I intend on cosplaying Kuzco this summer, and I innocently googled “llama costume” and I feel like a whole new world has opened up before me. What a time to be alive.
Have you ever cried bc of a llama in a lobster costume bc i have and i dont want to be alone in this
fun fact! while that move is mainly for show now, it originated from when we used horses in wars and battles so they trained the horses to do this and absolutely obliterate anyone behind them
(yes that means someone would be on the horse while it does this)
It’s one of the highest level dressage movements, isn’t trained in many horses now days(not needed and requires an incredibly fit horse to do) but the Spanish Riding School has high level horses trained like this(second photo is from there)
Ok so I’ve read conflicting info on the purpose of this move, can anyone verify / source the use?
You mean used in battle vs. l‘art pour l‘art?
It‘s kind of both.
While all the moves‘ original use was on the battlefield, they were certainly not this exaggerated and perfected. While it was handy if your horse could kick out or go into levade in battle, the grade of lowering the haunches was probably not of importance at that moment.
The moves you can see at the riding schools are from a time where riding academies/schools for the royals were popular and the main goal of the masters was a healthy horse. They perfected the moves onto a level where they strengthened the horse and while theoretically they could go into battle, i doubt anyone willingly send a horse (and rider) on whose education they spent 10+ years. 😬
Anyways, the schooling was done until perfection, so the horse could, in the worst case, move without harming himself.
Still existing versions of this would be old-californian vaquero (Jeff Sanders is a good example) or spanish vaquero or those riders from Carmargue. They train their horses in (higher) dressage to have a reliable and long-living horse for herding.
