In my last post, I outlined some of the important differences between a horse being light and a horse being soft and how you can test when your horse is one or the other. If you have not yet read that post, please do before reading this article. This post will probably make no sense if you have not grasped those concepts.
In this essay, I want to describe a few principles that I try to apply when teaching a horse to be soft. Like almost all my posts, this is not a “how to” article but more of a set of principles I think you should consider when trying to figure out the process of training for softness.
Before I get to the nitty-gritty, you must appreciate that lightness is part of the road to softness. When teaching a horse to respond softly to pressure, they will go through a stage where they respond lightly to pressure but carry some degree of anxiety. This is because anytime a horse is asked to change its idea to an idea it does not yet understand, there will be some worry.
Imagine driving a route to work that you have travelled every day, then one day there are road closures and you have to divert to drive a route that you don’t know. You are not certain the new route will get you to work on time, so this new idea will add some anxiety to the drive. You will drive with lightness, but not softness (emotional discomfort). But after the first time (or two) driving the new route, softness (emotional comfort) will return because there will be clarity about which way to get to work and how much time it will take. Clarity is what changes lightness into softness.
So don’t expect softness from a horse the first time you ask it to respond to pressure or feel. It’s okay if they respond with lightness and not softness. But it’s not okay if you stop at lightness and don’t continue the training to transition to a soft. Because many people think lightness and softness are the same things, they stop working on the response to pressure when they achieve lightness. This leaves a horse in a state of worry about pressure and feel.
Okay, how can we teach softness? I’m going to stick to the example of leading a horse that I used in Part 1 to keep things simple.
Let’s assume our horse already knows how to lead and give to the pull of the lead rope. Let’s assume there is hardly any resistance to the feel of the lead rope. It gives to just a light feel to the lead rope. How do we know if our horse is light or soft?
“You know, not by what they are doing, but what they do when you interrupt what they are doing.”
This is important to understand. When a horse is light it is mentally invested in the idea it has committed to because of the worry it carries. It believes safety and comfort can only come from avoiding pressure. It is light because it wants to avoid the pressure out of worry about the pressure. When we interrupt what our horse is doing, we interrupt what it thinks is the best option for safety and comfort. So a horse that is light will feel a little more troubled when we interrupt the option it thinks is its best option.
However, a soft horse believes going with the pressure or feel is a good idea. The emotional comfort it feels about pressure/feel means when we interrupt an idea and offer a new idea there is no need to feel troubled. In a soft horse, pressure and feel bring clarity and clarity is a comfort to a horse. In fact, clarity is the primary source of emotional comfort when training a horse. Without it, a horse cannot feel okay.
But how do we make pressure a comfort to our horse and turn lightness into softness?
It starts with no longer confusing how a horse moves with how it feels. I said in Part 1 that lightness is a PHYSICAL response to pressure and softness is an EMOTIONAL response. If you want to know if your horse is light or soft you have to stop focusing on movement and obedience because if that is your criteria then lightness is the best you can ever hope for. Softness can only come from using pressure/feel to evoke a change of thought and bring clarity. The feet or movement is secondary.
Concerning that concept, we are taught at a very early stage of our education to release the pressure or feel when a horse moves its feet or body. Again, people’s focus is on the body - what the horse is physically doing. But when building softness we should be releasing pressure when the horse changes the way it feels. This coincides with when a horse changes its thought from resistance to “going with”. This is not simple and many people struggle with this notion, which is why I work so hard at explaining and demonstrating the concept at my clinics. But the adage of a horse learning by what you release for is true. If your horse is light on the lead rope but feels troubled when you release the feel of the rope, then it will associate troubled feelings with the removal of pressure. So instead of releasing pressure for a horse’s movement, wait to release for when it changes its thought.
A really good example of this concept came to me years ago when people were talking about teaching a horse to relax by applying pressure to the lead rope to lower a horse’s head. A theory was floating around about the head lowering stimulating a release of beta-endorphin from the pituitary gland which in turn caused relaxation in a horse. People still believe it is the lowered posture of the neck that leads to relaxation. But in truth, it is the horse’s thought to yield to the pressure on the lead rope that caused relaxation, not the position of the head itself. The change of thought to stop resisting the feel on the lead rope causes relaxation, not the physical lowering of the head.
And finally, building and maintaining softness requires keeping the conversation between humans and horses open and active. Every few moments we should apply a different feel or pressure to ask our horse a new question and wait until there is a change of thought. I repeat. It is the change of thought and the accompanying clarity that yields softness and quiet emotions. EVERY time we apply a feel, we wait for a change of thought and improved clarity. No exceptions.
And lastly, to teach a horse to sustain its softness we need to keep the conversation between us and our horse alive and active. That means we are always asking a new question and waiting for a new answer with its accompanied change of thought. It also means our horse can ask us questions and we reply with a feel to influence its thought and emotions. We should not work our horses and only apply pressure when we want a change of speed or direction. Pressure should not be an interruption to a horse but a form of dialog we use to keep our conversation alive. This is how softness becomes a normal part of every moment we have with our horse.
I know this has been a super drawn-out and long thesis on softness. Unfortunately, I have hardly touched the surface. I hope you’ll give it some thought and experiment with some of the ideas I have presented. Talk to your teachers, ask questions, and listen to your horse.
