This article will either bore you to tears or stimulate your brain cells . But I think it is important.
Have you ever watched a rider or trainer and envied how they got their horse to do something? How did they learn to apply exactly the right feel at exactly the right moment to make it all possible? When you try to do it yourself, it doesn’t work nearly as well.
It often seems
a mystery, like it was magic. Even some of the best horse people don’t know how they do it. Many don’t know why a horse responds so easily and comfortably to them, but not to another person. Students at clinics have often asked me how I did something because it seemed like I did nothing. Yet their horse gave all the right answers with little or no trouble.
Let me tell you that it’s not magic. It’s not drugs. It’s not hypnotism. It’s not psychic communication. It’s not even horse whispering. It’s using pressure with the right amount of feel to suit the moment. It’s something that many people struggle to understand even after decades of experience. This lack of understanding pressure and feel I believe is the most common reason people abandon negative reinforcement principles or other approaches.
What is pressure?
The application of pressure is any change in the degree of feel that a horse detects and which motivates it to search for a response (see the video clip below).
Let’s look at what factors make it possible to use pressure in a way that leads to the best outcome in how a horse responds and how it feels about how it responds.
There are a few major components that make up pressure and release that we need to consider at every moment when working with every horse.
Component 1 - Amount of Pressure
The first factor has 2 parts.
The first part is to know how much pressure to apply. The correct amount of pressure has to fulfil 2 objectives. It must be the bare minimum amount of pressure that a horse (1) can tell a question is being asked, and (2) the bare minimum amount of pressure that the question being asked is clear.
Part (1) motivates a horse to search, and part (2) sets up the parameters of the search. For example, the pressure is just enough to cause a horse to search for a response (part 1). But it also has to indicate to the horse to search for a specific response (not a random, do-anything response). Such as telling the horse to search for forward movement and not a backing movement.
In summary, the pressure needs to motivate a horse to search. But the pressure shapes the search response towards a specific outcome, such as forward and not back, or trot and not canter, or pick up a foot and not lay down.
If we want a horse to transition from a walk to a trot, most people would apply more pressure with their legs, seat, or voice. Very few people use increased rein pressure to achieve a walk/trot transition. This is an example of applying pressure that is specific and not random.
Component 2 - Speed of Pressure
The speed or abruptness that we use to apply pressure is another very important factor in using feel.
Not many people give thought to how quickly or slowly they should apply pressure.
If we apply pressure in a snappy way, we can raise a horse’s anxiety and damage the clarity of the pressure. Likewise, being too slow can create dullness and confusion. A horse needs time to process the meaning of our pressure. We need to apply the pressure in a way that minimises the anxiety so that the horse is comfortable to search and process its thoughts. But we also can’t be so slow and careful that we risk losing our horse’s focus and its “try” to search.
Component 3 - Release of Pressure
Everything I have said about how much pressure to use and how fast/slow to use it applies to the release of pressure.
Let’s remind ourselves that the release of pressure is the signal to a horse that it is on the right track in its search. Many people believe we need to release pressure 100% when telling our horse it made a correct response. This is not true. The amount we release the pressure will depend on the horse’s drive to search and how close it came to changing its thought to the one we desire. This means we might release the pressure 100% at one moment and 50% another moment if we want the horse to keep searching. It will depend on what the horse’s mind is working on. Is it working on searching for the answer, or is it working on mentally disconnecting?
If you can know that, you can learn how to correctly adjust the release of pressure.
Similarly, for how fast or slow to release the pressure. Read what the horse is thinking and feeling, and you will know how much to release the pressure and how quickly to do it.
Lastly, because we should release when a horse changes its thought from what we don’t want to what we do want, it is not critical that we release the pressure immediately we achieve a change of thought. We only need to release the pressure while the horse holds onto the thoughts we want it to have. So if we apply a feel to encourage a horse to think to turn left, we wait for the horse to think of turning left before release. It is not critical to release the feel the instant it think to the left for it to learn from the pressure. It is only critical that the pressure is released before the horse changes it’s thought to something else, like turn right.
Component 4 - Dynamic Use Of Pressure and Release
No matter what principle of training we use, all training should be based on shaping a horse's thoughts. Everything a horse does begins with an idea. A horse first thinks to trot, then it trots. It doesn’t trot and then wonder how it happened. Its brain directs the movement, not the movement causing the horse to have an idea.
So directing a horse’s ideas is the way we can direct its movement with the least amount of anxiety and resistance.
However, a horse’s thoughts are constantly in flux. Like all animals with a complex brain, a horse’s thoughts and ideas come and go in fractions of a second. They are constantly changing. That means that when we are working with them, their response to our feel is constantly changing. A horse can think of turning to the right when we apply a feel on the right rein. But in one tenth of a second later it can think turning left is a better idea and non longer yields softly to the left rein. This means we should adjust the feel in the right rein to interrupt the idea to turn left. A split second later the horse is thinking to the right again. There is a constant conversation going on between horse and rider where the horse has an idea, and we are constantly and dynamically adjusting the presentation of our feel to keep the horse going with us.
This means that pressure and the release of pressure are constantly changing to adjust to the constantly changing thoughts of our horse.
Conclusion
When people ask me how I get such a nice change in a horse, the answer is simple.I read the inside and outside of the horse constantly. The horse tells me:
*how much pressure to apply;
*how fast or slow to apply it;
*how to do the same thing for the release of pressure;
*when and how to adjust the application and release of the pressure every moment of every second, depending on the changing thoughts and emotions of the horse'
No book or video or instruction of any kind tells me how use and adjust pressure with feel.
Now that I have told you all that, you have no excuse for not being brilliant with your horse