Getting Low | Beneficent Horsemanship
Galaxy & Teagan Zavita
Long & low stretch - A starting point in strengthening core muscles & developing collection.
Collection should be the main focus of riding, simply because it's good for the horse. It's how we strengthening the horse's topline, get beautiful fluent moment, and improve a horses longevity. Riding a horse that is hollow & weak backed will unfortunately cause lameness.
We start by asking for a stretch by dropping his head & raising his back allowing him to reach his hind legs underneath his body. Gradually as a result of core strength & increased tucking of the hindquarters, he will begin to get light/rise on the forehand. This is a stating point to our end goal of collection.
Quick note: If you are wondering why we only practiced on one side, it is because Galaxy has special needs that don't apply to most horses. Galaxy is blind on his left side, he has to rely on sound only to know what to do on that side & since this was his first go at it, we will continue on his right side until he is consistently using the verbal cue only before moving to his blind side.. For horses with two eyes, practice both sides equally :)
How did I teach this long low stretch?
Obviously there where many small steps taken before getting to this point, but it was all achieved with capturing, positive reinforcement & at liberty, using gesture cues, mimicry & verbal cues. It should never be necessary for you to impose this on the horse with any type of equipment aids (i.e. side reins, tie down, draw reins etc.)
To teach this exercise your horse must first know how to lunge & lunge well, on a lunge line or at liberty (for a proper consistent bend when exercising I would suggest using a lunge line) Your horse must also know how to lower his head on a gesture or verbal cue, both work well & I used them both to teach this move.
Lunging
Teaching or reteaching your horse to lunge is a whole other blog post, so in this post I will give you the minimum requirements your horse must know about lunging before trying to start teaching him the long low stretch.
The most important thing is that the horse is calm while lunging. A horse is not in the right frame of mind to learn if he is worried, excited, fearful, distracted etc. He must know all his gaits & be able to vary the tempo of his gaits on cue. When on the lunge line he must not be pulling your arm off. At this point we aren't to worried about keeping a consistent light contact circle (without pulling & sagging the line) or bending around the circle, because if your horse is hollow backed, he cannot bend his body to keep a consistent circle & that is why we are teaching him this exercise, so that he can round up in his back so he can bend properly & strengthen his core & topline.
Lowering the horse's head
Some people find this difficult to do & resort to using head restrictive aids to force the horses head position, but it is easier then you think to achieve, if conditions are right & the proper steps are taken beforehand, it literally is easier done then said, no really, it took way longer to write this blog then it took to teach the horse. :)
Firstly, as stated above, the horse must be calm, because only a calm horse can absorb information. If you have a horse who tends to be a little jittery, find a place where your horse is relaxed, most often this place is in his own paddock. There are several different ways we can get a horse to lower his had without even touching him using a clicker & positive reinforcement, here are a few.
We can use a target - with target training we teach the horse to touch a target with his nose by clicking and rewarding when he touches the target. Once he has learned to touch the target, you can put the target near the ground, add a verbal cue like "head down" & fade out the target.
We can use capturing - with capturing we wait for the horse to offer the desired behavior on his own, click & reward that behavior, then add a verbal cue to that behavior.
We can use mimicry - This is where you show your horse what you want by doing it yourself & the horse mimics your behavior, for example, I lower my head downward & the horse lowers his, when he mimics you, click & reward & there you have it, a gesture cue was created with mimicry.
The steps I took to teach Galaxy.
Galaxy is very good a mimicking my body gestures, we developed this over time & it makes things quite easy. I wanted to teach him to lower his head on cue & I knew he would lower his head if I squatted down, so I started to squat down, he started to lower his head, I clicked stood back up & rewarded him. We did this a few times while I added the verbal cue "head down" & in a matter of minutes, I was just slightly rounding my back or slouching my shoulders & tilting my head downward a bit while giving the verbal cue "head down" & Galaxy would drop his head. Once we got that down at a standstill we started to add movement. From start to trotting with his head down took about 8 minutes..
Important note: I like to teach my horses at liberty, but once they have learned what to do for a lunging exercise, I execute the actual exercise with contact on the lunge line, this is to ensure proper form (bend) for better strength & flexibility results.