DRAW ME A HORSE
This essay is a re-post from mid 2022. I’m putting it up again because of a very recent discussion with a classical dressage trainer who was describing to me the value of biomechanics in building strength and correctness in movement. I had no problem with what she was telling me, except in her entire argument there was no mention of directing a horse’s thoughts BEFORE directing the movement. None. Only when I pointed this out did she say “Of course, the mental and emotional state is important. But that does not need saying. because it’s obvious.” Well, it clearly is not obvious because her work does not address it.
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If I asked most people to draw a picture of a horse chances are they would draw a head attached to a neck, attached to a body, attached to four legs, and finally add a tail, ears, eyes, etc to their masterpiece.
However, if I were to draw a horse, I’d draw a brain with moving parts attached.
A horse is neither a head nor legs or a tail or neck. Even putting them all together, you still don’t end up with a horse – just a resemblance of what looks like a horse. If you amputated a leg from a horse or docked the tail and ears, you’d still have a horse. But if you lobotomized the brain, you’d only have something that looks like a horse, but the essence of the horse would be gone.
To me, a horse is a brain encased in moving parts. When I attempt to interact with a horse, the conversation is not with the legs, neck, or torso. My relationship is with the mind of a horse.
We all know that to be true. I’m not giving away any hidden secret by telling you this. Every horse person knows that horses are smart and emotional. It’s their intelligence and emotions that in large part drive their behaviour, particularly in training.
Yet, even though we all know it, so much of our training ignores it. We train horses like they are just the sum of their moving parts. When we train, we train their parts to move in the way we want them to move. We choose specific exercises to train their gaits. Then we choose other exercises to train their posture. More exercises to train their obedience and still others to train relaxation.
The thing that exercises do is build strength and suppleness in horses. Like a human athlete, exercises are needed to increase the strength, fitness, and suppleness of the body to prepare for work. Without the exercises to improve these things, a horse is capable of doing about as much work as a couch potato. The best we can hope for is an okay walk, trot, canter, and halt. But the right exercise prepares a horse for the physical demands of extension and collection in all its various forms. But using exercises to build strength, fitness, and suppleness is not educating a horse – it's just physical work.
A horse learns only by what the brain absorbs. Bone does not learn, muscle does not learn, and skin does not learn. Only the learning parts of the brain learn. They learn and they tell the rest of the horse what to do and when to do it.
I want to be very clear with what I am saying. Exercises are a vital part of training horses – no question. But just performing exercises is not necessarily teaching. The neck, the torso, the legs, the mouth, etc of a horse do not do the learning. For example, we do not train the mouth of a horse to accept the bit because the mouth cannot learn and retain information. The mouth is capable of an enormous amount of sensory information, but it does not remember or understand that information. The brain of the horse takes the information the mouth sends to it, interprets the information, and then remembers the information for learning purposes.
We have probably all heard the expression that good horse training is “all about controlling the feet.” I think too many times this has been misinterpreted to mean that if you can control the feet of a horse, all is right with the world. In other words, many people have taken the expression to mean that good training is about training the feet.
But I have already stated that bone, muscle, and skin do not learn – they are dumb. Only the brain learns and only the brain tells the feet what to do. It’s not the other way around where the feet tell the brain what to think and feel. If you want to train a horse to do a task, you have to talk to the brain. If you try to bypass the brain by making a horse perform (using strength and gadgets) you’re in for a battle of wills which you might win, but you might also lose. At the very least the best relationship you can hope for is as master and slave.
What I am trying to say is that training exercises are important in preparing a horse for the physical demands of hard work, but their value in the learning process is only in regard to how the brain interprets the exercises. That statement may seem obvious, but experience has taught me that it is not so obvious to many people.
A large number of horse people are constantly seeking magical exercises that will fix all their training issues, which suggests to me they don’t understand the function of training exercises.
When we choose a particular exercise to educate a horse, our most important aim must be to talk to the horse’s brain in a way that tells the horse to relax and focus. That’s it. That is the single most important job any exercise should have.
When that message has gotten through to the horse, we can use the exercise to instill mental clarity and physical strength. Once we have the mind of the horse quiet and focused, we can use the exercise to explain how to respond to the rider’s reins, legs, and seat. The learning can begin. But without our ability to direct the horse’s mind to relax and focus, the exercise has only marginal value. We might teach the horse to be obedient, but the quality of the work will be a fraction of what the horse is capable of giving. Plus it will inevitably lead to a damaged relationship between horse and rider.
This is why two different people can perform the same exercise with the same horse and get different results. One person uses the exercise to quiet the mind and establish sufficient focus before becoming particular about the accuracy of the movement. The second person ignores the resistance and anxiety and simply uses the exercise to create obedience of the feet. The two outcomes are galaxies apart.
So much training ignores the fact that training is largely a mental exercise, not a physical one. If you doubt this statement, just look at the modern competition dressage. It’s a disaster. It’s not just dressage; the problem is at every level and in all disciplines. I believe it stems from the fact that people forget they are riding a horse’s mind, not its body.
A rider can’t be heavy-handed and barge through trouble by hammering away at an exercise and expect brilliance. First, we must establish okay-ness and focus for the exercise to have any benefit. There is no higher priority.
I think in theory my message can seem obvious. But I equally know that in practice a change in what the horse’s body is doing can seem like a change in what it is thinking and feeling. Unfortunately, this is not always true and we often misread what is going on because we want to believe we are on the right path. We need reminding to look for what is changing on the inside of the horse before we worry about what is changing on the outside of the horse.
At a clinic in Minnesota, Sara and Rain are in serious conversation and exchanging ideas with each other