The shorter your reins, the more direct the link from your seat to your hands to your horse’s mouth, therefore an immediate, more subtle response is attained. The closer the link, the more refined you can become, the clearer the communication you can relay to your horse and the more precise your cues and positioning. Communicating with soft feel is far less crude than longer reins and has less room for error or misinterpretation.
You may need to use Soft Feel or what we call a ‘Contact Rein’ when doing things like; manoeuvring through tight spots, placing feet in or on a particular spot, opening gates, regulating paces within a gait, lateral movements, cutting or herding cattle, or any thing where it is important that your horse understands quickly and precisely what it is you want him to do.
The term ‘Soft Feel’ comes from the feel on the reins when your horse is listening closely and is poised ready to take action. Often he will collect his body in short and close and soften his poll, which effectively softens the reins. If your horse has opposition reflex and does not want to listen to you, he will often push on the bit and reins, giving you the opposite feel; heavy and dull.
In Level 3 we will discuss something called ‘Natural Flexion’ which is essentially what a horse will do when engaging and empowering himself to perform some kind of action. Think of horses playing and showing off in the paddock. Notice how they get very elevated and their bodies seem shorter from nose to tail. They engage all of their power from the hindquarter and can now dance and almost float through the air.
It is important to remember that soft feel is just that ... a soft feel. Sometimes people get soft feel confused with vertical flexion, as often to give softness a horse will give vertically at the poll to soften the reins, hence his head will appear to flex vertically straight up and down. Vertical Flexion is the ultimate goal, something we will aspire to in Levels 4 and 5 as it indicates the amount of engagement and power our horse is harnessing. It is purely the outcome of engagement and softness ... not our focus.
However, for a horse to truly give vertically, it means he will bend, flex or ‘break over’ between the 1st and 2nd vertebrae, right behind his ears. In order to do this, he exposes his spinal cord right in that vulnerable death spot we talked about in Lesson 2, leaving him in a defenceless position and especially vulnerable if he has a predator on his back. How much does your horse need to trust you to do this? It is not something to be taken for granted.
Many people prize the vertical head set more than the softness, so they go about getting it by mechanical means such as draw reins, chambons, martingales or lunging their horse for hours in side-reins. Knowing what you do now about opposition reflex, you may be able to imagine how dull and heavy this can make the horse, let alone how your horse feels about it. They may learn to flex, however they also learn to push on the bit, get heavy on the reins and become extremely dull. This kind of force will get some flexion, however it is rarely true flexion. This is because the horse does not trust to expose the spinal cord. They feel claustrophobic and lacking options so they will flex further down their neck between the 7th and 8th vertebrae which still gives the illusion of a vertical head-set without the spine opening as far. It also alleviates some of the soreness of being forced to carry a head-set for a prolonged period of time. Imagine how it would feel to have your head tied to your chest for even a few minutes, let alone for the length of time some poor horses are subjected too.
A horse in this position will have his weight more forward and not be truly engaging his hindquarter. Often he will develop what we call an ‘uh uh’ muscle - in other words ‘uh uh, I’m not doing that’ – which looks like an inverted bowl on the side of the neck below the 7th & 8th vertebrae. The more developed the muscle the larger and harder it becomes.
When a horse is truly engaged, his body becomes very short and powerful. He will lift up out of his wither and flex from there, softening at the poll as a result. This is something that takes a lot of confidence and trust in the rider and will build with time. Our horse will give it to us naturally when he is ready and we do not expect it until the higher levels. For Level 2 and 3 we are just looking for Soft Feel ... softness of the reins ... allowing the engagement and flexion to develop naturally.
Read More Road To Horsemanship articles.
- By Meredith Ransley, Quantum Savvy.