“I believe being highly consistent is extremely important in bringing clarity to a horse. Even with mediocre timing, if a person is very consistent in their presentation and their reward, a horse will eventually find clarity in the work. However, I don’t think the opposite is true. A person can’t be effective if their timing is brilliant, but their consistency is poor…”
This is a quote from my book, The Essence Of Good Horsemanship. It expresses the importance that I believe consistency plays in good training. It’s not just me. You’ll hear the same views from trainers and teachers all over the horse world about the need to be incredibly consistent in order to be an effective horse person.
This makes perfect sense to everyone I know. It just seems so obvious that nobody questions this concept. So let me surprise you by turning this idea on its head. Well, I don’t think it will really surprise you, but you may not have heard this said from anybody else before – I certainly haven’t.
It’s not always true that consistency is important. In fact, it is highly desirable that it is not.
Let me explain.
When a horse is initially trying to figure out something, there is a distinct lack of clarity in its mind about what are its best choices when confronted with pressure. It tries various options in the search for comfort and safety. To bring clarity to the horse, we must be faultlessly consistent with applying the pressure. This means we ask for the same thing, in the same way, every time.
For instance, let’s teach a horse to move forward from a rider’s leg pressure. To start, the rider needs to ask the same way every time. However, if the rider bumps with the heel of their boot one time, then squeezes with a soft feel through the upper leg the next time, then alternative left/right nudges the next time, and then by a cluck of the tongue the next time, there is no consistency in the rider’s ‘ask’. There will be no clear understanding of what any of that means to a horse. Eventually, the horse might think any gesture by the rider is a cue to move forward.
However, if we can be highly consistent when we ask a horse to do something by presenting pressure in a specific way, eventually that will lead to clarity. A horse will become confident in how to respond, leading to calmness and relaxation when faced with such pressure.
But this is where a rider should leave the well-worn track. When a horse is confident with how to respond to a cue, the importance of consistency loses its clout. After a horse no longer needs to be trained in how to respond (because he’s got it and it feels okay), then we can afford to be less rigorous in our consistency. We can slack off. In fact, we should try to slack off.
In case this is confusing, let me cite an example. When I first start teaching a horse to lead well, I am very consistent about several factors. I know where I will stand and how long the lead rope will be. I know where I want my horse to be positioned. I know how I want the feel in the lead rope to be. I know how much energy I want to put into my body language and how much energy I want my horse to put out. I know all these things and I am very consistent with both how I present myself and my expectations of the horse.
However, when the horse is clear and comfortable with leading well, I stop being so careful about consistency. With my horses, I no longer worry about where I stand and the length of the lead rope or their position. I can lead my horses from the front or the tail. I can lead them with or without a halter or rope. I can stand on the right or the left. I can lead them on foot, from a horse or a tractor. I can lead one at a time or four at a time. I can do all that. I can be highly inconsistent in how I ask them to lead and still get what I want. Yet I have not taught the horses any of those things. I just started their training by being highly consistent and for them to feel comfortable and confident about being led.
The more a horse feels confident in how to work with us, the less consistent we can be when we ask them something. In fact, we should want to be able to be slack around our horse and still be understood. It’s like a close friend or partner who can finish our sentences before we do or when we point to something and a colleague knows immediately what we mean. They pick up on the intent almost immediately, place it in context, and prepare to respond.
If your horse requires you to be very consistent in the way you ask for something, then the meaning or clarity of what you have asked is not yet well enough understood. That’s perfectly okay; it just means there is more work to do. Instead of understanding your intent, they rely on the physical pressure and give only to that rather than having an association with what that pressure is telling them.
It is important to remember that while consistency is important in the process of training, it is not a goal in itself. Consistency is just a technique that we can avail to instill a clearer understanding in a horse. Once that understanding is well established, the need for consistency should lose some of its importance. We should work towards a horse maintaining its clarity even if we chop and change the way we ask.
At a clinic last November, Lorena is applying a feel to Solly’s tail as a new approach to teach her horse to back up. This is part of the approach to teaching Solly to follow Lorena’s feel no matter how it is applied or what it is asking.