The technical knowledge of how to talk to your horse, of which aids to give so the horse knows which maneuver to perform, is one part of this process. The other, larger, part consists of listening to the horse’s side of the dialogue. It’s our ability to understand what the horse is saying to us at any given moment. This is what we call feel.
Horses tell us all sorts of things whenever we listen. While riding, we are feeling the horse’s back with our back. We are feeling the horse’s ribcage under our legs, and, if we ride on contact, we can feel the horse’s mouth in our hands. We can feel the rhythm of the horse’s footfalls. We can feel their tempo quicken or slow down. We can feel the horse’s balance shift, from front to back, from left to right. Perhaps most importantly, we feel the relaxation or tension in the horse’s back and neck and jaw. By extension, we are feeling the horse’s mind. We can tell whether or not he is secure with us, whether or not he feels confident in his surroundings and in our presence on his back, whether or not he is focused on us, or on something other than the conversation we are having. When we ride with feel,we can tell what a horse thinks about doing a moment before he actually does it. Riding with feel makes riding horses safer because it makes what horses do less unpredictable. A feeling rider can tell when a horse is about to spook or bolt or buck, and take measures to prevent or minimize it.
This is a long-winded way of saying that learning to feel is important for every rider, not just dressage riders, not just professional trainers. Please make it a priority.
Read more about how to develop feel and timing in my Book Ride with Feel: A Guide for the Rest of Us. It’s available here:
or here:
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