolute respect for the horses mouth. I had to teach my horse to have complete confidence in my hands. The hand must NEVER be backwards, or sawing and must be consistent and reassuring. I turned to a teacher who had trained with Phillipe Karl(ex head of the Cadre Noir, the elite French Dressage School). If you do a search on here you will find that he is slightly controversial, but for my level there was an awful lot to take away on respect for a horses mouth. If you look at his teaching on hands, it gives you another way to approach using hands upwards and outwards but Never Ever Backwards which might help. I have now moved to a more conventional classical dressage rider (think Sylvia Loch style or Kyra Kurland style) who is very focused on having perfect balance in the body - a very interesting journey.

The second thing was I found it was also related to the strength of the horse. As he matured and I worked him carefully and correctly, he is much stronger in his back line and clearly the head tossing was an issue that was related to pain.

My last thought is that you are pretty much correct that the horse is trying to tell you something, so whatever you do, don't strap the mouth shut - or he will just have to find another (possibly less polite) way to tell you!
 
I'm not going to strap his mouth! I know that won't solve it. I'll look up the information on training my hands as this is definitely a thought of mine. My other horse is very heavy in the mouth and leans so I'd expect I need retraining too.
The person who checked his back is one of the best in the country and is used by many top riders so I trust him. He said his back was perfect but lacks in muscle so it will be sore using it properly like when we go the gym (which I never do!)
I just want to make the schooling experience as comfortable for him as possible.
 
Well, just been advised to lunge him in side reins as he was probably just taking the mick out of me and it seems they were right! He fought with himself for about 2 seconds, realised that was pointless and came right down. I got on him after and just pushed him through it and it worked! Lots of lunging and leg for us now!
 
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