Cheers!

Draw reins are never a solution, just a short cut that misses what is really going on to prevent your horse from accepting the contact. First I would recommend seat exercises to build your balance in the saddle and establish independence in your aids – this will help immensely to quiet your own hands down if he is avoiding contact for that reason.

Following seat work I would then say he may be moving forward, but likely not forward enough. Forward does not mean fast, simply means that his tracking is correct at every gait you are working in. Work on the lunge is invaluable for establishing tracking to begin with and then following up with a great ground person to give you feedback when you translate that tracking to under saddle work.

Another point I will make is bit – I often hesitate to say anything about bits because it is easy to get caught up in trying this bit and that bit until your head pops off. Any horse I have worked who has the slightest hesitation to make contact on the reins I immediately put in a Baucher snaffle. The reason is because this bit is more stable when it hangs in the horse’s mouth and especially for a horse who is timid in taking pressure or is more sensitive about the bit it can make a world of difference. They are also a very affordable favor you can do your horse.

Would love to know your progress and if you need help in getting started doing any seat exercises let me know. :)

Cheers!

From what it sounds like, your boy is experiencing being overwhelmed by the energy and chaos of the now vamped up drill team practices. I used to ride in drill team and understand completely the change that can happen instantly with your horse when moving from slow and basic practices to the more finished versions which involve higher speeds and faster responses. There are a couple things which may be at play, but I would suspect it is a combination rather than just one.

Increased emontional energy from everyone - your horse, you, the other horses and their riders. In order to do maneuvers at a higher speed it requires more energy, more energy creates more tension and that tension will also increase the emotional responses from the horses and riders. If you are practicing to music as well think about the impact that excited and upbeat music has on a person’s mood – it can be hard or impossible to fall asleep or relax to heavy metal or even a good rock band.
Your own tension, and attention, has changed. Our natural response to speed and energy is to tighten our muscles more, and if you are relying on your muscles in any regard to keep your balance in the saddle your horse is going to feel this. Also, because you are focused so hard on the maneuvers in drill team your attention to other details is taken away.
Your hands and seat are not as quiet and steady at the faster speeds that they were at the slower speeds. The biggest cause of head tossing and running through are hands which are inconsistent and a seat which is out of balance for whatever reason. The hands can be inconsistent because they are giving and taking too much, bouncing around, opening and closing when unnecessary, and too high or low. Usually any problems with the hands are a result of an imbalance in the seat, and if not only from that they are always magnified by problems in the seat. Particularly with a horse who isn’t “there and done that” yet or one who is very attentive to the rider (hasn’t checked out) these issues can drive them batty to the point of being explosively evasive.
I would take a look at all of those things. Tie downs and bits are only temporary solutions, same as draw reins. Unfortunately you cannot force relaxation just through positioning the horse’s head, only the appearance of relaxation. If you don’t fix the cause then you are playing a bit of russian roulette – the temporary fixes will work until they don’t, and when they don’t could be the time that someone gets very seriously injured. Horses who evade by throwing their head up and running through are extremely dangerous because as a rider you have zero control in that particular moment. He is simply trying to tell you that something is making him uncomfortable – tension and/or imbalance. If this was my own horse and situation I would work first and foremost on fixing my seat and hands at all gaits because that may be enough to alleviate any contribution that the increased emotional tension in the group has. Even as a western rider you may find that lunge lessons with a (preferably) classical dressage instructor to be worth their weight in gold for your seat and hands. I would be happy to refer you to someone in your area if you would like. :) Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Erica K.

Thanks for the insight. :)

Erica

I started lunging him for several reasons: he is a very nervous horse and lacks confidence and I wanted him to learn to trust me; he had a lot of intermittent lameness issues and I wanted to be able to assess his way of going before getting on; he has a cough (allergies)that is very unpleasant to ride through and I wanted to have a way to get his coughing out that was less upsetting for both of us; and I wanted him to understand the concept of “we are working now.”

Once we got through all of that, my dressage trainer suggested Vienna reins as a way of teaching him to really use his back (he was originally trained [not by me!] with the “kick hard, pull harder, head up, hollow back” method – and he was ridden in a full cheek knife edge bit and a standing martingale). Given his apprehension about anything new I wasn’t sure how he would feel about the Vienna reins, but he took to them right away. Depending on how bad his cough is, I don’t lunge him for more than 15 minutes before we ride – and it’s usually not more than 10. It probably takes me more time to get him “suited-up” then it does to actually lunge him!

I find that the Vienna reins have really helped the development of his body and his brain – he now understands that it is much more pleasant to go around with his back up and neck relaxed, and he has a really nice well-developed topline.

I used the neck stretcher when I was at a strictly hunter/jumper barn – my horse seemed to like the give of it.

I have seen draw reins used very, very well and very, very poorly – they are like anything else: in the right hands they are a wonderful training tool and in the wrong hands they can cause a lot of problems. They are not a short cut or a way to “force” your horse into a certain frame – they are meant to teach your horse proper use of his body. And, of course, they mean nothing if you don’t use them correctly and you don’t ride correctly – it will always come back to that.

Laura