Susanne Frank Equine and Canine Therapies

31/08/2023

14/08/2023

WHAT DO YOU SEE?

A few weeks ago I watched a few video clips of the 2022 European Dressage Championships with a feeling of discomfort. This morning I viewed a clip of a horse that was difficult to pick up its feet.

Yesterday I watched a training video by a well-known horsemanship trainer and felt very uncomfortable.

When I read some of the comments that accompanied each of those videos, I was struck by how much my assessment of the training and the performances differed from others. There I was feeling very uncomfortable about what I was watching, yet feeling like I was missing something because of how much rapturous support was being expressed in the comments section.

Then it struck me that what I was looking at and what other people were looking at were not the same elements of the same videos.

People saw the reach of the forelegs in the extended trot of one of the dressage horses and loved it. I saw foam erupting from the horse’s mouth like a volcano indicating tension and worry. I saw a neck with extreme curvature and heavy-handed use of the reins. It bothered me.

In the video of the horse that avoided having its feet picked up, people’s comments ranged from checking for ulcers to back soreness. Yet I saw a horse that was distracted and mentally disconnected from the handler and was wanting to be with its paddock buddies.

In the video showing the horsemanship trainer working a horse, there was a lot of praise for the responsiveness and lightness the horse showed when asked to perform lateral flexions. I saw a horse that was afraid of the reins.

At a horse expo a few years ago I watched the c**t starting competition. The official winner of the event was able to ride his horse over tarpaulins, open a gate, and cracked a stock whip while sitting on it. He got a huge applause. But for me, the unofficial winner of the event was a woman who didn’t even try to get her horse to do any of those things. It was not ready. In fact, she didn’t even ride her horse. But over the three days her horse became relaxed, connected with her, and was trying its heart out at everything it was asked. The way she worked with her sensitive mare was first prize in my book.

I want to be clear that I am not yelling at anybody. I want to be clear that I am not saying that my judgment and perception of what is right is where the discussion ends. But I am trying to point out that different people have different ideas of what they believe is good training. I want to point out that some people make their judgments based on what we can teach a horse to do. Other people are more interested in judging the quality of training on what we can teach a horse to feel.

When I see a horse working a cow or performing a half pass or walking into a trailer or grazing in a paddock, it is my inbuilt bias that automatically looks at the inside of a horse. When I see a horse that is crooked or lame or straight or sound, I immediately think, “What is going on inside that horse?” When I see a horse standing to be mounted or approaching a jump, my mind first considers its expression, the direction of its thoughts, and the tension in its body. I do these things long before I consider the quality or correctness of a horse’s movement or the obedience to the aids. I can’t help it. It’s my prejudice. And because it is such a strong prejudice in me that I sometimes find it hard to understand why other people don’t judge horses and training the same way. Why do some people get excited by a huge expressive canter while a horse is displaying deep emotional upset? It’s not that I think they are wrong. It’s just that I don’t get it. I guess this explains why I am not the trainer for everybody, as hard as I might try.

Photo: This is my mare, Six showing the sort of relaxation that is worth more to me than any blue ribbon.

07/05/2023

We cannot make a horse more supple…

A huge majority of new clients want me to assist them in improving the suppleness of their horses. Conversely, most of them actually need help with stability and alignment, but the perception is that their horse lacks suppleness.

The thing is though, I can’t make your horse more supple. Neither can you.

What we can do is foster trust.

The horse must trust that the rider’s hand will not surprise him; that the leg is stable and consistent in how it communicates with the horse and that the rider’s mind is clear and focussed.

Most importantly, the horse must trust that the rider is listening every stride, so that the horse can communicate, “This is a little too difficult, can you make it easier?”, if needed.

You see, no matter what discipline you ride, your horse will always be a horse. A prey animal.

Dressage horse = flashy prey animal
ShowJumper = prey animal that jumps
Reining horse = compact and agile prey animal
All-rounder horse = prey animal with many jobs!

The first question that a prey animal asks itself in any given situation is, “Am I safe?”

If he feels the answer is no, then we have already got a roadblock on our path to ‘suppleness’.

Suppleness starts in the mind. When we stretch our bodies, the first sensation is of mild discomfort which quickly melts into relief, so long as we breathe and relax into it. We do not start to affect change on the soft tissue structures until a short while after.

I believe the same is true of horses. The first barrier we meet will be the horse’s nervous system. Only once we have passed through this ‘barrier’ do we start to affect the body of the horse.
Be aware that the ‘barrier’ can come back down and block you at any given moment. For example, following a change to the environment in the stable or arena.

An exercise cannot make a horse more supple.

A training method cannot make a horse more supple.

Only the horse, flowing through subtle transitions between postures, tempo’s and gaits with a relaxed mind, can make himself more supple.

My advice: start by only doing what you can do well. Gently. With relaxation. Next, build on it. Make subtle changes to it. When you make changes, try not to lose too many of the things you liked about the work. It’s OK to lose a little for a short time, but if you lose too much, go back to doing something that you could do well. Gather all of the components which you liked about your work and start from there.

Work within the comfort zone of the horse, with only moments of working at the edge of the comfort zone.

The nervous system is the first gateway to suppleness. Relaxation and quiet dialogue are the keys.

04/02/2023

I'm striving to be part of a future for horses where the poor performance diagnostics don't stop at a head-nodding, hip-hiking, nerve block assessment.

Where posture isn't disregarded as conformation.

A reality where postural assessment is drawn in to the reasoning behind why a symptom may occur;

Despite there being no evidence of pathology.

For it to become the norm to observe the mechanical deficit and understand which soft tissues are integrated within that movement,

How they're misfiring,

And then develop a plan to sympathetically address that posture in a logical way.

Rather than disregard it as a benign deficit the horse has.

Rather than tell owners to just push through their intuition and ignore those feelings that something is wrong with their horse.

But also to cultivate movement that supports the horse's emotional wellbeing too.

Instead of treating the horse like a puppet to be controlled.

Because whilst movement is medicine, if the mind isn't there with the body, if there's no freedom, joy and expression,

It's just going through the motions.

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Lovely Lenny, owned by LS Horsemanship ❤️

29/10/2022

“Rising”
One of the many things that annoy me is mis-use of the term “rising” when talking about a horses age. “Rising” is used interchangeably with “nearly” but that isn’t what it means!

The term comes from the idea that all horses age a year on the 1st of January. Regardless of when their birthday is in that year, they are considered a year older on the 1st January. This originated in horse racing but is now used by most competitions and societies. Obviously very few horses actually have their birthdays on the 1st Jan. Outside of racing, very few horses are born in January at all (I’m specifically talking about the UK here). So from the 1st of January, a horse becomes “rising” …. the age they will turn that year.

This is a very important distinction because the horses age matters. For example, in the UK, outside of racing, it is not allowed for a horse under 4 years of age to be ridden on a show or competition ground. Not at all, not even in the working in arena. But that rule is not talking about the horses birthday, it means from the 1st of January of the year they will turn 4. Whether you agree or not (I do not in case you were wondering), even if the horse doesn’t turn 4 until October, they can be ridden at a competition from the 1st January, when they are actually 3 years and 3 months old.

When I check a horse at the moment (October) and the owner tells me the animal is “rising 3” I immediately assume the horse will be having its 3rd birthday before the 31st December. Because that is what “rising 3” means. Which causes a lot of confusion when I say the horse’s teeth say he’s 2 years old. Every day I come across this. So I just wanted to clarify what “rising” actually means to avoid the endless confusion and explanations in future.

In the photo is my Warmblood, Adonis (the dental photo was taken earlier this summer). He was born 3rd May 2019. He is 3 years old. On 1st January 2022 he was rising 3, on 3rd May 2022 he was 3 years old and on 1st January 2023 he will be rising 4 until the 3rd May 2023 when he will be 4 years of age.

I hope this clears it up!!

02/10/2022

30/08/2022

WHAT'S MISSING FROM THE GERMAN TRAINING SCALE?

The German Training Scale (GTS) is often used as the guide for modern competition dressage training. People use it as their bible in their travels to produce the dressage megastar. Most successful competitors admit to using the GTS as the backbone of their training and instructors all over the world teach and adhere to its principles. So given the importance and influence that the GTS has on modern dressage training, it seems practicable that it be examined from time to time to see if it still holds up well.

The GTS comprises 6 basic elements rhythm, relaxation, impulsion, straightness, contact, and collection. Each is taught in order because it is believed that each is built on the foundation of the earlier elements. So for example straightness is only achievable if the horse already offers good quality rhythm, relaxation, and impulsion. Likewise, collection only becomes possible when a horse has a good handle on the other five elements.

It is highly desirable that any horse (dressage educated or not) should be able to exhibit rhythm, relaxation, impulsion, straightness, contact, and collection. They are noble pursuits that have purpose and merit no matter what discipline you wish to travel with your horse.

But I also believe the GTS is not a miracle formula or perfect path to great results. Some trainers believe that GTS is the foundation of good training. It isn’t. It is not the foundation. If the GTS is to be of any value it must stand on more fundamental elements of what I call the three pillars of training – focus, clarity, and softness. For the GTS to be effective in training, each element of it must exhibit focus, clarity, and softness. Without focus, clarity, and softness the GTS is an empty shell that will have the horse never reaching its potential and failing prematurely as it approaches the higher levels of training.

So what are focus, clarity, and softness?

At first thought, focus seems obvious. We automatically think of a horse’s mind being on our aids. But this is only part of it. Not only do we need to have our horse’s mind with us, but we also need to be able to direct its mind elsewhere. We need it to listen to us, but also to send its thoughts elsewhere to create the movement we want.

Just like us, a horse thinks about what it is about to do before it does it. It thinks it is thirsty so its mind goes to the trough before the feet take it there. A horse does not suddenly find itself standing at the trough and wonder how it got there. It knows how it got there. It felt thirsty and the brain ordered the feet to the water trough. It thinks it wants to go out to the gate of the arena so a horse’s thought gets stuck at the gate. The feet resist moving away from the gate and hurry when heading towards the gate. When we try to separate a horse’s feet from its thoughts we get resistance because a horse is always trying to do what its mind is telling it. But when what a horse is thinking about doing and what we are trying to get it to do are the same, there is no resistance. So good focus is not only about having a horse listen to us but being able to direct its focus to do other things too.

Clarity is also fairly obvious. It means when we ask a horse to do something it is absolutely clear what we are asking – zero confusion. It is my experience that people are often poor at being clear with a horse. They expect a horse to know something just because they know it. Most people struggle to break down a task into tiny steps that can make sense to a horse. When teaching a horse a task people see the final picture in their mind and not the process needed to get there.

Clarity is the horse knowing the answer to the question. Knowing the answer gives the horse comfort and confidence and emotional comfort. A clarity of clarity creates anxiety, resistance, and mental turmoil.

The third element of the three pillars is softness. Softness comes about because the quality of focus and clarity are strong. It is the “love child” of focus and clarity.

Softness is quite an elusive concept for most people and it is often confused with lightness to the aids. But let me clear up the difference between softness and lightness. Lightness is a physical response to the aids whereas softness is an emotional response to the aids. You can have lightness without softness, but you can’t have softness without lightness.

In softness, there is an emotional calm. It’s what I call a quiet mind. It does not mean a dull mind or a sleepy mind. It means a ready mind prepared for what is about to come, but there is a calm okay-ness about the mind. Softness means the horse is responsive and does not have a drag or lateness or heaviness in the way it responds to the aids, yet its emotions are untroubled. It is what we aim for in everything we do with a horse. If there is a problem with softness it is because the focus and clarity are not yet at a high enough quality to yield us the softness we require from our horse.

When there is a problem with softness it is certain that there is a problem with either focus or clarity or both. Go back a step or two and fill in the gaps to refine the degree of focus and clarity. You know when you have got it right because the softness will improve.

Focus, clarity, and softness should underlie every element of the GTS (or any training principle). Without them, the GTS is nothing more than poorly performed tricks. But even more than that, if focus, clarity, and softness are instilled to a high enough degree they make most of the GTS redundant and unnecessary. When focus, clarity, and softness are sufficiently established you will already have relaxation, rhythm, straightness, impulsion, contact, and collection. It’s just a matter of how refined and sophisticated you incorporate these elements into your work. For example, you will need a much higher degree of focus, clarity, and softness to achieve collection than to achieve a good level of rhythm. But it is still the same elements – just more refined.

A few people have told me that focus, clarity, and softness are already inferred in the GTS, and talking about them is unnecessary. I would hope that were true, but I have never found it to be true. In my experience, the GTS focuses on exercises to create rhythm, relaxation, straightness, etc. But just because a horse is able to demonstrate the elements of the GTS does not mean that focus, clarity, and softness are well established. If that were true there would not be such a prevalence of horses leaning on the reins, busy mouths, spinning tails, and all the gear necessary for control that is commonplace at competitions. Perhaps when the GTS was first introduced as the bible of training, everybody naturally accepted that focus, clarity, and softness were essential parts of the GTS – maybe it didn’t need to be stated. But that is certainly not the case nowadays. If you ask most people to define and describe focus, clarity, and softness there is inevitable a confused response. They either try to make something up on the spot or shrug with an “I don’t know.” Yet most people who are serious about dressage can recite the GTS and describe all the elements.

The ideals of the GTS have a lot of merits and every horse in any discipline can greatly benefit from what it tries to teach. But without the underlying foundation of focus, clarity, and softness which underpin each element, it is nothing more than a series of mechanical exercises than has little benefit and bears little resemblance to good training.

Photo: All training is underpinned by a horse’s focus, clarity, and softness. The quality of training is rooted in the quality focus, clarity, and softness.