People who have been to my clinics will have heard me repeat ad nauseam the importance of having a horse follow the inside rein with their thought. For me, it is always about directing the thought. Over and over I harp on about it.
I say things like “Get him to look where you want him to go first” and “Take that thought over there and he will try to catch up to it with his feet” and “Get him to think about it first.”
When things go wrong I’ll often say “He’s not thinking where you want him to go” or “He's leaning on your hand because his thoughts are pushing forward” or “You need to get this thought in front of him so he can go forward.”
In every aspect of working with a horse, I am always trying to point out how our reins, seat, legs, and lead rope influence the all-important role of changing a horse’s thoughts.
I believe that with everything a horse does, it’s their thoughts that play the key role in shaping behaviour. If any people have ridden with me and have not got that message, then I have failed in my job.
However, in the process of trying to instill this message in students, I seem to have messed up. It seems some people have taken my words to believe that a horse’s thoughts should always follow the feel of the inside rein. While much of the time we are trying to direct a horse’s mind to yield to the inside rein, it is not always strictly true that a horse’s thought should follow the inside rein. It’s a misconception.
An important exception to the idea that a horse should be thinking in the direction of the lateral bend is when performing lateral movements. Let’s take a really simple exercise like a side pass. This is a movement where the horse moves sideways without moving forward. Purists can argue whether the horse should have lateral flexion or not, but for training purposes, I always insist on flexion in the direction away from the movement. So if I am asking my horse to side pass to the right, I want a left bend while the feet are crossing over to the right. In this case, the inside rein (bending rein) is the left rein, yet the horse should have its strongest thought (primary thought) going to the right in the direction of travel.
This would be equally true in any form of lateral movement such as shoulder in, travers, half pass, etc.
The rein that establishes the lateral bend is always the inside rein and it should be the most influential in encouraging a horse to soften its mind and body via a horse’s secondary thoughts. But the primary thought should be following the direction of movement. In other words, a horse should always be thinking about where they are going.
So if we are performing a balanced circle to the left, the inside rein (left rein) creates the inside bend and the horse thinks to the left following the perimeter of the circle. But if our horse is doing a circle to the left with a counter bend (right-hand flexion), the right rein establishes an outside (right) bend while the horse is thinking to the left on the circumference of the circle it is moving. In either case, the horse’s thoughts should be directed left on the circumference of the circle because that’s where the feet as being directed by the horse’s thoughts. This is irrespective of which direction the horse is laterally flexed.
How do we know if our horse’s primary thought is in the direction we are asking it to move its feet? We know because the effort to move in that direction is almost weightless.
Instead of thinking about a horse’s primary thought determining the bend, consider the idea that the primary thought should direct the movement. Where a horse is thinking is where it should be moving.
I hope that clears up the misconception.
This was taken at a clinic earlier in the year in Ben Lomond, California. My friend Sheri, is asking Scout to leg yield to the left with a right-hand bend in his body. Notice Scout is looking to the left in the direction of travel.