There is a movement in horsemanship to look more closely at how we use pressure during the training of a horse. More and more the message is out there to do less and less. Some people even campaign against subjecting a horse to any form of pressure.

It is my belief that it is a good thing that we examine our use of pressure and question the way we do things. I think we should do this regularly in every aspect of our work as horse people.

But (you knew there was a “but” coming, didn’t you) I think people often look at the wrong thing when they look at a horse and decide if the pressure being used is appropriate or not. Most of the objection to the use of pressure is about how much worry it puts into a horse. The less pressure, the better the training. Conversely, if more pressure is used it has to be bad training. 

[If we are going to stick to this concept, then it should pertain to all forms of pressure - even that caused by positive reinforcement methods like clicker training. But generally, the same rules don’t seem to apply in people’s minds to worry created by negative reinforcement as to that caused by positive reinforcement. But I am getting side-tracked.]

I feel people who judge the value of training and the skill of a horse person based on how much  pressure they use are looking in the wrong direction. They are putting their own emotions before the horse’s needs. I understand this because we have all seen training where a person has used pressure to turn a horse into a miserable, frightened slave for the sake of obedience. But that is confusing the principle with the practitioner.

Sometimes people who know me only from my writings on this page get the impression that all my work is quiet and gentle and I never raise the energy level. When they come to a clinic and see that my use of pressure can run the entire scale from imperceptibly small to pretty large, they are surprised and maybe even a little dismayed. They can be put off because they rarely see the ultra-small amount of pressure and only see the large. They go home thinking I only ever yell at horses.

But here is the thing so many people are missing about the use of pressure.

Pressure is NOT to make a horse do something. The intention of pressure is to open the conversation between a horse and the human.

When I am working a horse at a clinic, if people watch carefully, most times I will apply a very small feel to a horse to ask them a question. If I get no answer because the horse is ignoring my feel (as opposed not understanding the meaning of the feel), I might increase that feel/pressure significantly before going back to zero again in a fraction of a second. The intention is to get the horse engaged in the conversation that it is choosing to ignore. The amount of increase in the pressure is commensurate to the strength of the horse’s thought to tune me out and not join the conversation.

Opening the conversation can sometimes take a whisper when a horse is listening and searching. But when a horse has very STRONG thoughts to do something else, it can take considerable pressure to get a horse to stop the fight and talk to me. For most horses I meet at clinics the pressure is somewhere in between zero and hundred - but rarely zero and rarely a hundred

If I am to work with a horse, it requires we are both in negotiation. I ask my horse a question and they come back with an answer or another question. That’s getting along with a horse. But when I ask a question and a horse acts like either I wasn’t even there or is not interested in participating in the conversation, I am going to use sufficient pressure (no more and no less) to become important enough that the horse says to me “what do you want?”

The very skilled trainers know how to use pressure to start a conversation. When they use a lot of pressure, it is usually for the fraction of second that it took for the horse to ask them a question. Then it’s over. The emotions come back to zero and the horse is ready to be asked another question with a whisper.

However some trainers use pressure to make a horse do something rather than to start a conversation. They are not interested in the conversation. They just want obedience and be damn what the horse thinks about it. This is a misuse of pressure in my opinion.

Conversely, I am not interested in “kind and gentle” if my horse stays disconnected from me and the conversation. I believe “kind and gentle” that results in me being the only participant in the conversation is a form of mental abuse for a horse. It’s nagging. It’s a lack of clarity. It’s cruel. It means a horse has to live in a human world trying to tune out forever these nagging and annoying humans. Not being effective at changing a horse’s thought is never “kind and gentle” no matter how little pressure is applied.

While I encourage us all to reflect on how little pressure we can apply in our training, I believe the criteria for judging the amount of pressure to use or not to use is NOT in how loud is our energy. Pressure is not the enemy of good horsemanship - no matter what source the pressure comes from (positive or negative reinforcement). It’s in how effective it is in opening and maintaining the conversation between us and our horse. If we do too little, a horse will ignore us. If we do too much, a horse will be obedient because it will be afraid not to be obedient. If we get it just right we will have the best relationship, the most willing performance and so much fun.

Video: In this video you’ll see how I incorporate the range of pressures/feel to help Riley keep the conversation alive. Towards the end of working him, the feel on the rope was very small yet Riley was with me following that feel with very little worry. We were working more closely together.