Basics: YOUR Body Positioning for Walk/Trot

Unsure where your body needs to be when walking/trotting your horse? Answer your shoulder should be even with your horse's throat latch.

Below the exhibitor is too far behind her horse...
Below the exhibitor is too far in front of her horse...

Below the exhibitor is just right (sounds like the 3 bears doesn't it? LOL). Although I can tell her horse is starting to lag behind because she's using the pull/release method of getting her horse to speed up just a bit by where her hand is next to his nose (waaay in front).

Thank you to the 2 Janet's and Elaine for being our demo's!

Basics: YOUR Body Position, BACKING

You thought you had a nice pattern, but didn't even place, here could be the reason.

Standing directly in front of your horse to back will disqualify you on most judges cards. This is a dangerous position to put yourself in, IF your horse spooks you could be run over, or if your horse rears you could be pummelled.
Below our exhibitor is in a much better position safety wise, she's slightly in front of her horse so that she can see where to guide her horse and she's off to the side so if something should spook her horse she can quickly move off to the right.

Basics: Pivot to Backing Problems

The pattern calls for a pivot of some sort and then a back, but you back crooked? Why, you did you pivot, but your horse still backed crooked...here's 2 scenario's WHY.

In this first photo our exhibitor has over spun, look at her horse's feet, they are not aligned front to back, so if she backs at this point (her horse's hip is canted to the right), her horse will back crookedly to the right...
In our 2nd photo our horse has NOT completed (or under spun) his pivot, and if she asks him to back at this point he'll back crooked to the left

To avoid either of these problems, as you are completing the your pivot (the last step or two), look up to WHERE it is you are GOING to go, this way you can either continue that next step or stop to prevent an over pivot. Having someone watch you also helps... Happy Practicing!

Chain Length Photos

Ok, here's the photos I promised for chain length...below shows 3 links...we could probably go one more link easily with this horse if we wanted...
Sorry about the grainy picture...grey day and my student was a ways off...anyway... see the slack she has left in her lead? She can run her hand up and down her lead if she needs control...you can't do that with too much chain...

Below she is walking towards us, again see the slack she has in her lead? For this particular horse, she can go no tighter...why? At some point in this horse's career someone has done the "smack behind" as they trotted (and psst, yes, we know she has a whip in hand, it's not used for his forward motion of walking/trotting), so he learned how to trot sideways with his handler, this is something we battle continuously...if you need your horse to go quicker, you should do the pull/release method of tugging your lead FORWARD and releasing when your horse is trotting/walking next to you. If you SMACK them behind yourself as your walking/trotting your horse will try and get away from your smack and travel crooked... This exhibitor has to be very conscientious about how she even holds her hands, pull him too close, he travels crooked, too much slack and he wanders... he's a work in progress :) Anyway, I digress.... Her slack and chain length are appropriate for HER situation. She can move her hand up and down the lead as she does her crossovers. I would say her lead from hand to hand is a touch long, but this was a quick practice and we were concentrating on chain length and slack...

Thank you Janet and Jack for being my examples!