# 5-Gaited Saddlebred Saddleseat



## SaraM (Feb 14, 2014)

First of all, you are a very nice looking saddleseat rider. Your seat is very soft and forgiving, your hands are very quiet, and overall you guys look very nice. 

In the trot video, I'd like to see you push him more forward to keep the tempo steady. It gets nice, then his energy sucks back, then he gets better and forward, sucks back, etc. it's up to you to determine a pace and keep it, think about what it should be and maintain it with preemptive aides before it settles into the wrong pace, you should be monitoring for consistency every single second. 

Along the same lines, when he stretches his neck forward to brace against the contact, keep the contact the same and push him more forward into it. Right now, because you are so soft, he's just pulling through you and your hands are following his mouth forward allowing and rewarding it. When he does that, don't pull on his mouth, but close your hands and say "hey; this is a wall you cannot push past", and always always push him forward at the same time. 

His canter is sort of unbalanced; that's why the first transition sort of stumbles through a half trot half canter for a few strides. Really his canter doesn't get "balanced" til almost a whole time around the arena. If I had to guess, it looks like his canter was artificially slowed down for the show ring before he was ready; ie going slower should come from first being balanced, not from just changing the tempo. I think he needs to canter a little more forward to get balanced, and you need to sit up straighter and deeper to help him balance back on that hind end. Right now your seat is so light and leaning slightly forward, just sit your butt deeper and lift your upper body up; I like to think of myself as the pole on a carousel horse at the canter. 

The first walk-canter transition of the video was not good. You should feel walk-sit on hind end-lift shoulders up-and first stride of canter. If you let him take those rushed jumbled strides and let him continue cantering, you are basically saying "that was good, do that every time". In the first second of feeling the bad transition, you should stop, get him focused again in a good walk and re attempt. Again, it's probably because the canter is unbalanced, but I would not accept any transition that is not a prompt walk to canter and would re-do it until it was clean. Cantering on afterwards is the reward for a clean transition. Its quite easy to teach this to a horse like this, because their front end is naturally lifted, it'll just take a little work. 

Really, you are on the right track. Your body flows with the horse well, just work on making more corrections to guide him more, rather than being a good riding passenger. I have no experience with gaited stuff, sorry!


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