🐴 Five Practical Skills to Build with Your Horse

 

Whether you’re working from the ground or in the saddle, every session can develop physical skills that improve how you and your horse move together. Here are five ideas to strengthen your partnership and your horsemanship:

1. Refine Your Timing of Pressure and Release

Quality communication is influenced by when you ask and when you release. Horses learn from the release, not the pressure.
Try this:
Ask your horse to take one step backward from light pressure on the halter. The instant he shifts his weight back, release by softening your fingers and relaxing tension your hand (not completely “dropping” your hand away from where you offered the cue.)

Assess how much energy you used, was there tension in your fingers, did you hold your breath as you asked, were you anticipating? Did the horse shake/push/drag his head as you asked? Did you address the behavior with, “Not that, but how about this?”

Goal: You can feel in real time when horse begins to make a change.

2. Improve Independently Influencing the Horse’s Mind without Body Movement

Mind- then Head, Neck, Shoulders, Rib Cage and Hindquarters.
Try this:
At the halt, can you separate picking an object your want the horse to look at- and without you stepping/pulling/driving can you ask the horse to look (literally) at it only by using the lead rope? Then can you ask for the look, then ask for the head and neck to turn toward it, followed by head, neck, and shoulders stepping towards it? Then a slightly more angular step (where the rib cage is bending)? Finally, directing the thought, while the horse maintains focus on the object, moving with his entire body toward it, as a specified energy, with a clear, soft intentional, balanced (not braced) halt. This seemingly “minor” task is typically challenging for many horses of all experience levels because most of the horse training is focused on physical yielding/compliance, rather than mental engagement, then adaptable movement.

Assess if YOU were triggered to move/do it for the horse/plead/beg/hope/increase your energy/get emotionally bothered if the horse didn’t comply? If the horse offered counteroffers, were there physical patterns or mannerisms that your horse got “stuck on”? Did you address them? Do you see the horse mentally processing or releasing tension after you address them?
Goal: Influencing the body in “separate” pieces improves the balance, softness, and adaptability in the movement.

3. Develop Consistent Transitions

What do you consider is a transition? I teach there are 10 energy levels within each gait. The ability to softly transition within and between gaits reflects the horse’s mentally availability to your communication.
Try this:
On a straight line, practice assessing if you can change the energy (without driving or dragging the horse) within each gait.

Assess How do you clarify the difference you’re requesting? What are the horse’s counteroffers? Do you keep increasing the pressure of the cue without getting a change?
Goal: Transitions do not trigger defensiveness in the horse.

4. Balance your Body Alignment

Do you unintentionally drive your horse’s movement?
Try this:
On the ground, designate a small 1m x 1m (3’ x 3’) area- draw a box in the sand if you need to. Now stand in it. Then practice the above three exercises.

Assess if you are leaning at the horse as you communicate? Do you lock your knees, hips, shoulders, elbows, or hands as you ask for something of the horse? Do you feel the “need” to step at the horse to get a change?
Goal: Recognize if you are unintentionally “driving” or imposing on the horse with the angle of your body. This reflects a lack of effectiveness in the initial aid, creating holes in communication that will escalate the more that is asked for of the equine.

5. Practice Balanced Halt Responsiveness

95% of the people I meet NEVER actually ask their horse to halt, assess if it is a balanced response, or if recognize if there is “containment” (i.e. the horse is defensive toward standing with increased anticipation.)
Try this:
While standing, can you direct the horse’s thought, ask for a step or two, and then request a halt.

Assess how do you ask for the halt, what are the horse’s counteroffers, are you specific when asking, do you correct unwanted physical movement without addressing the horse’s focus or tension?

Goal: The halt should be seen as the opportunity for the horse to mentally check-in with the person, a time for processing and releasing tension, and it gives the person time to decide on what to do next.