When do you have the right connection? Is that when your horse walks in a certain position?
And how does that differ between a young horse and a horse that competes at the highest level?
I have a very handy check that applies to both a young horse and a horse that has already been trained very far.
I’ll tell you in the video below:
So you want your horse to always have a forward-downward tendency.
When you open your hands, whether in a half pass or during a tempo change, your horse should want to take your hands in a forward-downward tendency.
If your horse doesn’t give the right response
Does your horse not do that and does he bump into the hand? Then you know that your connection is not correct.
What we often want to do is solve that problem by changing the posture. So, for example, by setting your horse slightly rounder in the neck.
But unfortunately that is not the right solution.
Get the right connection by riding from back to front
A horse’s posture should always follow from riding correctly from back to front.
And the posture changes as your horse’s balance changes.
In addition, there is no specific posture associated with a good connection.
A young horse can have a good connection and also a horse at Grand Prix level, but the posture of both horses is very different.
This is such an important topic that an entire training module is devoted to it in the online training with Rien van der Schaft.
With the help of this training you can lay the foundation that you can fall back on every day.
