Thought for the day:
The most common cause of issues between a horse and rider under saddle is what I call “preventative riding”.
Preventative riding is what a rider is doing when they spend more time trying to stop the horse from doing things than directing him or allowing him to do things.
If you ride in a preventative manner by holding onto your horse with your reins and legs in order to control it or prevent it from going too fast or from veering off-course or from bucking or any other manner of unwanted behavior you are most likely causing the behavior that you are frightened of.
Riding like this causes riders to be stiff and unbalanced and to hunch up when the horse panics. This in turn greatly increases the chances of falling off.
There are horses around that deal with this type of riding but they do so because they are dull or desensitized to it or are just working in a state of learned helplessness.
You can’t have feel when you use your reins like a set of handlebars or a brake lever.
Riding properly into the bridle on an engaged horse has nothing to do with anything I have written above.
All horses need to learn to go on a loose rein also.
There is so much rhetoric thrown around, about getting a horse to trust you, but “trusting your horse” is probably the biggest step you must take toward this.
If safety is your main concern then you need help to learn that safety comes from keeping your horse from feeling trapped, learning to balance, learning to teach your horse how to take direction and learning that the horses energy comes from from your energy.
You may want the fancy stuff or just a safe horse but learning not to be a preventative rider is the only way forward. This is walking before you can run. It can’t be over done.
Self control is the most important type of control there is when riding.
The picture is a group of great people working on this at one of our clinics.
