Many years ago, my wife, Michèle suggested a student ride her horse, Birch. I think Michèle wanted the student to feel what it felt like to ride a relaxed horse. It was to give the student an idea of what she should aim for with her very anxious mare.
Almost immediately the student began the ride she yelled, “Whoa. She responds to every move I make. I’ve never known a horse could be so responsive.” The student had to recalibrate the feel she put into her reins, her seat, and her legs because Birch responded to every slight movement.
It has been my experience that most riders don’t give too much consideration to training their horses to be so responsive. It seems that as long as their horse listens and obeys whatever pressure a rider applies, most riders are satisfied with the results. If it takes 1kg of rein pressure to stop our horse we are okay with that and even feel proud that we are doing better than the riders that have to use 2kg to stop their horse.
But in theory, horses can respond to any amount of pressure that they can perceive. If they can feel it, they can learn to give it meaning and yield to it. With that in mind, we should not be satisfied with using any amount of pressure that is more than the minimum that a horse can detect. We should want our communication with our horse to look like a secret to anybody watching. But why?
It’s because the less we do, the more attentive our horse needs to be to hear us talking with almost imperceptible changes to our reins, seat, and legs. To be so tuned in to us requires our horse to tune out a lot of extraneous input from the world - not all of it, but a lot of it. We become the primary object of our horse’s attention and all else become secondary objects of focus. It’s the closest we can get to working together as a unit. And I believe unity, working as one, is the ultimate goal in horsemanship and riding.
So how do we achieve such responsiveness to our feel?
There are a lot of ways. It will depend on the horse, the experience of the horse, the experience of the trainer, and the skill of the trainer.
Let me outline the principle of just one method that I have found helps many green horses. I think this approach is useful on some horses that are learning to yield to pressure and do not have to undo a history of resistance and dullness.
The first thing I like to discover is where is the threshold of resistance to a feel. How little does it take to get a change? For example, let’s say I want to teach my horse to be more responsive to the reins in a backup. My horse understands to backup when I pick up the reins, but I’d like to use less pressure and get more response. My horse is not dull to the reins from bad training. It’s just unsure.
To find the minimum amount of rein pressure I need in the beginning I slowly pick up the feel of the reins. I start with zero pressure and smoothly and slowly increase the pressure until I feel my horse check-in and think about what it should do. Then I stop increasing the pressure, hold and wait for a weight shift. Then slowly and smoothly release (I don’t suddenly drop the pressure, but feed it back). Say it took a pressure of 1kg to get a response. The next time I ask with 500g pressure and wait. If my horse tunes me out I increase the pressure to 1kg and wait for a change of thought. Then I try again starting with 500g of pressure and wait. If my horse is searching I wait and release for a change. If it is not searching I increase the pressure to 1kg again. I repeat this process until my horse is listening to a feel of 500g. Then I begin again but this time I start with a feel of 200g. I repeat the process precisely as I did before. Then I start with 100g and eventually I can apply pressure that weighs little more than a thought to ask my horse to take a step back.
It takes a lot of practice and a lot of consistency. It takes working on focus all the time, even on windy days or when other horses are calling out or when the neighbour is mowing. It takes working on every aspect of offering a feel to a horse, whether from your legs, reins, or seat. It doesn’t matter if it is performing a capriole or picking up a foot or fleeing from a bank you just robbed. We should always be working towards unity with our horse so that our conversation looks like a secret and the feel weighs about as much as a hydrogen atom.
Capriole