Help my horse is running through the bit!
Welcome to a profound exploration of the intricate world of equine training. Today, we embark on a journey that delves deep into the dynamics between horse and rider, focusing on the multifaceted process of confidence building. Join us as we unravel the challenges faced, the strategies employed, and the profound growth experienced by both human and horse.
As an Holistic Equestrian, each challenge presents an opportunity for growth and learning. Recently, one of our students encountered a significant hurdle while working with one of our school horses. Something that we often fail to recognise in our horses is how to communicate clearly with our horse, which doesn't happen due to the application of pressure and pain. Your horse doesn’t feel you pulling on their mouth and think oh the rider wants me to stop. They feel you pulling on their mouth and think my mouth is getting pulled on.
The first step in addressing this is acknowledging that. Some horses will feel bit pressure and stop. Others will feel it and brace against, pull through, toss their head. Any number of perfectly normal responses to having a piece of metal pulling on their mouth. This is not easy to acknowledge as the rider, because part of the reason you are pulling on your horse's mouth is that you want your horse to stop and get scared when it doesn’t. Your body then assumes the fear response. Your pelvis tilts forward, you pull yourself forward and lean forward out of the saddle and your spine locks in fear. All of this telling your horse to go faster and that the human is scared of something, we need to run away from the scary thing. Your horse doesn’t assume they are the scary thing.
Central to our approach is rewiring our physical response when we ask. You want to assume the collapsed posture of a couch potato. What does it feel like to collapse onto the couch after a long day or a long week. We want this big breath out down regulated into relaxation when we ask the horse to stop. Taking a breath out, softening the spine, getting our pelvis into more of a posterior tilt and keeping our shoulders behind our hips. Taking the breath out and softening all the way through the spine to the heel and then apply the bit pressure. Horses are great associative learners, and if you are consistent with this and practising, in no time you will feel your horse thinking about stopping or stopping from your breath, adjusting your seat or dropping your heels.
Our school horse played a pivotal role in this journey. With their calm demeanor and gentle nature, our equine partner served as a beacon of stability and reassurance. Through patient guidance and unwavering support, the horse helped to restore the student's confidence, bridging the gap between fear and empowerment. Our horses are emotionally intuitive, catching dysregulation of the nervous system or emotions long before I notice them. When pushed through it escalates our horses tension and fear. But when heard and acknowledged offers us body awareness, self awareness and accountability for our internal state.
Our school horses have permission, when they feel their rider dysregulated, to stop. This prevents the horse feeding on this tension and spiralling with the student and is my cue to check in on the student. There are a handful of triggers each horse has. This is the benefit of getting to know your horse and building relationship with them because I can say is this mine or is it my horses? 99% of the tension that I see in the horses in lessons stems from the rider. When we can become aware and acknowledge it becomes a stepping stone to the personal growth that comes from our body awareness of dysregulation and our triggers and fears.
Critical to our success in our body awareness can be a deep learning or rewiring of our fear response. This is something that you might need support from a psychologist or equine therapist, especially if it is the result of ptsd or trauma. Our body communicates to the horse first and then our aids. If we don’t have conscious awareness of what our body is communicating the horse will become confused with our body saying one thing and our aids trying to say another. We will get frustrated and scared that our horse isn’t listening to us and we feel out of control on our horse driving us further into our fear response that we are communicating to our horse through our personal tension holding patterns.
In the end, our horses don’t pop out of their mother into this world knowing that when their human sits on their back and pulls a piece of metal on their mouth that they are supposed to stop. Someone has to teach them that. We have to teach them that. Our horses primary language is non verbal, body language and postures. Our language established through pressure is conditioned. And we can just as quickly condition our horse to do “the wrong thing” to an aid as we can to do the right. It is important to be clear, consistent, follow through on the ask and say thank you when they respond.
Check this video I made for you for the in-hand exercises I do on the ground to cue train bit pressure aids before sitting on our horses back.
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