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| Issue 14 |
October 30, 2009 | |
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What's New at HorseshoeCorner.com?
Dear Tim,
Welcome to the latest issue of the www.horseshoecorner.com newsletter. With this issue I'm pleased to announce that Laura Guyder has joined our staff as a volunteer. If you read this column you'll remember I mentioned the high expectations I have for her in last month's issue and we couldn't be happier having added her experience, training, and passion for everything equine to our staff. She brings with her formal training in graphic design, thoroughbred racing, as well as experience in internet marketing, and sales. If you would like to see some of her work just go to the Morrisville State College Thoroughbred Racing Management facebook page. I couldn't ask for a better blend of skills for our business, and it's already beginning to show. Since she's joined our team the number of unique visitors has nearly doubled. It's a great growth spurt that we hope to continue in order to build the premier equine website that horseshoecorner.com was designed to be. With the plans we're putting together I have no doubt that we'll be able to do just that. Thank you, Tim Van Loan www.horseshoecorner.com | |
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 Training Mythunderstandings
Working In Corridors (Heeding - Part 2 of 3)
by Ron Meredith
President, Meredith Manor International Equestrian Centre
Heeding is a horse communication system that proceeds in small, horse-logical steps that never create fear or antagonism in the horse. It requires being consistent in the moves you make around the horse, introducing just one small bite of information at a time, and making sure that new information is just one step away from what the horse already understands. Heeding builds a solid foundation that the horse and trainer can use to play reining or show jumping or dressage or any other game they decide to play.
In a relationship with a horse, the best place to start is at a distance. So last time we talked about how you start the heeding relationship at a distance. You turn the horse loose in an arena and just "play" by following him in a way that builds his confidence that you are not an attacker. You establish an imaginary line running through your shoulders and the horse's shoulders and consistently keep your body facing in the same direction as the horse.
The horse begins to associate that posture with the freedom to move forward. When you step behind this line, you put pressure on the horse to move forward. If you step ahead of this line, you restrict him a little. As you and your horse get to playing together and paying more attention to one another, you can eventually use these actions to encourage the horse to turn another direction or change speed. For example, you can step ahead of the shoulder line, turn, and ask the horse for a turn.
But in the beginning, you just play and wait until the horse stops to signal he accepts you and wants to approach. When he does, you turn your shoulders parallel to the horse's body and start making friends by scratching and "grooming" him from his chest up to his favorite places. The horse begins to associate that shoulder position with standing still and relaxing.
After grooming, you snap a lead rope on his halter, and you change the game a little. You start asking the horse to follow you, literally step by step. In the beginning, you want to match your steps to the horse's steps. When he picks up his right fore foot, you pick up your right foot. When he moves his left, you move yours. Take a look at how your horse is standing. The front foot that's a little behind is most likely the one he'll pick up first when you ask him to move off with you.
The reason for matching the horse's footfalls is because everybody starts out trying to develop a language with the horse by telling it a hundred things to do. That doesn't work. In the beginning, you match exactly what the horse is doing. Eventually, the horse understands that matching strides is the game. Then you can change the game a little again and start asking him to match exactly what you are doing.
The first time, you kind of move him over along the wall quietly then stop and scratch him. Then you obviously turn from facing toward him to facing with him in the same direction. You start to walk, anticipating which foot the horse is going to move first. Just as you start to walk, you reach back with the whip and encourage him with a little rustle or shake to go forward. He can see your feet move in his peripheral vision, he can hear the rustle behind him, and he can see it's open in front of him. It's an easy decision to step forward. Now you are "leading" the horse, not just physically but mentally.
When you start teaching your horse to heed, you walk along the wall of an arena. The wall creates one side of a corridor while you, with the lead rope in your hand and a whip sticking behind you, are the other wall. The "walls" create a shape the horse can feel. A methodical corridor of pressures creates shapes the horse will understand.
You walk down the wall and as you approach the end of the arena, the horse will think the corridor is blocked. To turn, you turn the line running through your shoulders and the horse's shoulders. You don't pull the head over because if you pull on the lead, you teach the horse to lean on the lead. And if you teach him to lean on the lead, he will always think that he can lean on any aid you put on. So as you reach the end of the arena, you have to fall back a tiny bit, turning your shoulders away from the horse so that you open up one side of the corridor. Now you can bring him around the end and show him that the corridor bends. You do the same thing on the next wall.
If you have a situation where he wants to run off in front of you or you are having trouble getting him to stop, don't yank on the lead. Walk straight into the arena corner to stop him. Give him lots of scratching and loving to let him know that halting was the right answer. Then make a turn, go across to the next wall and do the same thing. Before you know it, you will be able to stop before you get into the corner and he will stop with you. The control is being transferred to you.
Heeding gets the relationship between you and your horse to the point where you can communicate exactly where you want each step and how long the stride should be. That is where real control comes from. Once you have the horse working in a horse-logical corridor of physical pressures on the ground, you'll change the game again and ask him to work in a corridors of pressures (aids) created by a rider sitting on his back. The more methodical you are about the kinds of moves you use the easier it is to get the horse in the habit of paying attention to you. And the more accurately you can speak this language, the more relaxed and calm the horse will be.
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© 2000 Meredith Manor International Equestrian Centre. All rights reserved.
Instructor and trainer Ron Meredith has refined his "horse logical" methods for communicating with equines over 30 years as president of Meredith Manor International Equestrian Centre (Route 1, Box 66, Waverly, WV 26184; 1-304-679-3128; http://www.meredithmanor.edu), an ACCET accredited equestrian educational institution.
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Riding Tree: Communicating Through Aids
by Faith Meredith
Director, Meredith Manor International Equestrian Centre
Aids are physical pressures a rider uses to communicate with the horse. When the horse responds correctly to the pressure, the pressure goes away. So a correct response rewards the horse.
Think of individual aid pressures as "words" that have a specific meaning to the horse: change gait, go left, go right. As both horses and riders progress in their training, they begin combining several aids into "sentences" with greater nuances of meaning than a single word: get ready for an extended trot after we make this left turn, spin to the left when you come to the end of this slide.
Aids are not the same as cues. The horse responds to voice commands or to a click that means trot, or a bump that means canter is responding to conditioned cues. This is a different communication system and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. The problem is that riders communicating with their horses via cues are working with a very limited vocabulary. Riders communicating via the aids have a full, rich vocabulary with many shades of meaning. In order to take a horse to the upper levels in any sport, you need this larger vocabulary.
The "natural aids" consist of the legs, the seat or weight aids, and the hands or rein aids. We put these aids together into corridors of pressures that the horse feels as a shape we want him to take. Because, we can vary the pressure of any aid, good riders can apply them with great finesse or shades of meaning to communicate hundreds of variations of shape to the horse.
Leg aids are used primarily as driving aids that ask the horse to move a hind leg forward. A rider puts a leg aid on the horse by pressing with the inside of the lower leg (with the toe pointing forward, not out). Leg aids can be applied with varying degrees of pressure and in different sequences to ask for specific shapes. When both legs actively apply driving pressure, we call that a bilateral leg aid. Some examples would be asking the horse to move from a halt to a walk or from a walk to a trot.
When only one leg is actively pressing and asking the horse to move the hind leg on that side forward while the other just softly holds and steadies, we call it a unilateral leg aid. Some examples would be asking the horse to turn while in motion or to pick up a canter depart.
Weight aids are the second category of aids we have to use as communication tools. We talk about burdening weight aids where the rider drops more weight onto her seat bones and makes her seat feel heavier to the horse. The opposite of that is unburdening or decreasing the weight on your seat bones and making your weight lighter in the saddle. Like leg aids, weight aids can be applied bilaterally or unilaterally. It's important to understand that when the amount of weight carried on a particular seat bone changes, the rider's upper body position should not change. The upper body should not lean. The hip should not collapse. The rider simply drops a little more weight into one or both seat bones.
Weight aids are particularly effective because when you are balanced over the horse's center of gravity and following its motion, any weight shift creates a physical pressure that causes a feeling in the horse that he needs to rebalance himself. They naturally influence the horse to take the shape you want. For example, to turn the horse to the left, you simply sit a little heavier on your left seat bone and the horse automatically feels like stepping to the left to keep you centered over his center of gravity.
Rein aids are applied to the bit through steady, quiet hands and an elastic wrist guided by loose, flexible elbow and shoulder joints. There are four ways we use them:
A keeping rein maintains steady, elastic contact with the bit while following the horse's motion. Riders cannot effectively use a keeping rein until they are relaxed, balanced, and able to follow the horse's motion with their seat.
A taking rein means that the little finger moves the rein slightly toward the body. Many riders incorrectly take rein by bending their wrists. However, if you bend at the wrist in order to "take rein", you lose the elastic connection to the elbow which is the essential joint to absorb motion as your hands follow the horse's motion. A "take" is usually followed by a "give" or soft release. Examples of a bilateral taking rein include the rein back and the half halt.
A giving rein is applied by moving the little finger slightly away from the body. The giving rein aid always follows the taking rein aid. On a circle, for example, the rider rhythmically applies an inside taking rein followed by an inside giving rein to position the horse's head slightly to the inside of the circle. Meanwhile, a steady outside keeping rein follows the shape you want the horse to take and allows the degree of bend you want.
A resisting rein is a taking rein that is not followed by a give or release. A bilateral resisting rein applied for a few strides asks the horse to make a downward transition or to stop.
In addition to these three natural aids, we also have the artificial aids of the whip, spurs, and voice. The voice is often used more as a cue than as an aid with shades of meaning. Whips and spurs are very misunderstood inside and outside the horse industry. When they are used to reinforce the driving leg aids, there is nothing innately abusive about them. They simply become another shade of meaning.
In that regard, the timing of their use is critical. In training, we take a horse through the steps of showing him want we want, then asking him for what we want. Once he has mastered those two phases, we can use our natural aids to tell him what we want. When we know that the horse understands what we are telling him but the horse chooses to ignore the request, this is the appropriate moment in time to reinforce your natural leg aid with a tap of the whip or a touch of the spur. Either should be applied with a degree of pressure that does not startle the horse or raise his excitement level. Used this way, whips or spurs are not seen by the horse as a punishment. They are simply another shade of meaning added to the pressures they already understand so they are going to be horse logical.
We use corridors of aid pressures to create the feeling of shapes we want our horse to take. However, it is important to understand that a constant pressure goes away. A good example is the pressure of the girth. Initially, a young horse may be very apprehensive about the pressure of the girth. However, because it never changes, he starts to ignore it.
The same can be true of any of our natural aids. If a rider inadvertently applies constant pressure with a leg or weight or rein aid because she is out of balance or unable to control her body's movement in some way, the horse soon learns to ignore the pressure. That is why development of an independent seat through relaxation, balance and an ability to follow the horse's motion is critical to proper application of the aids.
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© 2001 Meredith Manor International Equestrian Centre. All rights reserved.
As a horse industry professional for 30 years, Faith has successfully trained and competed horses through FEI levels of dressage. She currently coaches riders in dressage, reining, and eventing. She holds a BS Degree in Education from Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts.
If you enjoyed this article, please check out all of the articles we have available at www.horseshoecorner.com
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Sincerely,
Timothy Van Loan
President & Founder
Horseshoecorner.com
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