Introduction
In order for the horse and the rider to become the best versions of themselves and the best possible team, they need to have a good relationship. Colonel Peter Spohr (Die Logik in der Reitkunst, 1908) described it like this:
“Only those who have the friendliest relationship with the horse will achieve the most. It is the first step to address his intelligence, to subordinate his strength. Those who rely only on force can fail and, indeed, will often fail. But they will never accomplish everything that can be accomplished! Only those who are the horse’s best friend will be able to make him their best friend if they are otherwise competent.”
The basis of this friendship between horse and rider is mutual trust, mutual respect, and effective communication. In all three areas, the burden is on the rider to prove herself to the horse, that she can be trusted, that she deserves respect, and she needs to learn to become a good communicator.
Trust
Trust has to be earned. Horses who have never had any bad experiences are generally relatively trusting towards people. Of course, just like with people, there are horses that are naturally a little more suspicious, while others are naturally more trusting. But if the horse has been traumatised by poor handling or training, it can take a long time for a new person to win the horse’s trust. Severely traumatised horses assume that you are guilty until proven innocent. They automatically expect every new human to mistreat them just like the previous ones did, which makes them tense, suspicious, angry, afraid, and defensive. They will only let down their guard and open up to you if you prove to them every single day that you are not like all the others.
To win the horse’s trust you have to be fair, and not expect things of him that he is not able to do. You have to be careful not to exploit his willingness or his talent. In other words, don’t repeat movements or exercises too many times, and don’t make the work session too long so that the horse doesn’t get too tired.
If you have to enforce boundaries, it’s important to let him know that it’s not personal, but that certain behaviours are not allowed because they are unsafe.
Trust is also built by allowing the horse a voice and taking him seriously. If he resists or says “no”, we have to find out why he resists. What are the possible causes for saying “no”? In complex cases, this can take some time if there is a mixture of underlying causes. In the old military tradition, there was often a tendency to place a high priority on obedience. Horses were not allowed to say “no”. They had to function, and if they didn’t they were punished for being disobedient. Today we are lucky enough not to depend on the horse’s unconditional obedience with our lives to the same extent as the cavalry soldiers of the past. So we have the luxury of being able to allow the horse to say ”no” and to study the reasons.
We can take our time to ask the horse further questions for clarification and then think about his answers. Every response by the horse contains valuable information, relevant data, especially the negative responses. When I was young we were conditioned to override the horse’s objections, and we were made to feel bad, incompetent, hopeless if the horse resisted against our aids. Unfortunately, trying to push through a resistance tends to make it bigger, and it can compromise or destroy the relationship with the horse. At the very least it will undermine his trust in us.
In most cases, there are legitimate reasons for resistances and it is up to us as riders to find out what the root causes are.
They may be simple miscommunications in our seat and aids so that the horse is physically unable to do what we are asking him to do. They may be of a psychological nature if the horse has been traumatised in the past. There can be medical issues, a poorly fitting saddle or bridle, teeth or foot care that have been neglected, etc. Whatever these causes may be, it’s our responsibility to find them and resolve them.
Communication
In every encounter with the horse, we communicate with him, whether we are aware of it or not. Since we are the ones who choose to work with the horse, it is our responsibility to learn to speak and understand his language. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to build a solid, trusting relationship if we are not able to communicate clearly and effectively with our horse. This communication involves active listening - giving our undivided attention to the horse in order to find out what he is thinking and feeling, adjusting our own energy to the horse’s sensitivity and personality, using our posture, energy, and body language to convey our intentions, and of course, we use physical aids during the work in hand and under saddle.
Becoming an effective communicator is really a lifelong process. Some people are more intuitive, others have to work hard at it. But there is no end to learning and improving ourselves, no matter how talented we are or how far we come.
An effective communication transfers a mental image from the rider to the horse. This can utilise visualisations, as horses are very sensitive to our thoughts and the pictures we see in our mind’s eye.
When we are sitting on the horse, we can use our entire body to address his balance and the individual parts of his body. Through our pelvic alignment, our weight distribution, our leg and rein aids, as well as through the way we shape the movement of the horse’s spine through the movements of our own dynamic seat we can guide the horse through all the turns, transitions, and dressage movements.
This is where riding gets technical because it is essentially applied physics. And the better we understand which part of the horse’s body can be reached by the leg aids, rein aids, weight aids, etc. and during which part of the footfall sequence the horse is able to execute our request, the more precisely and effectively we can communicate. The more skilful and coordinated we are with our seat and aids, the larger our vocabulary becomes and the more sophisticated the conversation with our horse can be.
When we know the options that are available, and when we know which moment in the footfall sequence is the best for each aid, we can work on improving our timing and our coordination. This eliminates contradictions between our aids and minimises misunderstandings and confusion in the horse.
The more precise our aids are, the more effectively we can communicate with our horse, and the better the relationship can become.
