#double lunging

Snow!!! But also frozen footing 😭 so no riding in the dunes… but the arena was already nicely defrosted in the sun, so we did some double lunging work. Fun!!

Pretty girl ready for a workout!

Source: http://www.toffiimages.de/

so back to the first image, first of all it looks like a really clumsy system so personally i wouldn’t use it anyway. also potentially dangerous if it were to move out of place and fall a bit lower. which means your horse can’t really stretch properly without being potentially in danger. to me this looks like it essentially flows along the same idea as draw reins - it helps you to build the horse’s muscle so that you can then take the tools away and your only ‘resistance’ to your goals is the horse trying to figure out what you want, not them evading because they’re so weak that they can’t do what you want. so in terms of a strengthening exercise, it can do that i suppose. but to me it looks like it has the same potential negatives as the pessoa system, since it’s connected right to the mouth. as the stride stretches longer, the rein gets tighter, and the horse successfully gets a jab in the mouth unless you have a handler with a very coordinated ‘give’ for each long moment in the stride. because you’re trying to deal with the hind and the front with your hands at the same time, it’s easier to mess up the mouth and cause pain unintentionally. it would be interesting if they just had both lunge reins through a hole in the surcingle close to the whithers, kinda replicating the hand position, with no side reins. but yeah, as i said, more control + leverage than you think you have, still with the issues of the pessoa system. but most importantly, if you’re going to go to the effort of this, why not just long rein? it’s more accurate and you don’t have the reins going through rings to fiddle with the leverage.