This is an excellent exercise to work with your horse on squaring up and softening. Here are the step-by-step instructions from the video with Juci Samogyi of Balance Point Training.
- First thing to think about is posture before locomotion.
- Start by shortening your reins at the halt. This is to raise your horse's poll.
- You are going to take exactly 6 steps forward, and halt again. If your horse finishes with one leg in front, call it back to square him up.
- The last leg that stopped moving should be the first one that starts.
- Repeat several times, and you'll see the benefit of the exercise, which is to get a square halt, and to get them soft. You'll get the poll up, and the balance through the body. From there you can do sitting trot halt, etc...
