HOW AIDS CAN BE VIEWED
Aids are the language through which a rider communicates his or her requests to the horse so that a conversation can be carried on between them for their mutual benefit.
The horse must understand the language of the aids.
The horse’s obedience lies in his memory.
Aids can be used as lightly as a soft summer breeze gently caressing the leaves of a tree or as a sledge hammer smashing against concrete to break it up into small pieces. Make every effort to use them with discretion; to do otherwise amounts to ersatz riding.
With young horses or when reprogramming poorly trained horses, clarity of the rider’s aids precedes their eventual subtle use.
The resistance a horse offers against a rider’s aids is usually based on an outright fear of them or a lack of understanding of them.
The rider, using his aids, must establish a balance in the horse between the energy that creates forward movement (driving aids) and the energy that moderates it (restraining aids). It is like keeping a teeter-totter board balanced horizontally.
Aids are separated into driving aids, restraining aids, and supporting aids.
DRIVING AIDS
Driving aids are used to create and re-create various actions of the horse; they are never used to maintain the action.
The aids given with the lower leg from, i.e., from the knee to the foot are of the greatest importance because they are the most effective.
The aids from the lower leg can be broken down into aids given with the knees, calves, or spurs.
Knee pressure is not as effective as a driving aid on green or poorly trained horses. It is more useful on horses that have been educated to the aids.
Some riders believe it is necessary to keep the calf of their leg in continual contact with the horse’s side. By doing this it tends to make the horse dull to the leg. The rider’s legs should just softly drape around the horses’ sides; not squeeze him to death.
It is more effective if the rider just touches the horse with the leg and then takes it off and again touches with the leg in the same spot. The result will be that the horse will remain more responsive to the leg.
When applying a leg to move the horse’s hindquarters laterally, the rider should not move his leg so far back that he pushes into the soft belly under the short ribs. Use the leg immediately behind the girth instead.
Spurs should be an integral part of a rider’s equipment. But it takes an educated rider with a disciplined leg to use them correctly.
The length and shape of the spur is determined by the roundness of a horse’s flank as well as the length of a rider’s leg. When the rider’s leg is properly positioned the end of the spur should be approximately 1/2 inch off the side of the horse.
Spurs should have rowels on them which are better than having just a blunt end to them. The rowel of the spur can be used in a rolling manner where the rider touches the horse’s side and ‘rolls’ the spur up the horse’s side by pointing his toes downward.
Use the spur/leg immediately behind the girth/cinch because the horse’s abdominal muscles you affect there pull off the breastbone and are more effective in bringing a hind leg forward.
It is best for the spur to touch its intended location and not just somewhere in the general vicinity.
A prick with a spur is not punishment. It is an aid. It differs from a jab in that the rider retains support in the stirrups.
The rider should use the tread of the stirrup as a platform for his toes in order to raise the heel to where the spur can be kept about 1/2 inch from the horse’s body. This creates support for the leg so the rider can be more specific with the spur.
On the other hand, there is just a flat touch of the spur where the rowel does not touch the horse’s side, but only the inside neck of the spur.
There are times when a rider might use a spur jab. It is the strongest leg influence a rider can give the horse.
The spur jab must be quick and electric. Its effectiveness leads to the threatening leg position.
If repeated spur jabs are needed, all activity must be limited entirely to the movement of the rider’s lower leg from the knee down. Any participation of the arms of the upper body is not only annoying – it is considered bad manners.
If the rider cannot control the horse’s forehand, he will never control the hindquarters and if the rider cannot control the hindquarters then he will not adequately control the amount of bend in the horse.
This means that the rider will be unable to dictate whether the horse is moving on three or four tracks or to determine the distance between the outside hind leg and the inside front leg. For example, when performing a turnaround and the horse steps out with its hindquarters which, in turn, will put more weight on its inside shoulder with the result that the horse will become unbalanced.
THE WHIP
The whip is a useful aid when it is used correctly.
The whip is usually carried right behind the leg, but it can be activated on the summit of the croup right behind the saddle or on the horse’s shoulder depending on what the rider is asking the horse to do.
For example, the whip could be used to good purpose on the horse’s shoulder to keep the coordinating leg from staying on the ground too long.
The sequence of use of the leg, spur, and whip is as follows: the leg sends the horse to the hand, and the spur and the whip, in that order, clean up when the horse ignores the leg.
RESTRAINING AIDS
Restraining aids consist of the use of the hands and/or fingers on the reins passing the rider’s requests through the bit to the horses mouth, chin, or nose.
The rein hand determines the direction of movement and the tempo of gait.
Action of the hand should reach the hind leg.
Use of the inside rein is for beginning riders and young horses.
Use of the outside rein is for more advanced riders and more schooled horses.
A good starting position or ‘home base’ for the hands when riding with two hands would be for them to be carried about six inches apart (about the width of a horse’s mouth) in front of the horn of a western saddle or the pommel of an English saddle and no higher than the height of the horn or pommel.
The reins should be held with the thumb and index finger.
The remaining fingers (middle, ring and pinky) should be held as if they were holding a small bird and are used to open and close on the reins depending on the tension that the horse presents to the rider.
The last three fingers of the hand should always be squeezing and releasing the reins with every stride of the horse. This action will prevent the horse from leaning on the hand and getting heavy in the forehand.
The rider should always be advancing towards holding the reins with mere ounces of pressure not pounds. However, there may be times with the same horse when this will be changed depending on the state of training of the horse.
As an example of the preceding statement, the more forward the center of gravity is with a horse, the stronger the contact must be since in this position the horse requires more support from the hands than guidance.
The hands can move forward, or up, or widen – but they should never be retracted toward the rider’s stomach, i.e. do not pull on the reins.
The length of the reins should always be adjusted so that they can be used effectively with minimum effort by the fingers. Too much slack in them makes them ineffective.
COORDINATED USE OF THE DRIVING AND RESTRAINING AIDS
When riding forward with equal contact on both reins, in order to turn the horse to the left or right, simply open the fingers of the right or left hand. Don’t pull on the left or right rein (a natural habit); just maintain the same contact on it that you had previously.
For bending, the inside leg supports the inside rein in that it bends the horse’s spine and advances the inside leg underneath the mass of the horse’s body.
For elevation, the outside leg supports the outside rein in that it fixes the horse’s outside hind leg keeping it from falling out.
Both the rider’s legs maintain contact by driving the horse into the hands and keeping the horse’s head and neck positioned between the reins.
SUPPORTING AIDS
The supporting aids are produced by changes in the rider’s position to support the aids already discussed above.
The more the horse understands the language of the aids the more the rider will find that communicating with the horse can be done chiefly by the use of supporting aids. The exception being when the horse and rider are placed in a tense or dangerous situation.
The better the rider ‘does’ in educating the horse, the less he eventually will have to ‘do’.
The rider’s position on a horse should be a balanced one which is based on the correct displacement of his center of gravity, meaning that the rider’s straight spine must always be perpendicular to that of the horse, i.e., it must form a right angle to it to be effective when the rider activates his aids. Toned, flexible core muscles are the key to success.
A horse’s center of motion is his 14th thoracic vertebra which is the one that sticks straight up and is located at the base of the withers when viewing a horse’s skeleton.
When looking at the horse from the side, the 14th thoracic vertebra is about 1 to 1 1/2 inches back from where the horse’s withers join with its back.
A human’s center of motion is the second vertebra of the sacrum. The rider should strive to line up his center of motion with the horse’s center of motion and to bring the horse’s center of gravity in line with the center of motion.
When a rider sits in the saddle in a ‘chair seat’ he will thrust himself back into the cantle of the saddle with his legs pushed forward.
When a rider sits in a ‘fork seat’ his weight will hinder the movement of the horse’s shoulders and will cause his legs to be positioned behind his hips making him unbalanced in the saddle.
The use of the weight in the stirrups (stirrup aids) are some of the most nuanced and useful of the supporting aids because their use allows the rider to put weight on specific areas and unweight other specific areas of the horse.
The rider can use his weight in the stirrup with his heel up or with his heel down. When the rider uses his weight with the heel up he can be more specific about the placement of the spurs.
When the rider uses the stirrup with his heel down he will be able to resist more when the horse leans. The rider can also make the downward transitions crisper, for example, when going from a canter to a walk.
The rider can also use his upper body as a balancing rod and influence the horse’s manner of traveling.
EXAMPLES OF THE USE OF SUPPORTING AIDS
When the rider brings his upper body slightly forward and pushes on his pelvic arch the horse will slow down.
When the rider brings his shoulders slightly back the horse will speed up.
When the rider sits a little more to the inside he can spiral the horse into a smaller circle or, conversely, when he sits a little more to the outside the circle can be enlarged.
When the rider is asking the horse for a turnaround he can sit more to the outside so that his body becomes a counter-weight which the horse will pull against and drive more from behind and reach more with its front end. This will result is a slightly flatter turn.
When riding a horse early on in its training when his hindquarters are not fully developed, the rider can ride with a light seat (like a crotch seat) to take some of his weight off the hind end of the horse. This can be done by riding with his upper body in a more forward position instead of bringing his shoulders back and loading the hindquarters before they are ready for the increased weight.
To stop a horse, put pressure into both stirrups simultaneously and at the same time audibly exhale. When exhaling, the lower back will slightly flatten. As this occurs, momentarily tighten the lower back muscles and then relax them. When first beginning this method of stopping a horse, the rider, with only slight contact on the reins, may also have to close the fingers on the reins but without pulling them back. When the horse gets a better understanding of how he is being asked to stop, the rider can dispense with closing his fingers on the reins and just softly squeeze them.
To ask for a canter depart, let’s say to the left from a walk, first get the horse into a lively walk traveling on a straight line. Next, when the horse’s right hind hip is in the down position and its coordinating leg is in the process of swinging forward, meaning that it is not weighted, the rider will step quickly and electrically into his left stirrup to initiate the canter depart. The benefit from this way of asking for a canter depart is that the horse will be straight as opposed to the rider asking for a canter depart by moving his right leg back along the horse’s flank which will cause the horse to move his hindquarters to the left and thus cause him to canter depart in a crooked position.
The above examples are the reason why it is paramount for the rider to have gained experience in knowing where the horse’s feet are in any gait and to have perfected his timing of the use of the aids.