One very fashionable event at horse shows is the Hunter Under Saddle. While these events are possibly most widely seen in Northeast America, you can see them at other parts of the country and the world too. Irrespective of your horse’s breed and your level of participation, judges are alert to certain indicators. These are some revelations for you.

The perfect hunter shows perfect manners, pliability, quality of motion and correctness in function. Hunters must be eminently acceptable for the purpose, which suggests they ride the fields and cover enormous territory with little effort. An ideal hunter’s stride is long and low. He reaches ahead with ease and grace. The rider should be able to reduce or lengthen the horse’s stride when necessary. The pony must move unreservedly and with smooth-flow thru all the gaits. 2 of the largest scoring elements as far as judges are concerned are movement quality and gait consistency.

Hunters should exhibit obedience. They ought to be bright and alert of countenance, and react to the lightest of hand or leg contact. They should be able to transition between different gaits effortlessly. When they are required to extend trots or canter, it should be done smoothly, with the flow of motion that characterizes the other gaits. The horses poll should be level or merely above its withers. Judges penalise for polls held lower than the withers. The head should be held in a position of vertical or just a bit forward of vertical.

There are penalties if the hunter is on a wrong lead leg while cantering or the rider is on at a wrong diagonal while trotting. The hunter will also be penalised if he is taking short, quick steps or exhibits too much knee action. He faces penalization also if he is too swift or too slow, though most judges are courteous of every horse’s need to run at the pace that it finds most comfortable. Judges don’t require disproportionate canters, nor do they want exhibitors getting all nervous about passing. When you are passing a fifteen-hand pony on a seventeen-hand horse, you’ve got to do so at a canter. Horses are also penalized if they fail to tame the gait on cue or if the break the gait regularly.

Hunters also pay a penalty for head carriages that are too low or too high, and for intolerably flexing or nosing out. The rider needs to maintain contact with his horse’s mouth, since he has to ride the horse in-hand. Tossing of the head and constantly showing too far off the rail are also penalised.

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