When the horse's haunches are stiff, the back stressed and movements unconsolidated the rider, for the time being, may forget about proper posture and lightness. The horse will be long and low. It will be overly excitable or exceedingly heavy. It must gain elasticity and strength before any improvements in balance and responsiveness can be expected.
The elevated horse reacts promptly to the rider's aids. The long and low horse may or may not respond. In addition the rider's aids resonate differently on one side than on the other, the longer and lower the horse the more so. No wonder the French master Etienne Beudant in his 1929 summary of how to train horses gives the instruction to first seek the horse's elevation. His advice, raise the horse's head to the highest possible position.
When a well-built and adequately muscled horse lifts the nose to the horizontal, as it would to pick an apple from the tree, something changes. The sacral joint closes. The back mounts. The root of the tongue is stretched and the autonomous nervous system addressed. The forehand rises. The horse is prepared for action and the rider's guidance. It straightens up. These cumulative and in fact positive effects no doubt are the reason for Etienne Beudant's recommendation to raise the head to the horizontal as the first step of any horse's training.
The weak horse, however, responds to the nose lifted high into the sky with another reaction. It releases the back muscles and lowers the cantilevered back bone. Any high-spirited horse will associate this motion with the flight instinct and take off on the spot. A calmer species will demobilize, and - robbed of a steady flow of core energy - begin to swim, out of its own and the rider's control.
Mention Beudant's, or for that matter his intellectual grandfather Baucher's method to any German trained rider and you will get a look of deep seated fear. No, the horse's head must be low is the almost unanimous German vote. Anyone convinced of Baucher's ideas, however, will no want to do without the positive effects of training the horse head up.
These contradictory and passionately defended views call for research. After all the question arises, which type of horse, when, first set off the fear of the horse's head held high. A fear, which steadfastly perpetrates to this very day? Despite the fact, that throughout the history of humanity horses have held their heads high.
Aside from these controversies a key question remains. What happens in a horse when it sets down its feet softly. Only to lift them up as regular as a clock to transport the rider on. With its head held high it fulfills the rider's every wish. It appreciates the world with nearly human eyes. How was it spoken to?
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