Glenshee Equestrian Centre

“ON THE BIT”—NEXT PHASE: BALANCING  POINTS: ·       Balancing ·       Building ·       Rewarding In the previous stages, you worked on relaxing the frame, primarily by loosening the jaw, poll , and any bracing in the muscles of the neck . You should have found that this transfers its loosening effect all the way along the topline, through the shoulder and down into the hind legs, creating regularity and an easy, swinging in the gaits, as well as an overall lengthening of the horse’s outline. However, as noted before, using the inside “Direct (Leading) Rein” will have the effect of slightly loading the inside fore. This is not the great sin it is often made out to be, especially when the horse is relaxed (not rushing) and working at a natural pace (not pushed) on straight lines and gentle curves (not tight turns.) However, your goal in this next step is to shift that balance fro...

enlightened horsemanship through touch has posted another great discussion on dominance-oriented training. while reading the post i recalled several horses i have met over the years who were trained this way and rebelled. it didn’t work for them, and this post has effectively put into words just why this approach didn’t work. it also got me thinking about what did work, and a possible explanation of why it worked when the standard approach didn’t. in a nutshell, i think it comes down to this: "these dominant-submissive relationships are constantly renegotiated in the wild. they are not static. jostling for rank never ends.. in contrast, a calm, secure state of loving cooperation can be maintained indefinitely, so long as the human does nothing to destroy it." i have seen the effects of this first hand. this approach leaves the horse only two routes forward; the first is as above, to continue jostling for rank, and the other is to create such an atmosphere o...

i'd like to recommend the following blog post: Do You Demand Your Horse’s Complete Attention? I came across this great post over at Enlightened Horsemanship Through Touch , a blog I happen to love! This is a subject that is near and dear to me and my personal training style, but it was never something I thought about in any formal way, so it was really cool to have someone put it all out there in words where I could wrap my brain around it a bit. The result was a comment too long to post that I thought I’d post here in hopes that some of the readers here might visit the original post and share some of their thoughts on the subject too. Anyway, for what it’s worth, here’s my two cents: This is a post I instinctively agree with but have never put into coherent thoughts, so I’m grateful someone has so succinctly put it into words for me! This gets right to the heart of much that I dislike about natural horsemanship and all its talk about “being the alpha” and “respect.” There is ...

So, what did work? To begin with, we wen t back to basics to fill in all those blanks left in his training. E veryone thought that just beca use they put him in draw reins and got his head down that he was “on the bit.” They thought that just because he was moving forward h e had impulsion. They thought that just becaus e they could shorten his stride he was collected. Like so many people in the H/J world (and an alarming number of people in dressage) they had co mpletely missed the point. Of course, at the time I also knew nothing about the technicalities of dressage. I only knew when it felt right and when it felt wrong. And I ha d the benefit of riding my own horse who was super-sensitive in every respect and wou ldn’t tolerate anything but the lightest contact. I didn’t know how to hold a mouth or to pull, or to drive a horse into my hand with seat and leg; that was all foreign to me and doing so always felt wrong. Everyone talks about c ontact, contact, contact. And yes,...