How do you teach a horse to piaffe?
Personal experiance please- no links!

Here are step-by-step instructions!
http://ehow.com/how_2305239_teach-horse-piaffe.html?ref=fuel&utm_source=&utm_medium=ssp&utm_campaign=yssp_art
Good luck with your horse, Merry Christmas =]

Here r the Steps:

1. Get ur horse into a straight, impulsive collected trot & ask for a halt

2. Get straight back into a collected trot. Do this repetitively but gradually shorten the amount of strides the horse takes before halting.

3. Maintain the impulsion to keep the horse is feet moving, however, the horse should be relaxed. Eventually the horse should take a few steps of piaffe, maybe only 2-4, but it is a start.

4. Continue practicing. Eventually ur horse will start to take more steps of piaffe, just keep working at it, but remember to keep ur chest high & seat deep when asking the piaffe.



Good Luck!

Hahaha.
Okay well first off u really should not have to ask this, if u r training dressage & have achieved a steady progression in ur horses collection then ur trainer will show u how. Normally they take a whip & do not hit the horse in the hocks but kind of like a lunging whip they will swing it at their hind end to keep them forward while u apply leg then rein to get them to do a step or two. It is a VERY advanced way of doing collection & it takes a lot of time to even get close to what u see in the Olympics, its just a gradual process of more & more collection.
But remember : Collection should always be interrupted with extension. Because it makes them stiff if u always do one or the other. By doing both u r suppling them.

There are many different methods to teach it. It is tricky to explain like this though. Remember, piaffe is a very high level movement. Please do not go and try to train your horse to piaffe. It takes years to develop a horse ready to learn piaffe, and even more years perfecting it.

l hope u r asking this question out of intellectual curiosity & not with the agenda of trying to teach ur horse piaffe based on internet directions.

Before the horse ever even attempts the piaffe, he needs to have developed the musculature to do it by doing extensive collected work to increase the strength of the quarters. Teaching it is a two person job. The rider puts the horse in a very collected trot, & the other cues the hind legs with a whip to get the horse to step more underneath himself.