Mutual Trust

Round and round and round. How many of us have witnessed this? I know I have. It has been my observation that many trainers and riders take their horses out of the stall, and lunge for forty five minutes, "to take the edge off" they say. Yes many times we have horses that are a little bit more high strung than others, and at times, especially when we are first starting out a young or green horse we must take the edge off. Sure, safety IS first. But what about the seasoned horse that has been in training for three years? Why put the poor horse through the boring routine of going round and round? Shouldn't this horse be really good by now? It happens more often than one might think. With this I do not mean just in Western Horse Barns, I see it too in Dressage Barns, and other disciplines.

The question is simple: Why?

The answer is more simple, lack of trust. Like I said before with the young horse and with the green horse, or with the horse coming out of retirement or injury we might have to lunge or ride in large circles to warm him up. But, as time goes by, we should strive to give the horse more trust so that he can trust us as well.

It is my personal opinion and many horse professionals might disagree, but it is my opinion that every good horse should learn all good basics, and trust regardless of what his future career will be. By this, I mean

hat the horse likes and enjoys his work and does not object to the slightest change in scenario, or training pattern.

The Patterns... many professionals train their horses to be robots. They do not truly train the horse, but rather teaches him to perform a certain pattern for many months and then when the horse is taken out of his comfort zone, he performs badly or unsatisfactory. Why? There is no trust. No mutual trust. With this I don't say a horse should never act up, well they shouldn't, but once in a while they do. And that is O.K. because they are horses. Horses by the way are like small children, when you least expect it the do or say something (children, horses don't talk, not always) that embarrasses you or puts you in a difficult situation. Maybe the horse a some time or another acts up and puts you in a bad spot. Horses have bad days too, just like people. If we think we have the best horse in the world, we must always keep up his training to make sure he continues to be the horse in the world. If our best horse in the world turns bad one day, lets work with him to turn good again.

We give trust to our horses by the treatment we give them. Bringing the spur, and/or the whip to him in a necessary time is not cruelty, given that it IS done with care and love. The horse learns what discipline is, and why he is being disciplined. We teach the horse trust by saying with our seat and legs, "we need to go forward" the horse says, "no thank you by holding back" we apply the necessary aids, with the necessary amount of pressure and the horse complies. When this happens, the horse learns that even at times when he is scared, he can trust that you will not take him to a dangerous area.

If on the other hand we allow the horse to go anywhere he wants, when he wants, we teach him that we do not have enough authority over him as a herd leader and therefore teach him he cannot fully trust him. This is not kindness. This is not mutual understanding. Sure at times we must step back let things go, but there is always a time and place for the latter two.

We ride for joy, for therapy, for hobby, for money, for fun, etc. The horse knows that he is to perform a job, and knows that it's job is to do what we ask. You see? ASK.

We must not say MUST, we should never say you must do this horse. Because if we do, we find ourselves more frustrated, and in the end the horse WILL win. We must teach the horse to trust us, so that no matter what we ask, the horse will say, "Sure."

Because, how many of us have children or parents, or siblings, or friends that ask us to do a task we don't want to do? But we do it anyway. Because we love, trust and respect them. Am I right? Yes I am. So our horses should be happy performing their work. Doing boring patterns, over and over every day is not a fun way to work, neither is going round and round and round. How would you like to do the same boring thing every single day, for months or even years? Even if you do that already, or if you like that kind of life, does not mean the horse likes it too.

You might say, "yeah, I warm my horse up under saddle in the rising trot for a half hour" and to this I would also say that it is over kill. The horse in this case WILL with time get so sour of working so much that, again, he will become a robot. The horse will loose trust in his rider if this is continually done.

Mutual trust, will come with time. We must trust the horse first though. We cannot expect the horse to trust us at all, if we ourselves do not learn to trust the horse first.

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General Albert Dicarpentry

A Master rider of the Cadre Noir at Saumur France, born in Lambres, France in 1878 General Albert Dicarpentry is a riding figure worth studying. A pupil of the teachings of Baucher, D'Aure, L'Hotte and Fillis.

From 1933 until 1939 Decarpentry, served as a Dressage Judge in Europe and later in 1947 as President of the FEI. But these privileges might not have been possible were it not for his fourteen years as riding master at the Cadre Noir in Saumur France. An honest and honorable man, Decarpentry would speak the truth about riding, and especially when it came down to himself and that of his pupils (As can be noticed in his writings). 


Although Decarpentry was held in great esteem as a rider he had no desire to compete as such. A clear scholar of the art of riding General Decarpentry, compared styles of riding from the French Calvary School to thoso of other Rinding Schools in Europe, such as the Spanish Riding School and made comparisons as well to the classical teachings of the masters of the past to the teachings in current years (1940's).

General Albert Decarpentry died in Paris in 1956 immortalizing his name to competition Dressage riders and pure Classicist of riding art, through his teachings and writtings.



Information taken from notes at Centaur Institue of Classical Equine Studies, dictated by
 Master Michael Scott 1935-2010

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This is why the horse makes a mistake...

In many situations, when the horse commits an error or makes a mistake, we tend to find a cause or a blame of some sort. We need to think that horses like people some times have a good day and some other times they have bad days. We as riders need to look for signs that the horses give us, so that we can be able to tell when the bad days are. If and when the horse has a bad day, we add something to make the situation worse, we can not and should not blame the horse for what he did wrong.

Let's see, the horse only makes a mistake when we ourselves make a mistake in our judgement or when we become absorbed in our work and tend to want to be over confident. This is something no honest rider can afford, for overconfidence is a big enemy of true progress. Plus, when we add personal ego to over confidence the results can be detrimental and even harmful, for ourselves and for our horses in one way or another.

The horse is asked to do certain movements under the rider, that at some times he has not been properly trained for, and therefore is not capable of efficiently performing in a consistent matter. The rider should not blame the horse if the horse acts up but rather think. What caused the horse to misbehave or to commit an error on this occasion? If we cannot honestly answer ourselves then we will  not be fair in blaming the horse.

The only reason the horse makes a mistake is because we as riders made a mistake first, because the horse is always ready to listen and obey, if, we ask correctly, in the right moment, with the right aids, and assuming the horse is physically and mentally mature for what we ask. If any of the latter are not present when we ask the horse to do a certain task, then we run the risk of having the horse misbehave, making a mistake or ignoring our aids all together.

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Sh.. Happens.

You are having a nice, enjoyable, trail ride with your horse. It is the same trail that you have been riding for many months, maybe weeks, maybe years, the same horse, the same saddle, the same everything. It's a cold, foggy morning, and you decide to take a ride before work. You got up early this morning, earlier than usual, because you wanted to make it a habit of riding everyday and realized that the only way to do this was to get up and ride every morning before work.

Half way down the trail, same trail as always your horse spooks and shies away in complete fear, discomfort, and shock. It catches you completely off guard, and as the horse is moving away from under you faster than the speed of sound, one of your stirrup leathers snaps.. You struggle to stay in the saddle and you're even able to hold yourself up for a split second, but it is all worthless. The strength of the horse and his sudden movement combined with the stirrup leather snapping and the speed in which it all happened you fall to the ground. Actually you fall, in the cold mud on the ground. Your back, head,arms, legs and almost your full body is covered in mud.

The horse no being sure himself what just happened, just stands there laughing in his mid because you fell so easy. You get up suddenly, you're very pissed off at the horse for doing this. Now, the horse notices that you are covered in something that he does not know what it is. He thinks it's you and sniffs at you for a second, but when you throw your hands up in the air and down by your sides, the horse freaks out thinking, "Holy Sh.. that's what was moving out in the bushes, and now it ate my master, and now it's out to get me." That's what the horse thinks. So he, the horse, runs home as fast as he can to find shelter and comfort. You chase after him stupidly thinking that by chasing you'll be able to catch up and ride home so you can shower, and make it to work on time. It does not happen. So you end up walking home.

When you get home the horse is minding his own business, just eating his hay. He has already forgotten about you, it has been several hours after all since you got dumped in the cold wet mud. You shower and go to work, you are three hours late. You explain to your boss what happened, but your boss does not care, you had an important meeting and you were there late, very late.

Now you are furious, you lost your job, and it wasn't even your fault.

You blame it on the stupid horse. When you get home and explain the situation to your spouse, he/she tells you that Sh.. happens. And he/she is right. Unforeseen events happen to all of us, and we cannot blame our horses for a bad day. The horse heard something or smelled something, that he was unfamiliar with, and when that something got closer, he spooked. We spook too when something or someone pops up out of no where and scares us.

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Trailer loading

Why is trailer loading such an issue? Many people are in such a hurry to get their horses under saddle and winning at shows that they forget to take the necessary time, first to allow horses to be horses, and second to train them correctly.

Letting horses be horses is a whole conversation in it self. And we are here to talk about trailer loading today.

Now.

Why do most handlers, trainers and owners wait for an emergency to train their horses to load? When the horse needs to get to the vet, or the farrier, or out of the barn for any reason, is no time to give a loading lesson.

Worst Yet!!!

The horse gets forced into the trailer with multiple people beating him on the ass with a whip or butt rope, and even literally carrying him and shoving him into the trailer. Sure at times we must use the whip or a rope, to discipline and/or encourage the horse to go forward but if at any point the horse pulls back and throws himself over, it is not his fault but the fault of the rider, handlers, or trainers.

The horse if possible should learn to load with it's mother, or when halter broke. Some times, we must load a horse that has never loaded before and these cases, we are all prone to make mistakes and let our frustration and emotions get in the way of loading the horse with patience. In terms of working with horses, nothing can be rushed. We must give the horse what ever amount of time he needs to feel safe and comfortable enough to load.

The horse by nature is scared, and cluster phobic, when we take the whip to his hind end with great force, the situation gets worse. Now, not only is the horse afraid of the small enclosure that we ask him to get into, but also, he will associate the trailer with the punishment. So, we just made it worse, until forced, not trained the horse is cornered into getting into the trailer where he is finally left alone. Is this training? NO.

Now, there are times when using the whip is necessary but if and when this time comes we must be diligent enough to use it in a way that the horse understands why it is being used. If we do not have the ability to know when is and when it is not the right time or the right reason to use the whip, then we must not proceed, but stop instead and seek the help of some one else with perhaps more experience, better judgement and more self control and patience to help. A word of caution however is that just because a person has more years amongst horses than we do, does not mean they have better experience, knowledge, judgment, or skills.

If we teach our young horses when they are at their mother's side to load into the trailer, and we constantly load them in and out after they are weaned, there will be little or no trouble loading later in the horses adulthood. In the case when the horse did not have the privilege of learning to load as a youngster for any reason, or in the case of one who forgot all about loading for any reason, we must proceed in the easiest way we can.

 One of these being to place the horse in a round pen or something similar with the trailer backed into the doors of the pen, the trailer doors opened and the feed and water of the horse being placed by the opening of the trailer and moving further inside as the days and even weeks go by. The day will come when the horse will be indifferent about going in and out of the trailer. And so we can begin practising loading and unloading and taking the horse for short trips even if it is just around the property. Time consuming yes but worth the effort.

Another easy way to do things when a round pen or corral is not available, or we have a less suitable situation, is to teach the horse to move forward with a cluck of the tongue and/or  lite tap with the lead rope or hand on the barrel or belly. Most horses learn to load in a matter of days with this method and an assistant is not necessary.

I do not like to use the famous war bridles, or the famous "be nice halters" which are nothing more than a modified war bridle, because it stresses the horse unnecessarily, and if we are going to use something like that instead of a halter it may as well be serrata, cavesson, or even a hackamore.

Time is key, just like anything else. If we wait for the training of trailer loading, until the day we have to, things may get real ugly and we may end up using very bad judgement. At Watchman Farms, we train our P.R.E. babies to load at their mothers side, and we do many trips with them together, so when the time comes for them to do it alone, it never comes a a surprise.

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The extended trot is often times misunderstood. More and more frequently, we see riders striving for an exaggerated elevation of the front legs on the breeding and riding of the modern Dressage horse. Lets not forget however that the extended trot is not to be measured by the elevation of the front limbs alone, but by the length of the whole stride in itself. When the horse performs an extended trot the hoof of the front leg should land where the nose of the horse is pointing, and the elevation of the front hoof should somewhat be in coordination with the elevation of the diagonal hind leg. If the horse's strides are not level, the horse will be forced to drag the hind leg, forcing him in this way to push the mass of the body and not carry it like he should. Another fault often being ignored is the degree in which the horse is being forced into a frame, instead of letting him out, so that he can use his head and neck to balance himself better. The neck should not be made shorter, through forceful use of the reins but rather the horse should be allowed to stretch a little more forward and down, so that he feels comfortable at the lengthening strides. The moment of suspension should be longer, not quicker. This means that the horse will take longer steps and naturally will have to take a longer time to land after the moment of suspension. If the horse takes quicker steps, not only will it be more uncomfortable for the rider to sit the trot, it will also be for the horse. That is why we must give the horse time to understand what it is needed. We should collect the energy and then let the power out, let the power explode into the extended trot. A task much easier said than done. We must ask for the engagement of the hind leg through our seat and legs, checking through gentle half-halts, and then letting the horse out. Transitions from one gait to another, and within each gait will be of much help to develop this movement. Asking for extensions at random moments will also be beneficial, especially asking out of the shoulder-in and renver.

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