Schooling whilst hacking

[MummyEms]

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas.
Getting back to training and improving, how do you school your horse whilst hacking out?
Also do you require an outline most of the ride?

 

[Britestar]

I don't have a school so mostly done hacking.

Start relaxed, then pick up. Leg yields across the road, shoulder ins, travers. Outline for the middle part then relax again.

If I can , I'll maybe pop into a field and do some circles ( but more often just a good hoon!).

Just mix it up throughout the hack.

 

[reynold]

Also if you find a nice bit of grass can practice lengthened strides in trot and lengthening/shortening in general.

Shoulder in practice great for riding on lanes and wanting to teach horse to keep into the side and not stick bum out into traffic.

Then of course there is always the practice of turn on the forehand for doing gates....

 

[ycbm]

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas.
Getting back to training and improving, how do you school your horse whilst hacking out?
Also do you require an outline most of the ride?

I don't demand, or even like, an "outline" while hacking but I do insist that the horse is lifted in the shoulders, wherever the head is being carried. You can test that by turning the head left and right. If the horse can't move their neck to the left and right easily without moving the shoulders too, then you don't have the spine at C6/7 lifted between the forelegs, and if you don't have that you don't have the right muscles working right through the body.

If you haven't got it then a number of exercises will give you it. Shoulder in and rein back both being very effective and available as hacking exercises.
.

 

[ycbm]

Another one that's easy on a hack is to walk, trot a small number of strides, walk, repeat. You can do it with walk/halt too and even trot/halt.

Back 35 or so years ago there was a rider who competed at GP without having access to an arena. She said she used to practice her piaffe on the verges. I also read a male trainer who said that with a homeward motivated horse it was easy to teach piaffe when a short distance from home at the end of a hack, though in inexperienced hands that might cause quite a few issues!
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[humblepie]

As above, we have a straight quiet road with large verges so easy to do lateral work safely. When the fields are dry enough to ride round the tracks, I will do transitions within paces. I used to hack with a friend whose horse when to GP and he would piaffe and passage but generally when there was a wheelie bin or some other object he didn't like. Mine would just stare at this weird prancing horse! We do also tend to slob along some of the time.

 

[pistolpete]

Also sounds obvious but swap diagonals when trotting and ask for specific canter leads. Love a leg yield across a quiet lane.

 

[tda]

Transition at each lamp post, or if on rural roads pick a tree

 

[LEC]

I do the majority of my work out hacking as don’t have a school. Transitions, lots of flexion, neck bend, change the neck outline (FWLR, Stretch, competition outline, deep and round.) travers, renvers, shoulder in, half pass, leg yield, halts, check the contact, off the leg, sitting trot,