Continued from earlier post:
Now for another aspect of feel and how we take the slack out of our reins, this is crucial, this is one way we communicate with our horse. How does a horse move, most all of them that I see (with only a few exceptions) are very fluid and graceful, now let’s ask ourselves why is that important? Well that’s how they prefer to move, smoothly with grace, not jerky, stiff, and hard. So many times, people start off on the wrong tone simply because they are not aware of the force in which they go down the rein. If you do too much from the get go you will cause your horse to retreat from the learning frame of mind, he will quit searching and simply start preparing to save himself, when in all actuality we need him preparing to help us. So as you can see or already saw the horse has a mind as well as a body, and you better believe that he is a darn good communicator, most riders are simply not practiced enough to see and understand his communication. However, don’t fret yet – you are totally capable of this and improving your communication, you just have to be willing to think and sort somethings out, but that starts out with willingness, awareness and empathy.
For those of you who enjoy dorking out on horsemanship as much as me, I hope you found this both helpful and interesting. Try and remember our mind does not work the same as a horse and if a topic or lesson you have is not completely understood by you, how could you expect a horse to figure it out. I hope this sparks you onto the path of learning from the horse, for they are horses and if you aim to learn about them who better to teach you than a horse? I’ve never met a human that was on the same level as horses so why don’t we let them teach us and guide us along the path of learning, it’s not easy and it’s not supposed to be, its life, but my words can’t even begin to describe its worth.