Last year I attended a dressage clinic as a spectator. I witnessed and heard several things I liked and a few things that made me wince.
Timing Of The Aids
One Horse, Two Sides
Most of us appreciate that all horses are different. When training, what works for one horse may not be the best approach for another. The almost infinite variations of a horse’s nature combined with their varied experiences (nature plus nurture) mean the chance is almost zero in finding two horses responding identically to identical training.
Primary And Secondary Thoughts
So the reason we need to know what a horse’s primary and secondary thoughts are is that it lets us know how available a horse is to learning. We should always be trying to have the conversation we are having with our horse be the primary focus. It’s a non-stop battle because we are constantly competing with the rest of the world for our horse’s attention. This also means that while other things occupy a horse’s primary thoughts, we will never help our horse find softness and willingness.
Evasion Or Yielding
First, there is the adage that people quote over and over again, “make the right thing easy and the wrong thing difficult.” For many people, the emphasis is on making the wrong thing difficult and the “right thing easy” is merely a matter of removing the pressure. This attitude is too simplistic and guaranteed to cause problems along the line.