Grand Prix trainer, JJ Tate is quoted as saying, “If you love your horse, put him on the bit.” I would like to add “And get him straight!” Both go hand in hand, and are important to your horse’s longevity, and soundness. A horse that is on the bit is using his back and his haunches correctly. A horse that is straight is using both sides of his body evenly and not falling in with one hind leg, or excessively pounding on one front leg.
You may have heard that it is common for 90% of horses to be “hollow” to the right, and “stiff” to the left. This terminology attempts to explain why horses feel harder to bend on the left rein, and “easier” to bend on the right rein, (They aren’t truly bending right, but more on that in a moment.) but like many ideas in riding, it’s not the full story. You may also have heard that in dressage, we use bending to help straighten the horse - that is, we make the horse equally supple in each direction in order to make them truly straight. Why not just ride them in a straight line?
Horses have hindquarters that are wider than their shoulders. Most horses, if ridden around the area to the right, lean onto the rail with their left shoulder and fall in with their right hind leg. The rail actually acts as a “magnet” to the outside shoulder. When the narrow shoulders are leaning left and the wide haunches are in alignment with the outside shoulder, the right hind is alone on it’s own track. This allows the right hind leg to get out of the work of carrying the combined weight of horse and rider. For this reason, it is important to ride a bit shoulder-fore when going straight. However, if your horse is a bit green, or if the rider has not yet learned how to use the outside rein effectively, the horse will not yield the shoulders to the inside from the outside rein, and will still fall in against the inside leg. It is more effective to work to straighten the horse by riding on a circle, and avoiding the rail-magnet.
It is important to understand that when circling right, let’s say on a 20 meter circle, the horse is STILL leaning on the left shoulder and falling in with the right hind leg. The correct alignment on a circle is for the inside hind leg to track into the track of the right front, but when the horse is crooked, the hind leg is to the inside on its own track. Because he is leaning on his left shoulder, he feels like he is on the outside rein; and because he is not taking weight on the right hind leg, he feels soft on the right rein. He is actually contracted on his right side and not truly reaching into the bit on this side.
The other part of the issue is the fact that 90% of riders are right handed. Because we are humans, we want to do everything with our hands, and being right handed causes the rider to overuse the right rein. This hand is usually too busy and does not want to let go. The most common error is to pull back on the right rein to turn or bend, which contracts the horse even more on this side and creates more crookedness. A rider who is not supporting the horse on the outside rein will cause the horse to overbend in the base of the neck and fall out with the left shoulder. Many riders also slip off to the outside of the horse when on a circle, which does not assist the horse in bending in the ribcage.
One way to address this issue (there are many) is a bit counter-intuitive, and it is to counter bend the horse. When counter bending, you want to think about yielding the horse’s shoulders to the inside from the outside rein (in front of the right hind leg) which passively stretches the horse on the right side to encourage them to reach into the bit on that side. By bringing the shoulders to the right, you are asking the right hind to take on more weight. Your active aids are your left rein and leg at the girth, and your supporting aids are your right rein and leg (back a bit but not on). Once you feel the horse yield the shoulders to the inside, you can very softly change the flexion at the poll back to the inside while keeping the horse straight in the base of the neck with the outside rein, and ask it to step under with the inside hind leg and soften the ribcage on the right. It helps to open (not pull back) the right rein while keeping steady contact to encourage the horse to bring both shoulders, or withers, to the right.
Another good exercise breaks this concept down even further. That is to spiral in and leg yield out. There are many different ways to approach this exercise. For a green horse that is just learning the concept, I like to spiral in with outside bend, and then change the flexion and leg yield back out. You don’t have to spiral in too small at first, just going from a 20 meter circle to a 15 meter circle is enough to introduce the concept without causing the horse to lose it’s balance. When spiraling in, keep the left hand low and open the inside rein, encouraging the horse to lead a bit with the shoulders if possible. You will support the horse with the left leg at the girth. Then change the bend back to the inside, making sure you also change your position so that your weight is on the inside seat bone, the inside leg is at the girth and your outside leg is behind the girth to keep the haunches from swinging out when you leg yield. It is helpful to stay on this smaller circle for a moment to reinforce to the horse that they are to continue yielding to the outside rein and leg even though the bend has changed. If you feel the horse start to lean on the left rein, sponge it while keeping that hand back and down. Once you get some softness here, you can leg yield back out to the 20 meter circle, taking your time to make sure the horse is making the circle bigger by stepping under their body with the right hind, and not leading with the outside shoulder. If he does this, you may need to straighten him a bit more, or momentarily counter bend him again as a reminder. You want to sponge the left rein to encourage the horse to soften on it, while holding the right rein softy steady and riding him into it with your right leg. Once your horse is capable of doing this exercise, you can “test” that the concepts have been learned by riding around the rail in shoulder-fore.
Happy riding! Next we will talk about riding to the left =)