Submission Vs Yes
We talk a lot about submission in the horse industry. It is one of the qualities of training we are marked on.
In the dictionary, submission is defined as:
“The action of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person”.
“The act of allowing someone or something to have power over you”.
I don’t know about you, but this isn’t the kind of relationship that I want to have with my horse.
All my life I had been taught how to bully my horses into submission. To be bigger, scarier and stronger than my horse and anything it could be scared of.
I used to hop off at the end of a ride feeling guilty about how I had treated my horse.
Not that the way I handled them was particularly brutal or heavy handed. It just wasn’t the relationship or the experience I wanted to have with my horse. It wasn’t the relationship I had with them on the ground. I didn’t understand why that’s what I needed to get what I wanted from my horse under saddle.
As an instructor for kids and beginners, I also understood that they physically (and for the kids, mentally) were incapable of dominating a horse into submission. The lack of strength, coordination and balance in the saddle (and for the kids understanding) meant that the horses weren’t doing as they were told because they weren’t being made to.
There had to another way to get cooperation from our horses.
This is where Training Trainability came from. How can we engage our horses in the learning process so they enjoy the training sessions and want to participate?
One of our core philosophies is to ASK, not force.
Training Trainability gives the horse the opportunity to say “no”, which a lot of riders and trainers don’t agree with. This is understandable, because if you’re horse has never been given the opportunity to say no they really take advantage of it and will just about to say no to everything!! This can feel like you’re going backwards with your training and your horse is being naughty, so riders can quickly give up on doing it this way.
This method of training is about empowering the horse’s voice so:
They choose to participate in the training, and
They also can feel comfortable about saying that’s enough when they feel pushed to their limit mentally, physically or emotionally.
It’s about us, as trainers, to think outside the box and find motivators other than how hard we can kick, use the whip and pull on their head. It’s about developing a trust, relationship and bond with our horse, so that they want to spend time with us and look after us.
It doesn’t mean that there is no discipline and we let them walk all over us. It’s about establishing clear boundaries and expectations of behaviour so that when we work with them they are respectful and safe.
When it comes to performance pressure where we are stressing their intellect and physical condition however, we must take our time and let them say “yes” or “no” rather than expecting submission of everything we ask for.
