Here are a couple of things I have heard people say or I have read on horse blogs:

“I never longe, it just gets them more fit for no reason.” 

“If I don’t longe him first, he’s completely wild!” 

“I’ll throw him on the longe line first for a while and let him take the edge off.” 

“Longeing is boring, I’d rather be in the saddle!”

“Longeing is just an excuse to throw a bunch of gadgets on a horse, and all gadgets are evil.”

All of these statements have one thing in common: a fundamental misunderstanding of the powerful tool that longeing can be.

There are tons and tons of articles and passages in books that can give you specific exercises, but here’s my takeaway for the day:

Never longe your horse without a plan.

What do I mean by that?

First, ask the question: why am I longeing my horse?

Possible answers: he’s too lazy, he’s too energetic, he’s cold-backed, I don’t want to ride, I want to see him go, I want to work on something specific.

The difference among the answers there is that some of them are actual specific reasons and some of them are general. If he’s too energetic, why? Is it because he’s generally an “up” horse? Is it because he’s been in for a week? Is it because there are distractions around, like at a show? Is it because longeing makes him nervous? Is it because you’ve taught him that being longed means he can fly around like a kite for twenty minutes?

Dig deeper, and look at what you are actually addressing. Brain? Fitness? Focus?

Then, have a goal in mind. Know what your horse will look like at the end of a longeing session, and what you can do to get him there. Know what the intermediate steps will look like. Know how you’ll handle yourself, what you’ll ask of him, and how to shape his behavior and his movement to get to that end goal.

If all that sounds familiar, it’s because longeing, when done well, is basically the exact same thing as riding. You’re using aids to shape a horse’s behavior and movement.

Example 1: When I first backed Tristan, we did a lot of longeing. Anytime I introduced anything new to him, for months and months, I did it on the longe line. Saddle? Bridle? Boots? Different saddle? Different girth? Different bit? You name it, if it was going to be strange to him, I put it on, then put him on the longe line. For these sessions, I was looking for him to start off a little startled, but to get him focused back on me and doing productive work. I didn’t just let him tear around until he got over it; I asked for transitions, spiraled him in and out, and basically did things that would test his focus on me.

Example 2: The more high strung horse. Your horse won’t focus on you at a show? He comes out of his stall in mid-air? Ok, sure, put him on the longe line. But have a plan. For a horse like that, I would do transitions, starting low and going up as he proved to me he was going to keep his brain. Lots of transitions within gaits, primarily looking for a response to “easy” as a calming and slowing method. I’m ok with energy, as long as it’s controlled and directed. Are the transitions sharp and clean? Can you shorten the time between them? For this type, I’m going to keep a close eye on body language: where are his ears? What does his overall musculature look like – tense and bunched, or loose and relaxed? Is he tipping like a motorcycle, ready to take off again at any second? Is he hauling on the longe line or maintaining a steady tension? By the end I want a horse that will transition off of voice command the second I finish saying the word, who has an overall “loose” look even if he’s moving forward, whose inside ear is kept on me, who is not testing the longe line.

Example 3: The specific goal session. I do this one a lot with Tristan still, as a regular part of his conditioning program. I’ll think about what is lacking in his under saddle work, because I’m not a great rider or because something about the under saddle work is impeding him. Most often, this is quality of gait or a specific type of strengthening (back, hind end, etc.).

Last night, it was about strengthening his hind end. So I warmed him up, looking for him to release tension and focus on me. Say that took 10 minutes total, walk and trot both ways. He started off a bit lazy, and sharpened up and loosened up, dropping his head, stepping under more in his walk, and on a relatively steady circle. Then I went back to the mounting block and added my butt bungee thing because I wanted the resistance for his hind end.

I knew that a successful session for this would look like him moving normally or even a bit better than he does without the resistance band: tracking up underneath, using his back (one reason I like to longe with just a surcingle or without tack is that I can really see his back muscles work), keeping his head low and relaxed, and keeping his own rhythm without me remind him with the whip constantly. That took about 15 minutes, and each thing I did was with that end goal in mind. Sometimes that meant asking for a few strides of canter, to loosen his back. Sometimes that meant nagging him a bit with the whip to really use his hind end. Sometimes that meant an “eeeeeeeeasy” to get him to go from short quick frustrated strides to longer and looser strides.

After I got what I wanted, I took off the resistance band and handwalked him around the edge of the arena for another 10 minutes to cool him down and get him off the tight circle. Total elapsed time 35 minutes, with a tired but focused pony at the end.

So, really, all I’m trying to say is: have a plan. Have an end goal in mind, take steps to get there, and don’t just flail and say that you hate longeing and it’s useless. It’s a tool, like so many of the other things we do with horses. Giving it up is your loss.

Though it is a slow start, we are slipping into winter. It’s been cold and rainy the last few days, and I have been less than motivated. Mostly I’ve been either taking care of 8 million things around the house or lying on the couch reading/watching Jessica Jones on Netflix.

I am getting out on and off though, and last night I got home and my husband said “go to the barn. I’ll have dinner ready when you get back,” which I think was a ploy so he could spend the next three hours playing Assassin’s Creed on our new TV, but I’ll take it.

So: longeing. I wanted to make it productive rather than simply stretching, so I set up poles in a “circle of death” exercise.

I just clipped the line onto his halter and focused on getting a consistent forward stride, improving his tracking up, and improving the way he used his body over the poles. We started with five minutes of walk each way, then I moved him to the other half of the ring and let him trot without poles for three minutes each way. His trot has been sticky lately, so I let him jump into canter when he wanted to, buck around a little bit to loosen up when he wanted to, and focused on the end game of a smooth, consistent trot at the end.

Tristan may not have fancy gaits, but when he clicks in, consistency is definitely one of his biggest assets. Given proper support in the form of driving aids and framing he will move those hind legs like a metronome.

Then we moved back over to the poles to work over them in the trot. I watched his legs to see how he was using them, and the muscles of his back, and of his stomach. It was really gratifying to see that he tightened his stomach, lifted his back, raised his tail, and dropped his neck. His ears stayed pricked throughout as he hunted down the next pole. He loves jumping so much, I sometimes think pole work that I leave him to figure out – like longeing over them – is a partial substitute.

Like the consistency of his hind end, he’s always been a horse that likes to have a say in figuring out his footwork. When we jumped regularly, I never counted strides. (I know, hunters, I’m sorry, but I am telling it like it is!) I focused on getting him put together, focused on the quality of the gait I was riding, focused on keeping him straight, and let him figure out what he wanted for striding. He would usually flub the first few fences but as I worked harder on getting a better quality horse to present, he would start to get into it and would adjust his own striding as we approached. Every time. If I trusted him, he figured it out.

He started off a little stilted and not quite figuring out his placement. He would get to the pole on the same wonky striding every time, placing his left hind right at the base of the pole, then hitching a little bit awkwardly as he didn’t have a good angle to lift his right hind over it. Every single time, his left hind would almost tap the pole, his right hind would have to swing awkwardly, his head would raise, and he would look slightly frustrated.

Then, he started to shorten his stride before the poles one stride out, which resulted in some missteps and kicking the poles. Then he started two strides out, and once he started to figure it out he very quickly had the whole thing figured out and was absolutely nailing the striding, getting the pole perfectly in the middle of his stride and carrying an elevated, more swinging gait through the entire circle.

This happened in about 3 minutes at the trot. When I swapped to the left it took him less than 30 seconds to adjust his striding again and he just sailed through it without any mistakes. I asked him for just two circles at the canter, and he was so into it he would’ve kept going, though he was a bit tired.

Give me a thinking, figuring-it-out horse any day of the week, you guys. I will put up with an awful lot, but I can’t abide stupidity, especially deliberate obtuseness. I have never met a stupid mustang yet. (Obnoxious, opinionated, spooky, deadheaded, yes, but never, ever stupid.)

Total time elapsed was about 25 minutes, but it was a hugely fruitful exercise for both of us.

Last night, I drove around the many, many washed-out roads to get to the barn (about which more later). I was meeting someone who wanted to look at my trailer at 6pm, and I got there at 5, so I longed.

It was, to say the least, dissatisfying. Tris was not particularly interested, and showed only glimmers of good work. He was capital-L-Lazy, and would not step out in the walk and kept hopping into the canter in the trot.

He settled into a lovely trot going left, finally, nice and stretchy but never settled in going right, even after some canters to get him warmed up and blowing. He just looked uncomfortable, stiff, and discombobulated. I couldn’t place a specific problematic area: I watched his hocks, his front feet, his stifles, his back, everything to see where he was not using it effectively or not weighting properly. I was stumped. I can’t describe it any more than he just wasn’t using his body well, at all. His legs were clean, cool, and tight, his back was not sensitive, nothing obvious was out of sorts.

So who knows. It’s possible he’s been stuck inside the last few days and not getting as much moving about time as he needs. He’s definitely due for his Pentosan, and that niggling in the back of my mind about hock injections has started again. We’ll see.

Between that, the fact that the people who came to see the trailer did not buy it (they were lovely, but it wasn’t right for them, sigh), and the tripling of the length of my barn commute due to washed out roads, not the best night ever.