The Power of Neutral

The Power NEUTRAL of

By Elisha Bradburn | Photos by Connie Ellis

This month I thought I would take a break from my series on the qualities of a horseman, and visit a very important, but not often emphasized topic: The power of neutral.

To begin with, allow me to define neutral from a horsemanship perspective. Neutral is the state of being engaged and ready, but not giving out any communications.

You are ready, in that you are not slumped over, sitting on your back pockets, and chewing the fat with the neighbour over the fence. You are in an athletic riding position, reins up off the neck and poised for what’s next. It should be comfortable for you and the horse, a sweet spot of sorts, and it should be easily recognized by your horse as the “do nothing until further notice” position. Believe it or not, this neutral position is way easier talked about than executed!

Continued on page 6 Me and Boone at neutral.

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Continued from page 5

To be a good rider, you need to be clear, crisp and concise in your communications to your horse.

To be clear as an equestrian, you need to have a good neutral as your home base. It is the place that provides the difference, the punctuation between doing one thing, and then another, kind of like a period between sentences. The neutral home base is the place you return to when you have given a request via your aids to your horse, you have executed the request together, and are ready for the next thing. The visit to neutral could be as long as a few minutes, or as short as a second. But the difference that this moment of “nothingness” provides to the horse can’t be overstated.

Miles Kingdon often tells a story about a fly buzzing in your ear, eventually you don’t hear it anymore. In contrast, a speaker who delivers a speech with proper cadence and pauses garners 100% of your attention. That is like the power of neutral, the silencing of aids, the nothingness, the pause, gives the aids their power. Neutral is the pause between the important instructions you are trying to relay to your horse. The first big lesson I squirreled away in my lessons with Miles was to develop awareness. He encouraged me to stop and really look at my horse. He told me to look at his ears. Boone’s ears were flicking back towards me on his back, and forward again, like antennas, as if to say, “what next boss?” It was a big moment. For the first time in my life, and I have been around horses many years, that I really looked at my horse for feedback. This is not to say I had never received feedback from my horse, the obvious feedback we can’t miss, such as limping, bucking, rearing, etc. However, generally that is the feedback that happens when we miss the feedback we should have seen prior to the horse needing to get so extreme. I mean seeing the type of feedback that will open the door to a relationship with a horse (different than dictatorship). We need this level of awareness to be great with horses. This level of awareness allows you to realize why you need to slow down to hurry up, why you need neutral.

So many times, I would get in a rush and have expectations that my horse should deliver my requests with precision and speed, even if I didn’t have the feel, timing and skill to properly communicate my expectations. I felt like I had no use and no time for pausing, I was giving so many signals to my horse all at once (the fly was buzzing let me tell you!). Some signals on purpose, and some not on purpose, such as shifting in the slipping saddle, trying to adjust my foot in the stirrup, etc. My lack of awareness, and desire to go far fast was getting in the way of any real success with my horses. Too many signals (or aids) at once, and the absence of a clear neutral created confusion for my horse.

Let me give you an example of the importance of a clear neutral

to the horse. Imagine I am pulling your arm just lightly, so you walk forward towards me, thinking I am indicating for you to come forward. But when you come forward, I immediately start shaking your arm, so you start backing up. Then I pull your arm harder forward again, and we keep on doing this back and forth until you shove me away, out of desperation for relief. If the horse cannot find neutral as a reward and indication of a job completed, he will continue to search for the answer, with or without his rider still atop his back. This may also look like uneasiness, chomping the bit, rooting the bit, jigging back and forth, etc., because he can’t find the relief. This emphasizes why we need to provide a clear neutral to communicate well in a silent conversation.

So, what does a clear neutral look like in a silent conversation? It starts with a feeling inside you, a feeling of calm, purposeful readiness, without tension. Your seat is on your balance point in the saddle - that is your ears, shoulders, hips and heels are aligned, so that if your horse were to be snatched out from under you magically, you would drop to the ground standing. Your body and legs are relaxed, heels not pushed down, just resting in your stirrups, no tension anywhere. Reins are held above the neck, not tight but not totally slack, so you are ready to do anything. It is a nothing going on, but ready to get on with it, kind of place. It feels good to the horse. It feels different from when you are actually giving a communication or aid. It is like a period at the end of the communication sentence. It says good job, yes, that was it, you did what I asked. If we just keep on giving aids, how will the horse ever know if he actually accomplished what we asked of him. How will he relate aids to actions if it is just one big run on sentence of instructions?

Neutral is a pause, a sweet spot, but not to be confused with dropping the reins on the neck, giving total slack, and chilling right out.

You want to picture neutral like you are still having a conversation, and you are pausing, but you are not “hanging up the phone” as Jonathan Field puts it so well. The value of neutral has been absolutely priceless in the development of a soft, responsive, listening, and engaged horse. My horses have come way farther, faster, by me learning the power of neutral. I believe it was Pat Parelli who said it best when he said, “Take the time it takes, so it takes less time.” That is kind of like neutral, if we slow down and ensure our communication is clear, as it is punctuated with neutral, it will make everything faster! Hope this enriches your journey like it has mine.

Happy Thanksgiving friends!

Me and Boone slacker rein neutral, but still ready.

Elisha Bradburn and her husband Clay own Faithful Farm, an equestrian centre in the Fraser Valley of BC. Elisha’s passion with horses lies in psychologybased horsemanship, with a strong consideration for the horse’s point of view. Elisha is available for speaking engagements and can be followed on her Legacy Horsemanship pages on both Facebook and Instagram or e-mailed at legacyhorsemanship@shaw.ca.