Flags! What’s with flags? I don’t mean the national flags of countries. I mean flags used in the training of horses.
In some circles, flags conjure uncomfortable thoughts of cruel and abusive training methods. Other people consider them a necessary helper in shaping the behaviour of horses. And of course, there is a sector of the industry that has no opinion either way.
Let me say from the start that before I discovered flags, I had already trained a lot of horses with success. I learned horsemanship from some first-class horse people who had never heard of flags. It is only with the advent of the American influence in the late 1970s and early 80s that flags appeared on the radar of a few Aussie trainers.
Good horsemanship was present in Australia long before we ever knew what was a flag. So I am certain that using flags is not a pre-requisite for the successful training of horses. And that’s one of the arguments the anti-flag brigade use to denigrate the use of flags.
But what those people are forgetting is that the function that a flag performs nowadays was being performed by other tools. Most commonly people used an assortment of different styles of whips – lunging whips, carriage whips, stock whips, dressage whips, crops, bullwhips, etc. People also used (and still use) ropes as driving aids whereas now flags are being used.
You can argue all you like about whether flags are needed or even useful, but the fact is that they are nothing more than a modification of equipment that has already been used for centuries in virtually every discipline of the horse industry. And they serve the same purpose that whips and ropes have served since horse training began.
So people who are adamantly anti-flag can get off their high horse –hahaha (gotta love a good pun!).
The second most common argument against flags that I hear is that they are used to drive and create extreme fear in horses. Wow! What an argument.
I have never seen a flag get up and chase a horse around a round yard or a flag run out of the tack room and flap itself around the face of a horse.
Nor I have ever seen a flag observe a horse reluctant to go into a trailer and run behind it to spook it to jump into the trailer. If flags are so evil and create so much stress in a horse, how come I have never seen one do those things? I mean I have seen hundreds of flags in my career and they all just seem to lie on the ground or lean against a wall until somebody picks them. Are the flags doing all these evil things in the dark when I can’t see them?
I once overheard a flag declare at an international flag convention, “People blame me for chasing and scaring horses, but has anyone noticed I DON’T HAVE LEGS? It’s not me that is doing the scaring and chasing.”
My point is that people blame flags for outcomes that are the fault of human error. That makes no more sense than to blame a car for getting you a speeding ticket.
Let’s now talk about using a flag well. Forget about what happens when people use it badly because that is a problem with the trainer and not the flag.
So if we have other equipment that can substitute for flags, what’s the point of a flag?
In essence, a flag is nothing more than another tool whose purpose is to bring clarity to the feel we present to a horse. It does this by directing a horse’s thought in the same way a rider’s leg does or the reins or a whip or a lead rope or a person’s energy, etc. That’s its prime function.
The thing I find most people are worried about when learning to use a flag is the ability of the flapping bit to put out a lot of energy, which can scare a horse that is unfamiliar with flags. A little energy from the person holding the flag can result in a lot more energy coming from the flag than say a whip or an arm flap. The energy from a flag can be more like the energy from a stock whip. And while some people see this as a downside of using a flag, it is a bonus in two ways.
Firstly, it means the range of energy output from a flag is much wider. It can go from hardly perceptible to nuclear, which enhances the ability of the good horse person to offer more clarity through a great range of adjustments. The second bonus comes from the ability of a flag to allow a person to work at a greater distance from a horse. The range of energy output possible with a flag enables us to influence a horse’s thoughts more readily without being close.
But the potential energy that a flag is capable of delivering also adds a greater responsibility of the user to become more skilled in its use. It behooves every trainer to learn to adjust or calibrate the way they use their energy when holding a flag. It’s like learning to drive a car with sensitive brakes versus mushy brakes. You learn a new feel. If a person can’t do that with a flag, then it is a mistake to use a flag.
Flags are neither miracle solutions nor the devil's tool. A flag is a whip or rope with an identity crisis. They have no brain, no legs or arms, and no power. They are completely inanimate and useless until somebody picks them up. They are simply a means of communicating the human’s intent to the horse’s thoughts.
Shea Stewart and I are helping Monterey overcome his fear of being touched by using the flags at a petting party. Harry Whitney is holding the lead rope, without tension, outside the yard. As usual, Harry sits on his behind while Shea and I do all the hard dangerous work!