A lot of riders are confused by the dressage terms behind the bit and behind the vertical.
When a horse is behind the bit, he is not connected. That’s never acceptable. It means he has dropped the contact with your hands, and there are loops in the reins.
Your horse can be behind the vertical and still be connected. However, he will be on the forehand. I will go into that a little bit more next.
Sometimes, riding a horse behind the vertical can be useful in schooling to give a horse the idea of staying connected during a movement he is struggling with such as a canter depart or leg yields.
For a short period of time, you would ride him connected but behind the vertical to give him the idea of using his body as a unit during those movements rather than disconnecting and coming hollow.
But riding your dressage horse behind the vertical is not acceptable for competition. In competition, you always want your horse on the bit with his poll the highest point and his nose about 5 degrees in front of the vertical.
Think of the body of the horse as a parallelogram. If the nose is behind the vertical and you draw a parallel line with the hind legs, you would see the hind legs trailing out behind the body. That is what I mean when I say that the horse can be connected when he is behind the vertical, but his balance will be on the forehand.
As you bring the hind legs more under, the parallelogram shifts. The hind legs come under, the head comes up, and the nose comes more forward. Eventually the poll will be the highest point and the nose will be where you want it to be as a finished product which is about 5 degrees in front of the vertical.
Behind the bit, however, is an entirely different story than behind the vertical. If the neck of your horse is round but he does not touch the reins, he is behind the bit. This dressage term means he is not connected.
Connection means that you have connected the hindquarters to the front end. Think of the back of your horse as being like a suspension bridge connecting those two ends.
Draw reins or other gadgets do not help your horse understand how to come on the bit.
When a horse has been ridden in gadgets like draw reins, he will often adopt this behind the bit position of a round neck with loops in the reins.
Some horses even look like they have what is called a broken neck. This expression refers to the fact that the highest point of the neck is near the third vertebrae rather than at the poll.
Gadgets create a false frame so there is no real connection. The horse sees the reins as a restriction. Rather than going through them, he sucks back away from them or breaks at the third vertebrae.
You want your horse to come from behind, over his back, through his neck, and into your hand. So, if you just focus on making the neck round by using gadgets, you will never really have a horse that is honestly on the bit.
Also, fiddling with the bit and/or seesawing on your his mouth gives you the same false head set that you get with gadgets. Your horse will just arch his neck and bring his face on or behind the vertical. There is no true connection from back to front.
Jane Savoie was the reserve rider for the US Dressage Team in 1992. She coached at 3 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Sydney and Athens. Jane has written 6 training and sports psychology books. For more info, go to: http://www.janesavoie.com or http://www.dressagementor.com
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