09/22/2026
Topline Challenge; Week 1
It's week one of getting the horses back into riding shape after a long hot humid summer and lots of time off of physical work. And what have we been doing???
Work in hand, of course.
Work in hand is where you teach your horse to engage through their topline, but on cue.
Horses move in all different manners on their own-
When they get excited and show off they will really puff up and engage their topline, tuck their butts and go into an elevated dressage frame. This is really where the dressage frame you tend to think of comes from- when the horse is really putting a lot of energy into their movements because they're really feeling themselves. (I love it when they do this on their own- it's super cute and means they're feeling good.)
Where they're running (probably in more of a frantic agitated state) they'll drop a shoulder to turn quickly and spin if they need to- throwing a lot of weight on their inside front foot. If they do this with a rider, they'll really feel unbalanced and that feeling will further agitate them beyond what was already causing them to run. In extreme cases, they can literally fall over because the rider really does affect their balance that much.
Anyways, what I'm saying is they can move any which way without a rider.
But with a rider, to protect their backs and joints and keep themselves balanced, they need to lift through their backs and tuck their butts.
And we can teach them to do this on cue by teaching them lateral movement.
Because: just because of the natural biomechanics of the horse, when they step forward under their bellies AND over- so under the center of their bellies- their back comes up.
Probably the trickiest thing about work in hand is recognizing when this happens.
This week I was just asking each horse for ONE of those steps, and then rewarding them for it. And I would ask them for it a few times (rewarding them each time) in both directions, and that's it. After that they're done and get to go back out to their paddocks.
PS; In the last slide I'm just asking Kaptain to halt. I'm not asking him to step under. He's just anticipating and wanting to move. It happens!
