Monthly Archives: October 2016

How to Passade

Training Horses

The Passade

We’ve discussed the use of quarter turns on a square to educate a saddle horse on listening to our seat-bones and our legs. We’ve seen how this helps him in shifting his weight to his hindquarters. He learned to cross over with his forelegs, and reach out toward the side of the turn. Then we tightened the angle of turn a bit more by making a triangular figure. The next movement in this series is the passade, which involves a 180° turn. All these are to be done in sequence during training sessions. To accomplish the passade, first do the Square, then the triangle and on each straight side ride toward a target in a straight line. When you’ve completed those maneuvers, and are arriving at a targeted spot, twist your torso so as to be looking over your shoulder back toward the starting point. This will cause the inside seat bone to bear more weight. The outside rein will maintain contact and along with the outside leg, will urge the horse to make a tight turn. When the horse begins the turn, you release all the aids. He will have made somewhat less than a 180° turn, so you then use seat, legs and reins lightly to finish the turn as the horse walks back to the point of origin. This figure at first makes more of a boat shape than a straight line, but as the horse’s understanding and balance develop, he will be making a straight line, with 180° turns at both ends. This figure, the passade of the classical school, is then done at the trot, and finally at the gallop with a line of about thirty feet in length. At the gallop the turn is called the demi volt, or in Spanish, the media vuelta, and is a purty durn fancy turnaround!

How a Horse Changes in the Barn Stall

Philosophy, Training Horses

Fifty years ago in this part of Texas, horses were managed much like cattle, free to graze in large open pastures. I remember seeing herds of mares with their stallion in mesquite patches of hundreds of acres, with colts and fillies playing among them. The terrain was rough, the kind that makes colts grow up “sure footed”.They played in open fields, and vine tangled thickets of oak, elm and hackberry. There were steep-sided clay banked gullies and rocky hillsides with areas of deep blow-sand between. The colts spent the first years of their lives developing muscle, bone and agility. An additional benefit was that they learned the social life of the herd, and grew up psychologically adjusted.

Now we see some colts raised almost entirely inside barns and in stalls. Recently we saw a colt at a halter show with one hip “knocked down”, or asymmetrical. The judge pointed this out saying that it was commonly seen in colts raised in barns, who in their hurry to get out a door slam into the door post injuring the hip in such a way that it can’t heal right, resulting in this uneven appearance. In many other countries, especially Spain and Portugal, Mares are managed out in the open, and the foals grow up out in that open country. After weaning they still are kept on pasture until they’ve been through three spring “flushes” of grass, the “three eats”, before being brought into the stable for training at age three and a half. By then their backs and legs are nearly mature and strong. I remember when we were in Spain and Portugal how strong and correct the colts looked. I’m reminded of an article in a popular horse periodical in the sixties entitled “Let those colts grow up on pasture”.