Turning a carriage horse

[ros]

This is such a dumb question that I've typed it out on two consecutive days and then deleted it through embarassment. But it's still bugging me.

If you're teaching an ex-carriage horse to turn under saddle, do you have to make any special allowances because (presumably) turning in harness is a different ball game?

There, I've done it 

[epona]

not dumb!  I dont know either lol!
But I wouldnt have thought anything special requirements were necessary other than re/affirming ridden aids.....  But I would have thought the process of turning was in a similar vain as when ridden other than the constraints the shafts would place on turning radius.....

but then........i might be talking utter b******s! 

[Casey76]

I think you will probably have more problems getting them to take their weight behind rather than in front than turning around

[pico]

Just thinking out loud here... turning, they will be used to just direct rein aids: pull in a certain direction means turn that way. When driving, the only thing you have to tell the horse how tight to turn is the difference in the relative amount of contact on each rein. A driving horse will have no previous experience of indirect rein aids on the neck, for example. The rein terrets on a harness prevent the rein from ever contacting the neck on the inside of the bend.
I discovered when I was taking carriage driving lessons that apparently I always use slight indirect rein to help guide how tight the horse should turn when riding... Or at least I use indirect rein without thinking about it when coreccting a horse that is turning too tightly or coming in off the curve I am asking for.  The pony was turning too tight, and my intructor kept having to point out to me that I'd brought my hands over a tiny bit towards the outside instead of them being directly in front of me. So there I was thinking I was asking for a slight bend, and instead, I'd effectively shortened the inside rein much more than I thought I had by shifting my hands slightly to the outside! oops!
It was definitely a shift in thinking about it conciously to be learning to request the horse stay out on a bigger arc *just* by taking more contact on the outside rein.

[flintfootfilly]

I know very little, but my general understanding is that when driving, a horse has to be able to keep its body fairly straight when turning, in order to stay comfortably between the shafts.  So especially at slow speeds and doing a tight turn, they may turn more by a crossing over manoeuvre of their legs.

I've heard folk say that former driving ponies can be very straight (in a noncomplimentary way!), and that they need to be introduced to the idea of bending around the leg in order to help set up the balance for a turn when ridden.  So I guess the introduction of lateral flexion will be beneficial.

Sarah

[ros]

Thanks guys - for both making me feel less of a numpty, and for the constructive thoughts 

Reason I ask is because a friend -who is quite inexperienced (and admits it, bless her) - has an ex-Belgian carriage horse that she has a few problems with. Most of it is nerves and inexperience on her part; some of it comes from being given conflicting advice by a variety of "experts"  . Anyway, he's her baby, but he's also very strong, very compact, very round  and not always particularly helpful  . He's not good with anything much larger than a Reliant Robin, and he's quite likely to jump into the hedge or spin and run for home if the mood takes him. She's been riding him in a hard rubber Pelham but without the curb chain because she doesn't want to hurt him  so she's had no brakes for some time. If she does somehow manage to stop him, she can't turn him!

We're sorting the brakes  but I just wondered what aids he would best understand for turning at the moment - maybe might respond to without thinking. I've never driven, but I was kind of thinking along the lines of demi-pirouette being closest to the way a horse has to turn in harness - outside leg would replicate pressure of the shaft, but you wouldn't get the opening of the inside rein while driving, so perhaps direct rein supported by outside leg...?

Sarah - I think you're right, and when we get to schooling some lateral work would be very useful.
Casey - yes, generally speaking the draught breeds are built on the forehand, but this guy is extremely compact - I suppose pulling a carriage doesn't require the same brute strength as pulling a plough?
Pico - thanks, good to hear from someone who's had driving lessons, and interesting about the direct/indirect reins. We do need to think about the things we do automatically!

[ros]

Why have my smilies doubled 

[Casey76]

Oooh, he's a Belgian (I was imagining something like an Oldenburg or Freisan  )

Draught horses can become very stiff side to side, especially the wide ones (I know, I have one ) I'd start by doing some gentle carrot stretches to try and improve lateral flexibility.  Simple in hand flexions, on the ground and from on top will help him to grasp the differences in feel between direct and indirect rein,

Moving over from the leg can be taught from the ground.  Try some simple bending exercises in hand (bending poles, cones, labyrinths etc).  All of the in hand work will also help no end with her relationship with him.

Was he always driven with blinkers on - that might explain the spookiness on the roads.  In that case, nice in hand hacks would help (headcollar over bridle for security)

[cirocco]

 the mouthUm well you have to think about the way he's been trained for the driving job, and what your going to do now, ridden job.

I agree about the blinkers, they keep a lot of scary stuff away from the horses line of sight, so if he has been driven and not ridden, and so always been in blikers, it might just have come as a shock to him to suddenly be out there 'naked' about the head. Sometimes they cant handle it, and it can take ages for them to be re trained to an open bridle.
Then he would have been driven in a driving bit. You will never know what sort of a driver/ drivers he's had holding the reins, so no idea of the mouth, it can have become quite hard, so a bit that has the same amount of stopping power, but in good hands perhaps, Just in case its needed in these early spooky stages.
Again these horses get used to having that tightness in the reins, especially if they have been driven as part of a team, less so when they have been a single horse.
I have only ever driven horses that had first been ridden, and had a good grounding in general schooling, so they already know and understand the turning aids.
If it was me, I would go right back to square one. Into the school, loads of lessons, teaching rein contact, and leg aids, perhaps more leg than rein for now, taking the emphasis off the mouth.
Its not going to be easy or quick, but it can be done. Ive seen loads of re schooled ex driving ponies and horses doing a different job.
My friends pony Charlie now happily with Tracey, was a driving pony, team tandam and single. I rode him when he first came to us, and found him to be very one sided, we re schooled him on a long rein, with lots of leg contact.
Yes they do go round bends in a straight line, thats something they have learned to do, its not hard to re school them, just introduce lots of circles, big ones first, then small ones when they are happy.

If this horse has been part of a team, it might be a bit scary when he has realised that he is 'suddenly' asked to be brave alone, perhaps going out with a pal for a while might help.

I hope your friend can help this horse.

[flintfootfilly]

I think it's in Philippe Karl's book, he talks about the easiest way to turn a green horse when ridden is to go with the horse's lack of straightness.  So, for example, if you are riding in the school at walk and you feel the horse's shoulder push out to the right, then that will be a good time to ask the horse to turn right because you'll be working with his weight that way.  In other words, if his weight has pushed out to the right then it's going to be easier for him to turn right than left.

I've been experimenting with this with my newly backed youngster, and it seems to work.  If his shoulder has leaked out to the right, and I then try to turn him left, he just jacknifes and leaks further out through the right shoulder, because his weight is so far over to the right that turning left is impossible.  Whereas when the shoulder has leaked to the right, if I then lift his right rein to ask for a little right flexion, I can then get quite a nice turn to the right.  So we just mooch round the school doing pretty much alternative right/left/right/left turns because usually once he's turned right, he then pushes his shoulder out to the left so we are set up for a left turn.

Obviously, once balance and communication are better established, there'll be more refined ways to turn, but this seems to work well with a green horse so maybe it'd work for your friend?

Another thing I found useful with one of the youngsters was to have him loose in the school and drive my car in all sorts of patterns in the arena, initially ignoring where the pony was, and then moving on to driving a bit closer to him, but rewarding him for staying calm, and trying to avoid overfacing him.  So initially, if he looked at the car, I would stop or turn away from him to reward him.  And we built up from there.  Finished off by leading him through the car window as I drove round towing the trailer!  But always making sure he had plenty of room to move away if he chose to.  It really seemed to help him get used to traffic.  I've not done that with any of the others, but this particular boy just seemed to need more preparatory stuff before going out on the lanes.

Do you think he definitely has driven?  I only say that, because quite often I hear about horses/ponies who have supposedly been driven, but then it turns out the previous owner never showed any evidence to that effect (eg photos, or harnessing up and demonstrating), so sometimes people assume a horse is more experienced than he is.  So worth starting from scratch as though he's a horse who's not been ridden on the roads at all.

If he has driven, he'll almost certainly know some voice commands including one for turn left and one for turn right.  I've no idea what they would be, though, but it must be possible to find out what are common voice commands in England or in Belgium!

That's me out of ideas again!

Sarah

[pico]

My friends pony Charlie now happily with Tracey, was a driving pony, team tandam and single. I rode him when he first came to us, and found him to be very one sided, we re schooled him on a long rein, with lots of leg contact.
Yes they do go round bends in a straight line, thats something they have learned to do, its not hard to re school them, just introduce lots of circles, big ones first, then small ones when they are happy.

Oh, yes - the thing about one-sidedness has reminded me of my experience of riding driving horses.  I took on the dressage training of some horses that had been bred to be part of their owners' four-in-hand driving team. When I started riding the ones that had been used in the team, they'd had a bit of under saddle schooling already. so they understood seat and legs to some degree already. *But* the one horse in particular was so terribly one sided that he always went very visibly bent to one side. If you let him move on a loose rein and didn't try to straighten him, he'd end up veering in a big loop to that tight side to come right round in a big circle sometimes!

They'd apparently *always* harnessed him in the same position in the four in hand, instead of rotating the horses between left and right side of the team to help prevent such one-sided development.

[lacey]

Our HW driving mare had never been ridden, taught her the leg aids using whip on shoulder as cue (driving you tap on the shoulders to aid moving over) so to turn left give ridden aid and fractionally after tap/lay whip on right shoulder, she caught on really quickly, also used for lateral work to aid getting her weight back but even after years of being ridden she will revert to on FH if not ridden rather than OH going for a passenger ride 

[ros]

More interesting thoughts 

Yes, I'm pretty certain he was driven. He came from a notorious local dealer who imports all sorts; he's quite typical of the short, stocky Belgian breeds - Ardennes, Brabant and so on, but very pretty (in a stong way) in the head. The blinkers idea fits, and the going out alone. We certainly aren't aiming for any dressage prizes at the moment, our current priorities being stop, go and turn round  but it would be nice to think that down the line some schooling - for both of them - would be feasible. It's definitely a project