Training Your Horse

There are many parts of dressage riding that involve letting go: letting go of the rein pressure, letting go of the leg aid, letting go of your breath to facilitate the half-halt, letting go of a healthy bank balance. Yet another aspect is letting go of the issue! Some may call it finding a compromise, but really it's about knowing when to stand your ground and knowing when to back off.

It may last a week, a month, or a single lesson, but there are certain times in training when we must take note of what our partner is telling us and modify our goals accordingly. If you do not listen and you push too hard, you will squash the very thing that makes your horse who he is and kill his generosity of spirit!

We've all heard it before, a person arrives home from a two-day clinic, in which their horse went amazingly well and they return home ready to continue with the same momentum. While the horse goes well for the first week, the rider is baffled to discover that after two weeks of power-housing around the arena the horse feels ready to retire from old age.

Of course, the trainer knows to push you, to help you reach your potential, but they do not expect you to strive for that sort of impulsion everyday! Just as a top athletic trainer won't advise his sprinter to sprint at 100% in every session, a good rider must learn to respect that his partner is a living breathing animal with limits just like us!

Sometimes of course our horse is testing us and just as a good trainer will be able to detect the "lazy/burnt out" excuse we must know what our horse is saying to us and why. Is he being lazy because we have asked too much, or because it's lunch time and he'd rather be stuffing his face full of hay? There is no one way to tell. It is only by knowing, feeling, and asking!

An obvious one that comes to mind is the lateral work. When we begin lateral work with a young horse, is it often required that we ask for the lateral steps for a few days and then back off and return to the basics, being sure gradually to build up the horse to the new gymnastic requirement.

If we start the half pass, and then do half pass every lesson, the horse will soon become stiff in the joints, and begin to resent the aid for the movement. However, if we get a super half pass, then back off for a few days, the horse will gain confidence and strength of mind and body, and be ready and willing the next time we give the aid!

The key to an enthusiastic horse is keeping your training always on his level, don't ask for an 8, then push to a 10; ask, accept when you get what you were after, then reward, and next time ask for the 10! "Make it a habit to praise when the horse yields,"

Nuno Oliveira said (1998, 17).

The master's advice extends well beyond the physical yielding and a horse will know the minute a rider praises his emotional effort! If you ask something and your horse does not accomplish it, but tries his very best to understand and achieve what you are asking of him, reward him! It is better to reward a horse for trying, than to reward a talented horse for getting it right, even though he was putting in 20% effort!

"First and foremost is generosity of spirit towards the horse, so often the horse makes a mistake, mostly caused by the rider, and gets a beating or a yank in the mouth for it. I have seen some very sad expressions in the eyes of some of the horses I have judged," the very wise Marie Gahan once said. A judge for more than 50 years as well as a Grand Prix rider, Marie has spent years on her true passion: the training of the horse. She knows that it requires a rider with compassion, a rider who can put the horse's generosity of spirit above all else. "I also recognize all too well the relief in the horses' eyes when they have either finished the test, or they get to do the "long rein walk" in the middle," she said. "I am relieved I do not judge any more."

Sad to see the horses lose themselves in the pursuit of rider glory, Marie knows that one should be able to assess their horse's character and adapt their own goals around it. "It would be very interesting to access how the horse feels everyday, to design a thesis of his emotions. But in truth, how the horse feels is mostly to be seen in their eyes," Gahan opines.

This made me think about the personality of a top horse and how to achieve true magic; that part of the horse that has to be really alive in the arena. A rider who cannot let go, who cannot understand a horse's needs, who cannot reward little in pursuit of more, will suffocate their horse's generosity of spirit and finish with a robot in the arena that will never excite passion in its audience.

You can't tell me that a truly talented horse doesn't express himself in the arena and it knows that everyone is watching him. He must feel that he is special and is proud of his work! Just let him get there in his own time. This is not to say that you mustn't push your horse, it's just about knowing your horse well enough to know when to push, and when to let it go...for now.

Article originally written for Eurodressage