What is collection?

Many people look at the horse's head and neck carriage. If the horse work with his neck high and with the head close to vertical, then the horse is collected. That is not correct. If you want to look for if the horse is collected, look at what happens behind the saddle and not in front of the saddle.

When we get into training with our horses or horse stops, you can not help thinking about something wrong with the way you ride and train your horse. Or, at least, I think about it. And in fact, in most cases there is something wrong.

When the horse goes with a lowered back.

When a rider get up on a horse, the horse's natural reaction will be to lower the back. When the horse lowers its back, the vertebraes will come closer to each other. If this happens, the horse will not be able to work properly.

The horse will then find it difficult to step under himself. It may be difficult for the horse to bend. The fore and hind end do not work in harmony with each other, that is, the horse is struggling to keep the rhythm. The body's "shock absorbers" are put out of service and the horse's joints are put under heavy load, which can cause lameness, unnecessary wear and kissing spine. It goes without saying that this can not be particularly pleasant for the horse.

What is the most important thing in connection with the training of the horse?

It is to teach the horse to work properly over its back. This means that the horse must learn to work with its back up/lifted.

Amaze steps deep under herself and lifts her back

The strange thing is to search the web, so there is not really much to find about the subject. And often when you finally find a good text about it, the pictures do not fit. At least not to the idea I have about how it should look.

The horse's nature is to go around and seek food. It spends hours wandering around with the mule in the ground and feeding grass if there is enough space and grass to do so. It is slowly moving around with most of its weight on the forehand, but it is not something that is harmful to the horse because most of the time it takes place in walk and it does not carry the weight of a rider.