would you be able to tell the difference between a turning rein where there is a commitment to follow the rein and when that same rein is used to supple and align your body on a larger line?
what is the difference?
A turning rein communicates to the horse how to latch his inner front foot under your weight, and then the inner hind swings through more in alignment, tracking true with the print of the same side forefoot. The slide of the inner hand way up the rein is accompanied with a pushing sensation of the reins and a pointing sensation of the inner hand. This action helps the forehand follow versus rubber necking. There are many details about the equitation here for later. Alignment means that the inner haunch isn’t blocking the way of the forehand following the “point”.
To supple and align the horse without beginning a small circle or latching onto a smaller arc, how does the horse know to go down a larger line?
I will share that later. .
In Dressage you hear a lot about inner leg to outer rein. You might have heard the adage of “to get a horse off one rein you must offer him the other”
But it is the dressage riders that get scolded at the colt breaking clinics to not use that outer rein when teaching the colt how to follow and surrender any resistance to the rein that was reached for half way up the rein.
There are ways to communicate with our weight, torso; width, elongation, a press, add in timing of aids, and our pelvic and shoulder rotation!!
Although details matter, let’s just start with the big chunk pieces.
A horse knows how to go down the line because our pelvis and shoulder axis are both different than when we use a turning rein request.
I have even adopted using a rein management technique on the large lines that doesn’t involve sliding the inner hand up the inner rein, thus saving that aid for turning.
Later,
CeeCee
