Transitions are where a horse shows you the truth about her balance. From one gait to the next, down to halt, within a gait, or from one lateral movement into another — that’s where the imbalances surface. Nail a good one and it’s worth celebrating.
It also doesn’t mean you’ll land the next.
To be honest, my attention has always gone more to the up transitions than the down. With the click, my horses stop on the spot for their treat. Or I send them to a mat and they settle there. That’s exactly what I want.
But I forgot the other half.
With Blondie, I started looking at the down transition more closely.
Transitions aren’t usually thought of this way — but I kept coming back to an idea from behaviour science. I first heard it from Jesús Rosales-Ruiz, at a scientific symposium in Germany, where he called it the movement cycle:
A movement cycle is a repeatable unit of behaviour. It specifies a starting position and a series of behaviour -environment interaction that continue until the organism is back at the starting point and can begin the movement cycle again.
~ Jesús Rosales-Ruiz
Walk to trot. Blondie trots. I click, she stops for the treat. Now I can ask again. On paper, the cycle is complete.
Then look at what the stop is made of. She hears the click in the middle of the trot and plants her feet — still, but tipped forward, all her weight dropped onto her shoulders. Left to herself, that’s where she settles. And from there, balanced on her forehand, the next up transition isn’t available to her. The cycle closes, and she’s in no shape to begin it again.
The first two transitions I brought about with the click. I marked the trot, and Blondie brought herself to a stop. Watch her weight travel forward and down onto her shoulders. She can drop anchor in a single stride — she’s a quarter horse — but you can see what it costs her balance.
The third one I rode differently. Instead of letting the click stop her, I asked for the down transition myself, and clicked her for that. She carries herself back into the halt rather than falling into it.
In my last email it was my inside leg — pushing her hind too far out, tipping her into a stumble through a turn. This time it’s where I put the click.
I still land the click on a moment I want to highlight, mid-movement, knowing it brings a hard stop. That’s a choice, and sometimes it’s the right one.
This is where we are now. Walk to trot, and back to walk, with the click highlighting the down transition.
It takes everything I have to concentrate. I prepare the walk before I ask for the trot. I adjust my seat so I can help her. Then I ask for the down while we’re still in a good trot — good for us, at the moment. Her weight stays (more or less) where it belongs, and she comes back ready to go again.
It isn’t easy. But you find a balanced transition once, and lose it, and find it back faster the next time — because you’ve already been there. The work is in the finding.
Michaela
Happy horses make happy people!