"Where should the horses head be inside the turn?"
This question was sent in to the Facebook group. There are two scenarios I'd look at depending on the horse.
Watch this polo pony training lesson to understand these two scenarios.
Where Should The Horses Head Be Inside The Turn
Transcription:
Where should the horse's head be inside the turn. Okay. So, you've got two different scenarios here, in my opinion. Where you would normally want the horse's head is just inside the turn.
Okay. But you can see half the orb of the eye on the inside, so that when you turning that horse's head is slightly inside for a rollback, all of that. You want it like that.
But then you get those horses that bury their front legs. Okay. And they spin their backsides around the front front-end. Now, those horses you would treat completely differently. You want their heads out the turn, cause you want to actually move the shoulders. You don't want them to bury the shoulders and get their backsides to spin around the shoulders.
So, there, you would want to actually shorten the outside rein and have that horses head slightly out of the turn, so that you get it to move its shoulders round. And in that way, it's powering around from its back-end.
Otherwise you really losing a lot of time because it buries the front legs, spins the back-end out. And now it's pulling with the front legs, its paddling along.
It's not powering out with the engine at the back, with its back legs, pushing it through a turn, through a rollback, through whatever kind of turn like that. It's pushing its backside out. And you've lost the impetus from there. You at a standstill and now you've got to build up that momentum again.
So, if you've got horses that are correct, you want that head just inside the turn. And you're seeing half the inside eye. If you've got horses that spin their backside out, use the outside and you want to get that head up out the turn and get the horse to move its shoulders around its backside.
So, that would be the way that I would look at that. Okay cool. Yeah. That's great Gav.
