By Beth Baumert

Follow the steps below to improve the shoulder-fore and help enhance your horse's balance, straightness and suppleness.

1. Imagine your horse's position in shoulder-fore: the inside hind foot steps in the space between the two front feet. The outside hind stays in the same track as the outside front.

2. Your aids "mold" the shape of your horse. The aids for shoulder-fore are:

• Flex the horse slightly to the inside with your inside wrist.
• Sit to the inside with a long inside leg that is like a post for the horse to bend around. Your inside leg also positions your horse's inside hind leg in the space between the front feet and sends energy to the outside rein.
• Use a receiving outside rein that will prevent your horse's neck from bending too much and prevent him from going too fast.
• Use an outside "guarding leg" to prevent your horse's haunches from going to the outside.

Start the shoulder-fore with the tail-to-the wall leg yield. Check to see that your horse is effortlessly moving away from your leg and that you can straighten his neck. Next, move your aids to make a bit of bend to the inside so you are doing shoulder-fore. Sit to the inside, keep your shoulders to the right but make sure your hips are perpendicular to the long wall. Keep your deep inside leg on the girth and slide your outside leg slightly back. (Reprinted from "6 Steps to Half Pass" by Richard Davison with Beth Baumert, Dressage Today, March 2004.)

3. Keep a very slight degree of bend in your horse's body. The bend should be equally distributed from poll to tail so that he conforms to the arc of a circle.

4. Think that centrifugal force helps to put your horse on the outside aids when your horse is bent.

5. Prevent stiffening with gentle shoulder-fore aids. Shoulder-fore promotes relaxation because of the bend. When horses become tense they try to straighten their bodies and take the bend away by stiffening.

6. To prevent the common problem of over-using the reins in shoulder-fore, remember its purpose: To mobilize your horse's forehand or shoulders and make them lighter. Try to move your horse's shoulders--not his head and neck.

7. Try to stay in a comfortable balance. When your horse is balanced, you can use your seat and weight to give subtle aids that your horse understands easily. Balance can be lost four ways, so check to see that you have control in four directions:

• When you use your legs, does your horse take equal, honest contact?
• Can he stop easily without too much use of the rein?
• Do your inner aids prevent him from falling in?
• Do your outer aids prevent him from falling out?

8. When you can do shoulder-fore left and right equally well, your horse is "straight." Do shoulder-fore and counter shoulder-fore often in order to keep your horse straight and avoid the common problem of shoulders going out instead of in.

9. When your horse is in the shoulder-fore position, he becomes better connected and more "through." Since his hind legs become narrow and step under the center of his weight, his hindquarters carry more weight and the shoulders become lighter. This is the beginning of collection.

10. Shoulder-fore is not just an exercise. It is the way you ride horses all the time. It promotes, rhythm, suppleness, contact, impulsion, straightness and collection-all the qualities in the training scale that the dictates how horses are trained.

For more on the shoulder-fore, read the April 2004 issue of Dressage Today in which FEI rider Todd Flettrich gives three steps to master the movement.