Riding Lessons for Life #19

The Half Halt:
In a riding lesson that I, myself, was taking the other day, I was discussing half halts with my trainer and he said, “The most important part of the half halt is the letting go.”    The half halt is when the rider pulls back on the reins in order to slow the horse down without stopping entirely or to shorten the horses stride without losing momentum.   In either case, the rider checks the reins back for a stride, and then immediately releases the pressure on the reins.  The reason the letting go is so important in the half halt for several reasons. First of all, if the rider maintains a constant hold on the reins the horse will get annoyed, often to the point of the horse pulling against the rider’s hands in order to try to get away from the constant pressure, and the horse will learn to ignore the pressure so that it eventually becomes meaningless. Another reason letting go is so important is because we want the horse to learn to maintain its own rhythm and to go along without constant dictation from the rider. Read more