Skotti's scribbles; Skotin sepustuksia : Long-reining

One day in December I decided to try out long-reining again. We had given up on it during the spring and summer, because each time we tried, he just scrunched his neck and did not work through his back at all. This is very likely due to his first career as harness racer. In his racing photos he has his head high, and with very short and thick neck turtled back on itself.

Before we started with the classical foundation training, we did not lunge. We were taught to long-rein already long time ago and were told that it was much better for the horse than just lunging, since you have control on both sides of the horse. So, if we did work him from the ground, we did long-reining. Back then we didn’t realise the shortness of his neck, or we did know that his neck was short and thick, but didn’t realise that it could stretch… We struggled to get him working on the bit and not overbend him at the same time on the long-reins. That is, either he was very easily head high up in the air, or he was overbent… And it seemed very difficult to get anything else out of him. One thing was good though; since he was broken into harness first, he knew everything about long-reining. He was never scared or spooked about the lines or someone walking behind/to the side of him. And turning was easy.

One day we got some help from a person, who showed us how to get him into a ‘correct outline’ a lot easier. The trick was apparently to put the inside rein through the bit ring and clip it on the roller, and the outside rein in a zigzag clipped on the roller lower ring, through the bit and via a top ring on the roller to the hand… So we tried that a couple times. However, although it made his neck bend, it made it bend way too much, way too efficiently and besides that, killed all speed. So we managed to put him into a neat little package, neck in, overbend, and no speed. I am happy to tell that we then indeed very quickly returned back to the simple ‘from bit through roller/stirrups to hands’ –long-reining. And I would never recommend the other way of long-reining to anyone, it will just very easily break your horse's neck at the 3rd vertebrae and therefore produce a horse that does not work through its back. We struggled with his shape, but it was better in our opinion to be freer than broken in the neck. And then last spring we gave up with long-reining altogether and started to lunge.

But indeed now after a couple months of intensive training I was curious to see if long-reining would be different due to his topline muscle development. Also Will had suggested it as variation in our training regime. I decided to use chambon to encourage him to lower his head. In preparation I also watched all the long-reining videos from Will again.

Well, it was tricky still. He went to his old habits really quickly. Chambon helped though a bit. And I soon realised that if I kept the inside rein coming straight to my hand instead of going through the roller, and letting the outside rein be totally slack (especially easy when outside rein comes over his back instead behind his hocks), he finally started to stretch into contact and lower his head. I basically had to lunge him with long-reins…

We have now practiced long-reining a bit more with him and he has improved somewhat, but old habits die hard, and it is very difficult to get him working correctly when both sides of the long-reins go through the roller rings. Therefore we are still mainly long-reining him the simplest possible way, and prefer lunging to long-reining. Lunging needs a lot of concentration and effort, but long-reining demands even more of it, plus extra coordination with holding the reins and your whip… I also think that contrary to the common belief that lunging makes a banana out of a horse (bracing against the lunge and looking outside), it is in fact long-reining that makes our boy a banana at the moment!