03/21/2021
I agree with just about everything in this article. I do like to use a surcingle and side reins too and have found there is an art to that too.
Whenever I post about lungeing a horse, any number of you folks will disagree, whether wholeheartedly or ever-so-slightly. You’ll remark that it’s a good practice to ‘take the edge off’, get a safe ride in, but that lungeing will either make a horse lame, cranky, tenser-but-fitter… or all of the above.
Posting opinions online is a risky business and so, I must be prepared to defend my thesis. I respectfully disagree with the anti-lungers, and here is why.
Lungeing allows me to observe and learn what my horse is telling me, without weighing him down. If he is unable to do my bidding with only his own body to worry about, he will not soar to greater heights with me on him. A horse (and more particularly, a smaller pony) that cannot canter consecutive circles, slowly, steadily and in quiet calm will not do this while ridden. Read that again. He cannot.
It's taken me four decades to learn that I can teach a lot of good from the centre of the circle. Will lungeing make a broke horse? Nope, it will not. I will still have to get on the scary rides, putting on the mileage, gaining the experience that goes into a well-rounded horse. As I’m doing this, I will be putting a ‘soft feel’ on his mouth, riding him always into a more advanced state of collection. Much of my riding will approximate lungeing, however, as I aim to ride as often in stretching as I do, in roundness.
Now. There IS a difference between lungeing, as an art… and chasing a horse around with a cracking whip.
When I’m told that there are other ‘groundwork’ exercises that accomplish the same things, I perk up my ears. I’m paying attention! For as much as I’ve watched and read and listened, I’ve yet to find an in-hand exercise that develops the horse from behind, through the top line, as does correct lungeing. I am upfront about using the right gear, which does NOT include a surcingle and side reins, because I want to develop my horse to use its poll and not a random spot halfway down its neck. Is a dedicated lungeing cavesson expensive? Yes, I guess it can be… but as so many of us buy take-out coffee and drive pricey trucks and trailers, I’m fine with shelling out $250 to maximize my horses.
In this photo, please excuse the fact that I am lungeing Pilot from his bridle and not using the cavesson. I should not have used this picture, other than the once choppy, tense and inverted horse is swinging along so very beautifully... To make things right, I have put a close-up of him in a correct cavesson, in the comments below.
Much of today’s groundwork exercises come to us with a slant towards gaining respect. They are good but they are something best revisited occasionally, should there be need. I sure don’t get jammed in park with them. In my case, if mutual respect is looking shaky, I’ll either put some serious miles on my horse under saddle, or I’ll untack the horse and head straight to the round pen. We’ll sort it out, the good, the bad and the ugly... then we’ll get the heck outta there. I don’t keep a horse round penning very long because it can instill a reactive or cranky side (based on whether my horse is energetic or lazy) that is very, very hard to fix.
The same goes for many of today’s groundwork exercises or ‘games’. They are games in name only and too often, are a mind-numbing purgatory for the horse. Most horses are largely task-oriented. They like to use their skills to get a job done and it is perplexing for them to suddenly find themselves being treated like dogs. This is not anthropomorphism, as some folks like to point out, but a fact based on fifty years of really getting to know my horses. Just like their owners, some horses like to work for a living; some like to loll around at home.
I’m going to say this and I might be sorry for having done so, but many people are fixated on groundwork exercises to redirect focus from the fact that they’re afraid to ride. If a horse is too old or too unsound to have a job under saddle, then perhaps it’s an argument to stick with the ground games. To put a healthy, young horse through the endless permutations of pressure-and-reward is nothing short of purgatory, in my mind. I hold this opinion after seeing far too many of these over-handled ‘groundwork only’ horses grow resentful or angry, literally coming apart at the seams. Moving a horse’s feet around, getting a feel for his mind and body is good… but our need to endlessly drill horses from the lead rope, frontwards, backwards and sideways, is just too much of a good thing.
We also have to be aware that we can actually scare a horse, make him even more reactive, if we come on too strongly in the round pen. It becomes a chicken-and-egg scenario very easily. Are we round penning a 'tough' horse because he needs it? Or, have we made a horse a little goosey because we've rollbacked him to a hair trigger state? This is just a question that I'll be regularly asking myself whenever I'm starting one.
I deduce that lungeing a horse—correctly, without side-reins and with a goal in mind—most closely approximates the classical balance between the horse in my hand and the horse under my seat. Ever moving forward, building upon my horse’s God-given movement and rhythm. I urge you to study the art further and when you’re ready, to try it. Lungeing is groundwork that is working towards making a beautiful riding horse. People are always asking why my horses are so easily ‘put upon their bits’. The answer, of course, is that I don’t put them on their bits… I teach them how to carry themselves and then, to trust my hand. They start on the lunge line, first.
It bears repeating that I do not lunge my horses in order to tire them, so that I can handle them, though I'm smart enough to 'take the edge off' on certain days. No, I lunge my horses and ponies as a regular part of wellness, like my own gentle yoga practice. Large, stretchy circles... smaller, bendier circles... expanding their bodies along straight lines...
Lungeing can be the difference between wishing we were on a maximum quality horse… and maximizing the quality of the horse we happen to be on.
