Western pleasure
Regardless of breed, horses are generally expected to move in a slow, light, calm, and relaxed manner, with minimal rein contact.
Their movement is described as "daisy cutting," as they have very little knee action, but their hindquarters are actively engaged and their hocks reach well under the body.
They are shown in a style derived from the "California" vaquero cowboy tradition, particularly that of the finished spade bit horse.
They are to show with a lightly arched neck, their heads relatively low and tucked to be almost exactly perpendicular to the ground, with horses overflexed or going "behind the bit" to be penalized.
Shirts and vests or jackets are often brightly colored and sometimes elaborately decorated to mimic popular styles in western wear.
All contestants, at the command of the event's judge, are asked to have their horse walk, jog (a slow trot), and lope both directions in an arena, as well as to stand quietly and back up readily.
Winning horses are decided on their quality of movement, proper behavior, form in motion, and calm manner.
To evaluate these things a judge should look for these six characteristics: cadence and rhythm, top line and expression, consistency and length of stride, in that order.
[5] The Western Pleasure rider's seat is deep, with a long stirrup, to assist the horse in driving deeply from the rear and elevating the shoulders.
Western pleasure competition, like any event, has controversies and situations where fads become so extreme as to possibly constitute abuse.
Because western pleasure emphasises calmness and manners, some individuals attempt to circumvent good training by using tranquilizers to steady their horses.
The sport of western pleasure has been criticized on account of an extremely low head position many judges were favoring in the stock horse breeds, known as the "peanut roller."
The industry has adjusted its rules to penalize the "peanut roller" fad, though excessively low head positions are still seen at times.
In the USEF, included a requirement that a horse must have its poll no lower than the height of its withers, or, in the case of the AQHA, a rule stating that the ideal gait shall be performed with a "level topline."
[6] However, it requires time, good riding ability, and careful training to correctly teach a horse "self carriage," particularly to slow or stop by responding to only a rider's use of seat position (and sometimes voice) without tightening the reins.
Because spur, heel or leg pressure is generally used to ask a horse to go faster, this technique is sometimes referred to by its critics as "riding the brake" and is frowned upon by several major western pleasure sanctioning organizations since at least 2003, when AQHA put out a series of videos on correct and incorrect style and way of going for western pleasure horses, showing a "hit list" of undesirable traits not to be rewarded in the show ring, with the spur stop leading the list.
[8] This controversy in Western Pleasure circles resembles the debate over Rollkur in the field of dressage, particularly over the question of whether the practice constitutes animal abuse.
A "button" is simply a leg or spur position that is trained by operant conditioning that tells the horse to travel at a particular gait or speed.
While less extreme than the spur stop, such techniques still take the horse away from traditional responses to the riding aids of seat, hands, weight and voice, which can also lead to an excessively artificial way of going by the animal.
