Troubleshooting: Getting Your Horse In Front Of Your Leg

It seems I have problems keeping my horse in front of my leg. Are there any flatwork exercises I can do to help with that? When I am on course, I lose the horse’s hind end, and find myself riding backwards, pulling to the tight distance, since the “gappy” one doesn’t appear. What could I be doing so wrong?

The best exercise I know to get the horse to both listen to the leg, and come up in front of the leg, is to use the “cluck” in conjunction with a stick. Because I always err on the side of caution, I start the exercise standing still. My first step would be to cluck to the horse. If I got a reaction forward from my horse, I would leave it at that. If I did not get a reaction, I would then use the cluck and the stick at the same time. I repeat this until I get an appropriate response. If I am not sure that I got an appropriate response, then to me I did not.

Once I am getting a response that I like from the standstill, I carry the same exercise and the same ideas forward to the walk, trot, canter, and even over rails and jumps. The important piece here is that the horse ends up reacting by going forward when you cluck. You are using the cluck in conjunction with the stick to be sure the horse ultimately responds to the cluck without the stick. It is the cluck on its own that you will have to rely on for your performance in the show ring. Mixing up both the cluck on its own, and the cluck with the stick when the horse does not respond to the cluck alone with all your work, will ensure that you have the cluck ready to go for when you need it when you are showing.

Bernie Traurig did a post called “How To Stop Your Horse From Being Lazy On The Flat” that you may also find helpful. Click here to view it.