Elevation of the horse's neck

There have been several comments made about my Swedish version of the blog entry about ”LDR”. Thank you to all of you who took the time to send me your opinions. This blog is based on my thoughts in response to these comments.

One comment was “I believe caution should be exercised with all extremes, even the one I have seen you [student's of Philippe Karl] perform when you ask the horse to stretch its neck to the extreme in the other direction! That is not natural for the horse either!” (My translation).

First, before I address the philosophy behind the training technique of elevating the horse's neck, I would like to argue that if something I do is considered ”extreme” or ”unnatural”, that in itself is not an argument for other extreme methods of training, like rollkur. These are separate ways of training and should be discussed and analysed separately.

Perception is subjective
We can try to use conclusions from scientific studies to determine what is right or wrong in terms of how to ride, and how horses perceive our requests. But in the end it's still a subjective assessment that affects both the scientific results and my personal decisions in my everyday life . I have previously written about "directed perception" here on the blog.

”Directed perception” means that I see that what I expect to see. It also means that I interpret what I see according to a previously established pattern. The challenge with directed perception is to try to understand, to see, my own patterns of directed perception. What I want to do in this blog is to explore why I am OK with raising my horse's head. I have already talked about why I do not think it is OK to place the horse in the rollkur so I will not spend more time on that subject here.

What I personally think is OK to ask for from my horse is to a great extent based on my gut feeling. I think I ask more of my horse when I ask him to go into the trailer (he has been very afraid of the trailer. Even if, after much work, he is OK with it now, he is OK but still stressed) just because I want to travel to a Philippe Karl clinic, than when I ask him to raise his head for balance and gymnastic purposes.

Why raise the horse's head
Why do I raise the horse's neck and head? It's all about balance. A horse that carries its head and neck at the height of the withers, has 60% of its body weight on the front legs. In order to transfer part of this weight to the hind legs, the head and neck have to be raised.

The order for educating the horse according to Philippe Karl
The order for educating the horse according to Philippe Karl is 1) mobilise the jaw, 2) raise the neck, if that is what that particular horse needs. Depending on the individual's conformation and use of self when moving, the individual horse might need to raise or lower the neck in the beginning of his/her education. All horses must ultimately be able to both raise the neck (for collection, for example piaffe) and lower the neck (eg in order to increase stride length but move slowly) according to the the requirement for balance as required for a particular movement, 3) bend the neck to the right and left in high and low positions, 4) flexion of the poll which means the horse drops his/her nose, but retains a high neck. This way of educating the horse in how to relate to the bit is called flexion.

In order not to put pressure on the horse's tongue – the most sensitive part of the horse's mouth, the rider has always to act on the corners of the horse's mouth. This means the rider has to raise the hands when the horse's head is high. Also the hand should never act backwards.


A picture says more than a thousand words
Since I included a film clip showing rollkur in my last post, I wanted to include a film clip of flexion here. After some searching on the internet I found this clip on Youtube with a short sequence of flexions at a lesson with Mr. Karl.




Why so high?
How high the individual horse can or should raise the head and neck is due to how the horse carries himself and his rider. If the horse puts pressure on the bit (either due to resistance of weight or resistance of force) the horse has to raise the head and neck in order to be light in hand and to be in balance and self-carriage.

I say "must" here since it is all about the influence of gravity on the horse's body (a body on four legs with a front lever arm, the neck, that affects the weighttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifht distribution between the front and the hind legs). I wrote earlier that everything is subjective, but the gravitational pull on the horse's body is not subjective, it can be measured objectively.

The effect on the horse of the elevation of the head and neck
In my experience this way of training will make the horse light in hand because he/she balances him/herself better, bearing more weight on the hind legs with good use of self which will allow suppleness. This will in turn result in the development of all its gaits, including the walk. This is why I am OK with this training method.

What is your reaction to the video clip showing a rider learning the high flexions?

Thanks to Mark Stanton of Natural Horsemanship Magazine for proof reading! All remaining errors are all my own.