If you'll just go ahead and lope him.
The first that I would look at on a horse is the quality of the loping.
How I would categorize this horse, is I think his legs are good, but he's kind of loose in his topline.
Meaning that, he is not really driven to his face at all, I would probably work on that a little.
Is this acceptable for the pleasure? Absolutely.
I mean, he's on a loose rein and he's looking pleasant. But in a pattern class, I like to see a person dictating, it even says
in the rule book, that you would have the horse with light contact. And so I believe before you pitch a horse away they
should be driven up and to the bridle and had some light contact. So, when you take a horses topline, you take a horses face and
you lift their back up. Their legs really shouldn't change, they should improve, but they shouldn't change as far as speed or
depth. You need to get that horse to a certain kind of movement, through your leg and then release it's face.
So, then the last thing I do is release their face. The first thing I do is take it and hold it.
Like on a colt, we just take them and hold them and push them around until they learn to give to the face.
If you are pulling on a horse and their resisting, their back's not up.
Their telling you that they are not in front of your leg and you're not driving their back up.
The topline is actually a response to where the horses back is.
Okay, we can artificially put it down, by jerking on it, but I don't do that. I guess occasionally I have to do it if they lost
their attention or something. But actually just driving a horse up to the bridle is what makes them broke.
[So, does this horse have a lead change? Okay, so if you'll just canter around and let's see the lead change.]
I'm going to guess that, and I'm just going to venture to say that he'll have a little delayed lead change off of her leg.
Not meaning that front to back, or back to front. But she's going to have to drive him up to the lead change.
To get the change when she actually asks. So she actually pressed and one stride later he changed.
If the horse was picked up in his back, that would be different. But his lead changes is certainly a good quality.
And if you heard her, she actually sent her horse up to the lead change, like in the western riding pace is very important.
You need to establish a pace, just like the hunters or the pleasure horses and stick with it.
What will happen is if she has to drive him up to the lead change, by the fourth lead change, she's probably going to be getting
into the penalty areas. [Okay, so if we can see him change the other way. From left to right.]
Some horses, this horse canters, or lopes I should say, I think equally both ways.
Now she's pushing him up, that's a very nice lead change, okay. If I was to improve him I would just bump him up in the bridle
a little bit, get him a little bit more in hand. [So, if you'll stop and turn him around.]
And the stop is nice. [Just some 360's] So, I would say that this horse has all the nice basic stuff he just needs finished.
He needs just a little bit of sharpening up and a little finishing.
Though about the turn around, people always say what about that pivot foot, what happens if they move that pivot foot?
In the horsemanship, if their on the incorrect pivot foot, yeah they will have kind of a funny bend.
And that horse transferred his weight on the pivot foot, is a judge gonna hurt you for that, no.
[If you'll go ahead and begin to turn him to the left.] What I would say is he's a little resisting in the bridle.
He's forcing her to get her hand out of position, it's pretty far to the left. Is he completing the maneuver, yes.
Can that be improved, absolutely. How would I do that? I would get that horse more in the bridle. From the whole, from the get
go when I looked, when he first loped off I said to you he looks a little loose. He didn't look like he was framed up and
dictated to, but can he get the job done, absolutely. Does he have the basics to do it, absolutely.
What happens is in the horsemanship, do we wanna see a rider freeze up there and get nothing done, absolutely not.
I mean you're judged on the quality of your maneuver, but she was showing me that she was reining and moving and getting out of
position, meaning her hand came over here, there was a lot of spur, so my eyes first saw the horses head.
Forst I saw as a judge that the horse was loose, then I watched how she controlled it, her hand was out of position and she was
using quite a bit of leg to get him to do it. So I just like for that horse when you move the hand to crack off the rein a
little bit better. Tomorrow I guess we are going to wok on maneuvers and patterns, I can show you what I would do with them
To me, he just looks like he needs brought up one little level. But everything and all the quality stuff is there.
He just needs to get tighter.