How do you get your horse to piaffe?

I am laughing so hard right now because as soon as i saw the title i thought i wait for my big daft lad to spook at something usually, then we get some pretty awesome elevation !!!
 
I did the same as you OP! Rusky has a tendency to piaffe when worried and at first I had a lot of trouble coping. I would use more hand to get him to settle and he would get more wound up. My instructor had to come along on a hack and show me how to use more leg to encourage more piaffe which oddly enough got him to calm down. Years later when he had worked a tiny bit on piaffe in the school, on my own I would still practice on hacks as I got more 'oomph'!
 
Oh I just remembered seeing a really nice test on a young horse by a pro rider at a regionals and when the audience clapped as he was leaving the young horse got wound up and piaffed. The audience stopped immediately but the rider encouraged us to all go for it and he used the opportunity to encourage the horse in the piaffe and praise him!
 
Show him sheep with horns, works every time. However, sheep without horns are not worthy of the display.
 
Riding past a field of curious cows usually does the job. As soon as the cows see us and come bounding up the fence, horse piaffes and passages. And then does high speed canter half-pass.
 
Shy, very unusually for him, did an amazing one today. He had walked past a huge bonfire, been in front of a car following us onto a rickety wooden bridge, who i had to tell to stop :mad:, and met three ponies in a new field ("Good Morning Chaps, smashing day").

But then he saw it - and did the only piaffe known to him. It was a huge BOULDER in a gateway, aka a crouching dragon. He really lost it, poor lad. Soon got over it when I took him up to it, and let him eat the grass next to it.
 
Hmm, with my old mare it would have been take her to a hunt meet. On the go she was fine, but at the meet.... She had hot toes :D. God I miss that mare!
 
Haha :biggrin3:

Today's piaffe was given on behalf of the new fence that had been put up on someones driveway...we go past that drive everytime but since there was a new fence there...! And on the way home we passed a random bit of farm machinery dumped by the side of the track so we had sideways dancing and dragon snorts. Got to love 'em!
 
"Come and have a go, if you think you're hard enough" translates into piaffe for my Westphalian Draft horse - and spectacular she looks too, her neck arches so that the double mane stands up and she grows at least 2 hands to 18hh.
Needless to say, even the local 'hard man' who had just narrowly missed running over us with his very noisy open-topped sports car and then crossed the road on foot to ask what sister had shouted at him (not very complimentary) decided that he wasn't hard enough to take her on.
I just wish there'd been someone with a video camera around, as I doubt if she's likely to do it in a schooling session:wink3:
 
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