This photograph shows a professional rider and teacher, who has the BHSII qualification, riding her young mare who is only five. It is one of the nicest pictures we have had in the series, and this rider has a lot going for her. Her biomechanics are working so well that she can influence her horse very positively, creating the pleasing picture that we see here.

Anyone searching for a horse to buy soon finds that her dream of the ‘perfect pony’ becomes tempered by reality, and even if you can afford to buy a horse with unusually good conformation, there is still no such thing as a horse who automatically goes correctly. Some are, by nature, lazy; others are too ‘goey’, or inattentive. The horse may want to move with his back hollow, or with his nose on his knees, and he is bound to be asymmetrical – with a tendency to fall in on one rein and out on the other. However much money you pay for your horse, you cannot buy perfection, and every horse will set you a series of problems which you (ideally) get to solve through riding him well.

Undoubtedly, some horses are easier than others. Some set such mammoth problems for the rider that they are only suitable for professionals; others are so ‘rider friendly’ that they tolerate beginners well. We can only make educated guesses at the problems set by this horse, because the rider has enough tools in her ‘riding tool kit’ to neutralise at least some of them. By virtue of this skill level she generates results which can deceive the onlooker, who automatically assumes that the horse must be easy and talented; but that may not be the case.

When I think of this concept, I often think of the horizontal axis of a graph, which has zero at its centre. (Do not confuse the following system with dressage marking; it is completely different.) The horse, the rider, and the resulting picture which they create can all be more or less in the positive (showing good work), or in the negative (where the results are not correct). When the overall result is in the positive, the rider has been part of the solution to the problems which the horse has set for her – so if he was a minus four, she was at least a plus five, making the resulting picture a plus one or above. If the overall result is in the negative, the rider may be struggling to neutralise the problems the horse has set her, or she may be adding a minus to a minus and compounding them. When this is the case she has unknowingly fallen into the trap which the horse has set for her.

To do a good job, the rider has to have access to skills through which she can generate a rightness which is at least equal and opposite to the horse’s wrongness. Then they both end up in the positive, creating the kind of picture you see here. Don’t think, however, that the horse would necessarily maintain this picture if ridden by someone else. The mare has probably been ridden well enough that she herself is well in the positive (perhaps, by virtue of good training, she comes into the arena and trots off in a plus one or two). But it would take only a short time for her to react to a new rider’s wrongness and for the overall picture to begin sliding down into the negative.

Let’s look in more detail at the factors creating the rightness that we see here. The rider’s balance at the top of the rise is spot-on. If we took her horse out from under her by magic, she would land on her feet on the riding arena. The angles of her joints are very good, with her thigh and her calf creating a symmetrical arrowhead. Her upper body is a fraction in front of vertical, exactly as it should be at this point. Her knee cap points down, and her thigh has rotated over her knee in the rise, with her lower leg remaining still..

More commonly one sees the rider straightening her knee and pushing her foot forward in the rise. This makes it impossible for her to bring her pelvis forward enough to create the silhouette that we see here. The rider’s backside stays out behind her, whilst her shoulders and her feet are more forward; in effect her body remains so ‘folded up’ that she never gets a sufficiently open angle between the front of her thigh and her torso. This means that her centre of gravity (which is in her backside) is ‘left behind’ in the rise. This cramps the horse’s style, as does the backward pulling hand which tends to go with this scenario.

When riders find it difficult to reach the balance that we see here at the top of the rise, it is often because the muscles which form the front of the thigh and the torso are shorter than the muscles which form the back of them. This keeps the rider gravitating towards that ‘folded up’ position. I often suggest that riders with this difficulty think of limbo dancing, which would encourage them to bring their pelvis forward whilst their feet and shoulders remain back. This mitigates their natural tendency to keep their feet and shoulders forward, and their backside out behind them.

Look now at the horse. To me, the shape and the musculature of the quarters really show power and energy. The tail (which is set on quite low) is carried fairly well, coming towards the shape of a question mark. However, there may be scope for its carriage to become more pronounced, with less of the tension which would, in the extreme, keep it clamped down against the quarters. At this phase of the trot stride, we cannot tell if the horse will track up, bringing the hind hoof into the footprint left by the front foot; but I suspect that she will (despite the deep, puddly going).

The horse is reaching into the rein with a curve to her crest and a nice open ‘U’ shape under her gullet. Her nose, however, is just a fraction behind vertical, and there needs to be even more of a reach, with more ‘stuffing’ up her neck, particularly just in front of the wither. The horse’s quarters look more ‘stuffed’ than her forehand – in front of the saddle she is much more puny than she is behind it. We would probably think this too if we just saw the horse standing, and if so, it is one of the problems which she sets for the rider. Correct riding could change this, and if the rider could sit in a way which puts more stuffing up the horse’s neck, her work would develop the musculature of the neck and shoulder where the horse is naturally weak. This would then create a picture which would impress the dressage judges; they would go from thinking ‘that’s nice’ to thinking ‘Wow!’

This change would also create a more genuine contact. The reins are almost a loop, implying that the contact may be too light, with the horse backing away from the bit. With more ‘stuffing’ she would reach for it more correctly, and this would put the icing on a cake which is already very good. However, it’s hard for me to explain in the abstract exactly what the rider needs to do to create this effect. The changes she needs to make are subtle, lying on a much deeper layer of the onion than most of those which I write about in these articles. They relate to how she lands in the saddle, the shape that she creates in the horse’s back underneath her, and how she aims her bear down. If I wrote about them here, I think I would loose you; but I think I could explain them to this rider if she bought her horse to see me.

On a much more simplistic level, I would encourage her to take off her martingale. I do not think the horse needs it as a means of holding her head down (which is a dubious aim even when horse and rider are thoroughly in the negative). In my experience, martingales make it much more difficult to steer a young horse, because they interfere with an opening rein and can transform this maneuver into a backward pull. If the rider is worried about the untoward happening, a neck strap might ease her fears, give her a hand-hold in a sticky moment, and make it easier for her not to pull on the reins. But I would doubt if she even needs that, and I wish her well as she seeks to add the icing to an already tasty cake!