06/03/2023
The beauty of non-opposing aids.
The brilliant thing (well one of the brilliant things) about horses is their capacity to learn. They are literal, contextual learners who rely primarily on motor patterns and skills to understand how to relate to us. In the main they do not use verbal language, but instead movement and their other senses. They learn motor skills much, much quicker than humans. They’re digital while we’re analogue.
Riders often find their horses confused because we have ideas that don’t relate to what a horse can do or understand. Our big thinking brains can lead us to believe that a horse can work something out because we have told ourselves its true. When from a horses perspective it makes little to no sense.
One of the biggest areas of conflict for horses and people is the use of aids which oppose each other. And the simplicity of the principles of Legerete often shines a light on this which allows everyone to breathe a sigh of relief.
At the most basic level the modern concept of the half halt can create some serious problems for horses. Those of us who’ve heard Philippe Karl speak will have heard this said many times, and it’s worth reminding ourselves of.
In essence, if we apply the aids for stop (blocking with our hands) and the aids for go (using your legs) at the same time, what is a good horse to do?
I meet many people who have been told to ride this way, and I’ve yet to see it create much of use.
Because, with horses being the generous, helpful creatures that they are, they can only - as PK always says so eloquently - agree to be obedient to one or other of these aids. They cannot respond to both these requests from the rider, however much we dream that they can.
Therefore, they end up giving it a go in relation to the one they find it easiest to respond to, and ignoring the other. They have no choice but to either lean on the bit or go behind it as they try to respond to the ‘go’ request of your legs. Or, they must learn to tune out the leg aids.
I rode someone’s ‘dressage’ horse recently and was told I would have to have extremely strong legs. What this tells you is this horse has had one half-halt too many and has given up responding to the leg aids. No horse requires a humans ‘strong legs’ to keep moving, they have their own perfectly good legs. They have just been taught to tune out the leg aids, that’s all.
If we really think about it from the horse’s logical, movement based perspective it’s so clear that using aids that cancel each other out makes no sense. And that it results only in stronger and stronger aids and often more equipment.
There is a very specific way of using your lower legs which can be combined with rein aids in the ‘Effect d’Essemble’ which has some interesting effects on the horses body. But I’ve yet to meet someone who’s clear that’s what they’re doing and why.
Instead, most of us have just been told to hold the horse in front and drive them on from behind at the same time. And most horses are doing their damndest to make sense of that but falling short. Because they simply cannot both go and not go.
In this school we make sure that the aids agree with each other. If you ask your horse to go, you let him. If you ask him to change his balance and slow, you say thank you very much.
From a horse’s point of view, this is just common sense.
