when i ask her to collect...she bends!

[EventPony]

i was taught that the way to ask your horse your to collect is to drive them on w/ ** seat and legs, hold w/ ** inside rein, and "sponge" w/ ** outside rein. first of all, is this correct? see, the thing is..if it isnt..when im in lessons, and my instructor tells me to do something, i cnat exactly not do it, but anyways....it seems to work most of the time. But sometimes, shell bend her head to the outside (not most of the time, just sometime...adn yesterday, it was just in this one corner), adn when i ask her to straighten her head w/ my inside rein, she turns to the inside/middle of the ring. how can i keep her straight and still ask her to collect?!:eek: thanks for any ideas!

[larri]

I was taught the same way for a while, but you have to be very careful to keep the same contact / tension on each rein or the horse will respond to the stronger pressure from one and do what your hand is asking and bend!
If its working some of the time and your horse is used to that aid for collection - I would stick at it and you'll just have to really concentrate on keeping the contact even.

[cvb]

leg into hand is (simplistically) the right approach, but of course horses know 101 ways to evade.

By doing what she is doing - hasn't she got out of doing what you asked ?!

Normally, you want the horse to have their head 'straight' with where you are going (ignoring lateral work for now). But actually what is wrong with counter flexion as an exercise for suppling ?

So when she turns her head to the outside - rather than falling for the trick and 'rewarding' her by asking for inside flexion, then she gets to play trick 2 (turn to inside) and still evade - instead just ask for collection etc in counter flection.

Then her ploy of turning to outside no longer works as an evasion and she will learn to not try it. Of course she will just come up with another evasion - etc etc. But as you learn them all, you can learn to counter them all.
:)