All about contact...

You have heard the term many times, right?

Bu what is contact?

Simply put, contact is a feel of your horses mouth. Through contact we can have a subtle conversation with our horse and this becomes connection.

Contact should be a straight line - elbow, hands, and reins to bit. If we break this line by either lowering our hands or lifting our hands we interrupt the conversation with the bit to the horses mouth.

Quite often, contact and frame get confused for one and the same thing. You can have contact and your horse isn’t in a frame. You can have your horse in a frame and not have contact.

Contact also shouldn’t mean control - but some riders can feel like they are out of control when they don’t have contact.

It is important to ride your horse both in contact and without contact. Riding your horses in contact is important horse getting them to hold themselves together and in balance as is required for the athleticism demanded of them for the different disciplines we ride. Riding without contact is important for getting our horses working with us without “controlling” them with the bit.

If you don’t feel comfortable letting go of their mouths you are only get part of the conversation.

If this is you, and you feel you need more support with contact, feel and getting comfortable letting go of your horses mouth, join our free workshop “Riding with Heart”, which focuses on uncovering how to begin developing feel and connection in the saddle.