27/04/2024
Very well put.
“Ben do you ever have horses who just won’t respond to signals? Who aren’t interested in learning?” 🤔
I get variations of this question on an almost daily basis. Every time I read it I can feel inside me the same sense of being lost iv found myself burdened with many times over the years.
Let’s make things clear from the start
Your horses isn’t stupid
Your horse isn’t lazy
Your horse isn’t disobedient
Your horse isn’t stubborn
Your horse is lost.
If I choose to educate you on some obscure topic and after a number of lessons you’re still baffled, confused and lost. The burden of responsibility is on me. The teacher.
There is no difference when it comes to horses.
To me every horse is a riddle. A complex weave of emotion, learned habits and instincts. By choosing to have a horse in our life and in doing so deciding to subject that horse to our interference in their life we have a responsibility to untangle the weave.
Like a parent to a child it is our responsibility to educate our horse on the world they live in, how to act and how to have confidence in doing so.
When we hit a sticking point on our journey we must not give up. For these sticking points are our opportunity for growth.
No exercise is so small it can not be broken down further. There is always a way to simplify and slow down to allow a horse to gain confidence and competence with a certain signal or cue before we recombine the different signals to ask for more difficult manoeuvres with greater ease.
We have five forms of communication when working liberty horses. Five ways to give signals to our horse.
I call them the five senses of liberty
1. Tactile cues
2. Visual cues
3. Verbal cues
4. Foot work
5. Body language
Imagine each of the above as a dial that can be turned from 0 to 10.
Whenever we are asking a horse for a movement and getting no response think “which of the five am I using? And how could I utilise the others I am not?”
The aim is always to have all five dials at 1 or 2. Opposed to having tactile cues ( touch ) at level 10 and everything else at 0.
When we allow our self to rely purely on our tactile cues we become nothing more than a floating whip.
We can combine these multiple ways to communicate with biomechanics to position the horses head, neck and other body parts in a way to make the easiest next move for the horse the movement we are looking for.
No horse is stupid, stubborn or lazy.
They just need more help to gain confidence in the meanings of the signals you offer them ❤️
Think of every signal we have to communicate with our horses as a word in a language we are creating together. The more words in the language the more complete the conversation we can have.
Your horse isn’t ignorant. They just need help understanding some of the “new words” you’re teaching them 🙏
Photography credit to E J Lazenby Photography
