Tex-Over Farms, Articles

influence the actions of the horse toward the goal of a comfortable, obedient, and powerful horse that will be beautiful to observe and serve its rider safely for a long time.
     Horses, like humans, are born uneven. They prefer one side of their body over the other. To make the horse straight (equally strong and supple on both sides) is the trainer’s next task. In order to accomplish straightness the trainer first develops in the horse a desire to go forward (impulsion). Many transitions of the gaits, changes within the gait, the beginnings of lateral work, smaller circles and spirals all help to improve impulsion in your horse provided they are ridden correctly.
     By correct riding I mean riding from the back to the front with the limitations of the horse in mind. The trainer also must not sacrifice rhythm, relaxation, and proper contact to gain impulsion. The rider must take care not to ask for more than the horse can balance at this stage in its training. From this point forward the horse learns hardly anything new. What changes all the time is the degree of difficulty, i.e. ten-meter circle to shoulder-fore to shoulder-in to travers to half pass.
     For many centuries trainers have looked for better methods of improving their horses. There were three powerful motivations to excel at working with horses to gain their confidence and turn them into reliable partners:
     1. Survival (combat from horseback)
     2. Social status (the courts of Europe)
     3. Competition (the Olympics)
     Fortunately many of the masters passed on what worked for them. Others copied their methods, expanded on them, and thus we arrived at a system that has proven to be effective.
     Let us return to the practical side of training. We have established that in order to correct the natural crookedness of the horse, the trainer needs to instill in the horse the desire to go forward. Aided by this impulsion, she now takes care that at all times the inside hind and inside front leg of the horse are on the same line. She keeps the inside hind leg on the track that she wants to travel and aligns the front to it. Riding like this in both directions, on circles and straight lines, and gradually adding a positioning of the poll, the horse will soon work equally well on both hands.
     As I describe these steps of training in their sequence, it must be understood that there are no strong lines that separate them. On the contrary, the lines are very fluid and at times the trainer may borrow exercises from the higher steps to overcome a plateau on a lower step if that seems to work with a particular mount at that particular time.
     As was mentioned earlier, we must not lose something already achieved in order to move up in the demands. Rhythm, relaxation, and the acceptance of the aids are especially not to be endangered. The horse’s trust in the rider, its self-confidence, and impulsion may be lost, and those are hard to regain.
     By now you may have realized that there are not many strong rules about this business of training a horse. One thing that is certain, however, is that you will not complete one phase of training successfully without having achieved satisfactory results in all of the phases below it. Add to that the fact that all aspects of training should never be considered as finished or complete. The moment you quit working to maintain or improve what you have gained, it begins to deteriorate. The horse will return to its natural way of going.
     With all these words of caution in mind, let us move on to the last step in the basic training of the horse, - collection. First, I must say that we started the process of changing the horse’s balance very early in its training. The horse’s front legs carry two thirds of the rider’s weight. That takes the horse out of its natural balance. In order to overcome that, we convince the horse to carry its head a little higher and engage a bit more in the hind leg thus causing a shift of weight towards the hindquarter. Also in

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