A long time, make that a very long time ago, when I rode ponies I was warned especially against over bending the little darlings (yes, I am being a little snide here) because it would put the idea of laying behind the bit into their minds.
A pony can learn to tuck its chin against its chest and move right along anywhere it wants to having totally foresworn any rein connection with its little rider — which is a very frustrating and often dangerous thing to deal with. Also, a pony can learn to bend its neck to one side or the other so that its head will go all the way around to its rider's stirrups and continue on independently in just about any direction it wishes to go.
By the time that ponies learn this they have to all intents and purposes become quite useless and we all know what can happen to a useless animal, don't we?
Now I will qualify this by saying that ponies are very smart little creatures and that they are usually playing with small children who are possibly not as clever riders as ponies are "carriers." I will also exonerate completely not only all of the truly wonderful ponies in the world that have been well and carefully trained but also all of the badly trained ponies that have been taught the aforementioned tricks by excessive force from people who should not have been in charge of them anyway.
This all having been said and qualified what I want to know is why is it that I constantly see people working hard at and defending the practice of teaching horses to over bend, both by pulling their heads back to their chests and by pulling them around to the sides toward their stirrups?
I know why they say they do it. It is supposed to be a "training phase" of the horse's education and then at some distant point (which I have never seen achieved by the way) the horse will move beyond the "need" for this training phase.
I am not picking on one discipline here, by the way. When I was at a place where western riders were working some horses recently (the place is blameless and doesn't need to be mentioned) I ran into several people who were working some really nice looking horses in this manner. I didn't preach or cavil but I DO have pictures of it.
I suppose that the important thing to be deduced from this and can be supported with the pictures that I took is that if you want a "western pleasure horse" it is better to start with a horse that doesn't take a big stride below itself. In other words the horse that travels at each end of its body without connecting its hind quarter movement to its forequarter movement will most likely be the horse that will not need to be constantly pulled back all of the time in its training.
If you get a horse that drives from its hind quarters and opens its shoulders fully in front, well, life is going to be a long battle unless you can do a lot of what is now considered to be high-school work with that horse which is probably just not going to happen.
And now, having thoroughly made myself unpopular with the western pleasure horse set I will move on.
In the e-magazine titled "The Horse" and dated Jan. 5, 2016, author Christa Leste'-Lasserre, MA had the chutzpah to explore the questions that I have just been predicating in her article entitled Hyperflexion in International Dressage: 1992 vs. 2008.
If you ask a rather old fashioned group of people, this article has been a long time coming but it is well worth the wait.
Hyperflexion is another term for what used to be called over bending. It is basically the same thing and it looks exactly like the same thing.
This is the first paragraph of her article: "The hyperflexed head and neck position has been the source of much discussion in the past several years. While some laud its benefits, others believe it's detrimental to horses. And as some believe the practice has become more common in the dressage world in the 21st century, horses are receiving higher scores in top international competitions, according to the results of a recent study. But are the two related?"
The article goes into the physical effect of hyperflexion on a horse's welfare and health and this, of course, is actually where the rubber meets the road in training practices. A long list of eminent horse health specialists are noted as questioning this practice.
It is certainly a question that should be asked and it is definitely well past time to ask it.
410-857-7896
