You Can't Force the Kitty to Purr: Accepting the Aids
Let’s say your horse doesn’t pick up one or the other canter lead or breaks from the canter. Or doesn’t move freely forward from a light leg aid. Or maybe your horse has trouble leg yielding without falling out with the shoulder. Or perhaps he doesn’t want to go into one corner of the ring. Where do you start addressing (and fixing) the issue?
In order for any horse do what the rider wants him to do, he must
1) understand the aids
2) be physically capable of complying
3) accept your aids
Even if 1) and 2) are in place, but your horse is too worried or excited about something unrelated to you, he may still not accept the aids in a given moment. This is where a trusting relationship comes in, in which you can ask your horse to focus on you even if he’d momentarily prefer his focus to be elsewhere. But he cannot accept your aids at all if 1) and 2) haven’t been successfully established.
If there is a problem, we look to the rider. Always.
A) Do you have an independent seat? (Can you balance and follow the motion of the horse in all gaits without relying on your hands? Can you move your body parts independently? Can you sit in the correct position in all gaits?)
B) Are you sure that you know and execute each separate aid correctly?
C) Are you giving the concert of the aids in the right order with the correct timing?
D) Are you rewarding your horse for the smallest indications of the desired response?
If you are missing A, there is no way around fixing that first. Take lunge lessons. Find a Franklin Method trainer. Do whatever it takes to get better. Remember, the horse can only go as well as the rider can sit. If you suspect B and/or C are the culprit, ask your coach to help you. It may be that a trainer is hesitant to point out to someone who’s been riding for a long time that something really basic is still missing. Or perhaps they’re telling you and you think that can’t be the case after all this time. Decide if you want to learn, no matter where that starting point is.
Once you are fairly sure that you’re getting things right, you can begin to successfully train your horse. Btw., you’re training him anyway any time you’re on him, whether you’re realizing it or not. Perhaps the aids have been so confusing that his kindest option was to ignore them. His balance might be so poor that he’s trying to outrun it. Or perhaps you skipped ahead on the training scale and were working on more advanced exercises without having the building blocks in place.
Horses learn the aids through a process called operant conditioning, i.e. positive and negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement does NOT mean punishment, it just means you’re taking something away, like a light pressure of the reins or leg. Positive reinforcement means you’re adding something, i.e. a reward that could be a treat or scratching his withers. If you are NOT rewarding at all, you are not giving your horse any feedback, therefore your horse cannot learn. He needs to have agency in his life and associate certain behaviors with rewards, otherwise horses, quite understandably, either shut down or act out. The reward needs to be timed correctly for the proper association.
In any case, if the horse is not responding as desired even in small ways, you will need to bring it back down to the next lower level that’s working well. Set your horse up for success. Everything in classical (any good) training is meant to be logical and progressive. Read. Study. Ask. Find out the proper order of things, i.e. which prerequisites exist for certain exercises before attempting them. And be calm and positive. You can’t force harmony and lightness. You can’t force trust. You can’t force the kitty to purr.
Photo: PRE Pinsapo enjoying a hug and asking for a(nother) treat after a job well done
