BIT,
or no bit?
By Alessandra Deerinck The choice of tack, more often than not, is driven by its efficacy in terms of intensity of the pressure exercised on the horse, but If we become detailed and efficient in our communication to the horse, we can widen the scope of our choice.
When we are in the presence of a horse, or any other live individual, they perceive our behavior and act accordingly towards us. This is the reason why we have studied the social interaction between human and horse and formulated Human Horse Sensing as a detailed method that can be applied to any equestrian discipline. It works through behavior in a way that makes immediate sense to the horse, without requiring to train them for it. Training a horse for a purpose is an additional resource, but we should not just limit our interaction to what he has been trained for. The first step to be efficient in the communication with horses is to understand their instinctual behavior and we teach to do so on the ground and in the saddle. When we can understand the equine behavior, we also have to learn to modulate our movements in a way that horses can always immediately understand us, and most importantly we need to see and take in consideration how horses respond to our actions. Such modality makes the interaction become cooperative, like a dialogue where human and horse both contribute. The meaningful elements of the communication are not words, but movements, and their direction and frequency are key points that the horse can perceive by sight or touch, and understands them instinctually. Riding a horse puts us in a position where we occupy part of the horse’s space, the communication with the horse happens mainly by the way of touch, through pressure and release and is mediated by the tack we choose to use. The saddle is where we seat, and the bridle allows us to reach the head of the horse. In the past issue of Elite Equestrian, we talked about proper bit design, now we would like to talk about the way to make contact with the horse’s head using a bitless bridle. Rider and horse both need to learn the elements that are meaningful in the communication by touch. We teach the rider to gage his contact by its direction, frequency of request and most importantly to distinguish between the kind of interaction (cooperative or competitive) they are having with the horse. To prepare the horse to be ridden in a bridle, with or without the bit, we work to have him respond to our request that is made on the ground with the lightest touch, using a longe line. The goal is to have the rider learn to use the lightest touch by tension and by release, and to get the horse to respond to the direction of the impulse we send him, in a prompt and detailed manner, always without applying painful pressure or a fixed side rein. The horse learns to respond to the lightest tension of
the reins when we ride. He will comply with our request not by avoiding the pressure, but by following the direction of the tension or release. What is very often overlooked is that the structure of the tack we use determines the direction of the pressure not just its presence or intensity. When talking about bridles or choosing which one to use, the anatomy of the equine facial region should be always kept in mind. In order to efficiently communicate with the horse, we need to learn how to properly gage our contact through touch, and one of the ways to handle it in a detailed manner is to consider its direction and length of time relatively to the anatomical location where the horse receives it. The head is where all of the sense receptors are located and the horse orients it to perceive the environment, but also to properly move his body according to what surrounds him. When we ask him to position his head according to our instruction, we need to be conscious of these key facts. There are disciplines that require the horse to have a certain body carriage, and some riders achieve it by constraining the horse with tack or hard contact, but a horse that accepts the presence of the rider on his back, would naturally assume a correct head and body posture to achieve the correct carriage if the rider is sitting properly. Most importantly, the horse perceives all of the rider’s movements, not just what we would like to send as our input to the horse. Furthermore, causing painful pressure inside the mouth, or on the facial region will make a horse reactive and possibly defensive, which reflects on its carriage, and can cause a conflict instead of a cooperative interaction between rider and horse. In the learning process, an instance that has a negative content will not be something that the horse
TRAINING & Showing
Interaction becomes cooperative.
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