Ideally, to send a direct and concise message to your horse with no possibility of misinterpretation, you would stick your fingers straight into the corners of his mouth. No bit, no reins, just us and him. However, our arms are not quite long enough to reach, so some compensation has to be made. The accuracy of your yields depends on how good your connection from your seat through your hands to your horse’s mouth is.
Sit with your elbows resting lightly on your hip-bones with your hands pointing forward like a handgun, cops and robbers style. Push your left hip forward and see what happens. If your elbows and hips are connected, your left forearm and hand should be pushed forward also. Imagine that you had a rein in your left hand. What would happen to it? Hopefully you can see that if you open your left hip up and out, you also open up your left direct rein. All you have to do is open your hand just a little. If you have taught your horse to look for open doors and look for comfort, he would have struck off with a direct rein at whatever gait your energy level dictated. Can you see why it is so important to focus up? This should be an open door.
Now bring your hip back straight again and once again be aware of what happens to your arm, hand and imaginary rein. Can you see how smoothly and easily you can change down a transition? If you are doing any more than this at this level, you are doing too much. Either you need to do more preparation so your horse looks for the open doors, or you need to ride more gracefully and give your horse the opportunity to take the offer. Doing too much usually comes from us trying too hard and making our horses do what we want. This kind of ask is usually met with some resistance.
If you have a good rein seat connection, your cues and requests will become almost invisible because your connection is so close that every tiny move you make will send a clear message to your horse. Remember, be light, sit up straight but have a relaxed posture, and be soft.
Read More Road To Horsemanship articles.
- By Meredith Ransley, Quantum Savvy.