The Half-Halt Made Easy          with Jane Savoie

The half-halt is nothing more than a specific, clear ‘as-needed’ signal, not unlike the specific signals you use to tell your horse to canter (and keep cantering until you signal him to trot), or to halt and stand until you want him to walk on – except that you are using it to put him on the bit.

If he stays there steadily, you stay quietly in harmony with him and enjoy the ride. If he tries to come off the bit however by sticking his head up in the air, for example, you will half-halt him back onto the bit.

If he tries to come off the bit every few strides (he may – this is unfamiliar territory, and you are asking him to use an entirely new set of muscles while he’s exploring it) you’re going to ride a lot of half-halts.

To half-halt, give a three-second combination of leg, outside rein and if needed, only as much inside rein as necessary to keep your horse’s neck straight.

At the walk, lightly close both legs as if asking for that hundred percent, wholehearted forward response you’ve been practising. This time, however, rather than allowing him to go more forward, contain his energetic response by closing your outside hand into a firm first (as if squeezing every drop of water out of a sponge) and holding it for three seconds. He may bend his neck to the outside – if he does, straighten him by lightly vibrating, squeezing / releasing or pulsing your fingers on the inside rein, remembering always that the degree to which his neck is bent to the outside tells you how much (and no more) inside rein to use. No outside bend? Use no inside rein.

And rank your aids in order of importance: first, legs to create the energy; second, outside rein to contain the energy; third, inside rein only as much as necessary to keep his neck straight. After three seconds, relax your outside hand (remember the relaxation – the reward for finishing the half-halt – is as important as the half-halt itself) and return to the maintenance feel you had before, your hand firmly but gently holding those two baby birds without crushing them.

What are you going to feel when your horse comes on the bit? He will suddenly seem to move as a unit instead of a pile of parts, His back will swing, His walk will be smoother and more flowing. He’ll feel simultaneously easier to sit on and bouncier. If you are doing this exercise at the rising trot, you’ll feel as if you’re being rhythmically thrown out of the saddle as you rise and you’re staying longer in the air – as if you’ve gone from for up down up down to uuup… dooown… uuup… dooown.

This is the ideal, of course. Your horse probably isn’t going to come perfectly on the bit the first time. But if his frame or feel or strides change even slightly as I’ve described, tell him Good and rub his neck in order to encourage him to repeat his response. With each effort, you’ll improve his cooperation, his understanding, and his ability to carry himself on the bit.

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PROBLEM SOLVING

What can go wrong?

* Your horse may stop, slow down or resist by putting his head up when he feels your outside hand close in a fist; he isn’t coming through. He’s been taught all his life that legs mean go and reins mean stop. All of a sudden you’re using legs and hands together, and he’s stumped. Explain to him that yes, your outside hand is a wall, but it’s an invisible wall that he can step through. One way to explain this is to ask for lengthening, then close your outside hand in a fist. The extra momentum of the lengthening will carry him forward, through your closed hand. Do this several times, and reward him as soon as you see his neck get rounder and longer – as little as half an inch longer. Go back and half-halt, without the lengthening, and see if he’s learned stepping through the hand rather than coming against it.

* If you think that sawing on the reins – alternately squeezing on each rein, with a repeated left, right, left, right, left – is putting our horse on the bit, you are headed straight down a dead-end street. To the unschooled eye, your horse might look as if he’s on the bit, but you have control over nothing but a flexed jaw. When you ask for a transition, you’ll find there’s a whole lot of body underneath you that you have no influence over at all.

* If your horse maintains contact, but shortens his neck, he’s telling you that you’re bringing your arms back rather than tightening your hand into a fist. Fix this tendency by imagining an invisible wall at your wrists, one that you can’t draw your hands back through. Send him forward through the wall with your legs, when he arrives at your outside hand, close it into a fist.

* If your horse’s neck gets short and you have a loop in the reins, and no weight in your hands, he’s come behind the bit. You probably didn’t have him in front of your leg before you half-halted, and he just flexed in the jaw. You’ll also notice that he’s taking short, mincing steps rather than relaxed longer ones.

* If you horse swings with his haunches, you’re probably squeezing unequally with your legs.

*If your horse speeds up, slows down, or loses his rhythm, the pressure of your driving aids probably isn’t the same as your feel of your outside rein. Experiment until you learn to close your legs and outside hand to the same degree. If your horse speeds up, close more firmly. If he slows down, close a little less.

HALF-HALT TESTS

Here are some simple tests to give you confidence that the frame and feel you’ve created with your half-halt is the correct result of riding your horse from back to front, so that he’s truly on the bit.

* At the end of a three-second-half-halt, softly open the fingers of both hands. If your horse stretches his nose forward and down to the ground and seeks contact by gently taking the reins and chewing them through your fingers, your half-halt went through one hundred percent. If he stretches but doesn’t reach all the way forward and down to the ground, your half-halt went through to a certain extent. If he sticks his head straight up in the air, the half-halt didn’t go through at all.

* Ride a half-halt. Keep your outside fist closed with your elbow by your side, and create a loop in your inside rein by putting your hand forward, halfway up your horse’s neck. If his neck stays straight, your half-halt went through, and he is on your outside rein. If his neck bends to the outside and the outside rein becomes loose, the half-halt didn’t go through.

If these tests show your half-halt didn’t work, take a moment to evaluate. Was your horse forward, straight and in good rhythm? Was your contact correct? Did you use too much or not enough outside or inside rein? Did you remember to hold for three seconds, then soften for his reward? Did you bring your hands back behind the wall? After you’ve sized up what happened, try again.

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

I can almost guarantee that you’re going to feel results from this system in your very first session. For the first few sessions after that, you’ll probably spend your whole ride establishing your foundation qualities, losing one of them, getting it back again, riding your half-halt, testing the correctness of your horse’s response, losing it, riding your half-halt again, and so on. When you and your horse are solidly half-halting onto the bit at the walk, try it at the trot, and finally at the canter. Believe me, the additional revs will give you new challenges, but any time you have problems, drop down to the slower gait where you can remind your horse, and yourself, what the half-halt is.

This is not the final chapter of course. It’s just the beginning. Half-halt is always going to be part of your repertoire, but it will become easier to do, and you’ll have to do it less frequently. Eventually the three seconds will get down to one second or less. You’ll feel your horse coming off the bit, you’ll close your legs and your outside hand, and in a heartbeat, boom! he’ll be back on the bit.

I promise, you are not going to be one of those riders I see who feel they’ve achieved their goal, and done their job, if they’ve put their horses on the bit by the end of a session. Eventually, you’ll compress everything you’ve learned one step at a time in this article into a ten-minute warm-up – unless you have a young horse, in which case putting him on the bit probably should be your whole schooling session. This is the warm-up I do with my horses, and here’s how it goes:

I establish my foundation qualities almost as soon as I pick up the reins. Then in the first five minutes, I ask my horse the question, are you responding to my half-halt? I make sure we’re speaking the same language and he’s going to come on the bit no matter what I ask him to do. My warm-up tells me that he’s listening and answering before I go off and do my gymnastics, my school figures, my transitions, and my collecting exercises. Soon enough, you’ll be doing the same, getting your warm-up out of the way so you can go ahead and do the fun stuff, and the fun stuff is going to be more fun (and more productive) than ever, because your horse will be on the bit.

“Of all the things I plug away at – riding, writing, pretty much everything else – I think communicating is the one true gift I’ve been given,” says dressage trainer and competitor, Jane Savoie. “A student once told me: “It doesn’t matter if it’s riding or baking a cake or knitting a scarf. Whatever you choose to teach, you have a way of breaking down, explaining and putting in understandable terms the information that’s crying for attention the most.”

“I’m glad I have that gift,” Jane adds, “but I wish I were a better rider. If I had to choose between being a gifted teacher and a gifted rider, I’d rather be a gifted rider and work hard at my teaching than the other way around”

Her riding skills were not exactly weak. In 1992 she was reserve rider for the USET’s Olympic Dressage Team.

Jane’s best-selling motivational sports psychology book, That Winning Feeling was reprinted many times, and was published in England, Italy and Germany.

A student of multi-Olympian Robert Dover and German trainer, Herbert Rehbein, Jane placed third overall in the US 1992 Games selection trials on Zapetero. For the final rounds, held in Europe, Jane ended up fifth making her the reserve rider.

Jane Savoie’s death in January 2021 produced an endless string of tributes from friends, admirers and students, all over the world.