Connection with your horse is, in reality, a form of very subtle communication between two different species. To achieve this level of communication with your horse you need to offer your horse (not direct so much) true clarity of intent along with softening your intensity of signals so that you can develop effortless responses from your horse. This can be done by toning down, but not eliminating, your physical manipulation of your horse as much as possible.
The vast majority of unwanted behavior in your horse is only as bad as you make it out to be. It usually looks much worse than it really is. But, nevertheless, it has the tendency to upset you, mainly because you don’t understand it or you don’t know what to do about it. When this unwanted behavior shows up in your horse you may have a feeling that somehow you have made a ‘mistake’ or he would not have acted as he did. This, unfortunately, leads you to not wanting to make another ‘mistake’, so you do nothing at all. But making a ‘mistake’ generally means that you just didn’t get the result that you were expecting. It is what you do next that will determine whether or not you will move forward in your horsemanship journey. Think of it more as your horse offering you a learning moment, rather than you believing that you have made a ‘mistake’.
In other words, you have been given an opportunity to learn from the situation you have gotten yourself and your horse into. So, you really didn’t make a ‘mistake’ after all because you are still in control of the time, space, and energy of the occurrence as well as the succeeding events that will occur. Just remember that your horse can’t separate how he feels from how he acts. He is just giving you information that is neither good or bad. It is only information. But how you, the human, perceive that information will determine how you respond to it.
Horses are born followers. For you to get life in your horse, you need to provide him three things. The first two go together. You need to give him the direction in which you want to go and have a destination in mind to go to. Then you need to give him the desired speed you want him to have to get there. Without these three components your horse will just wander aimlessly at whatever gait he feels comfortable with. In order to achieve these three things, you need to be alive in the saddle and not have your horse just pack you around. This means that you must use different parts of your body in rhythm with your horse’s movements to have him go where you want him to go willingly and without complaint because your horse does nor possess either cruise control or an automatic transmission. But for you to get the desired responses from your horse you must stay involved in the process enough to help bring about the needed change in him. You just can’t sit back and wait for something magic to happen. You must pay attention to the job at hand at all times and stay focused. There can be no mental ‘time-outs’ if you want your horse to stay with you when you are in the saddle.
This is called taking responsibility and is a key ingredient to becoming the leader you must be. Leadership, simply defined, means getting people (in this case, horses) to give the best of themselves in everything that they do. The most effective leaders accomplish this by encouraging every effort made by the involved individuals (no matter how little it is in the beginning) so that the individuals get themselves energized and motivated to actively take part in the endeavor. An effective leader also provides guidance to redirect those efforts if they stray from the goal and when the results are successful the effective leader gives ample and public credit to all those taking part in the project. All of this is mandatory to remember and do when working with your horse so that you don’t fall into a negative frame of mind of ‘don’t do this or don’t do that’. Instead, work hard to replace those thoughts with something more positive and instructive, such as, ‘let’s do it this way instead of the way you are doing it’ or ‘it would be better if you did this’.
On the other hand, there are those people in a position of leadership (but whose leadership skills and qualities are deficient) who try to get the job done through intimidation by shouting orders or threatening physical discomfort or using other forceful means which will never get the results that are needed to sustain long-term objectives. It is a life-long effort to become a good leader and even harder to remain one over time. But once you surrender your ego and pride you are off to a good start in becoming one.
Lack of awareness of what is going on around you is one of the biggest hinderances you may have or develop to having a connection with your horse. Or, by the same token, you may get fixated on things external to your immediate environment that may have no bearing on what you are currently doing. Another hinderance is a sort of indifference which may develop because you are just happy to be around your horse so whatever he does or how he does it is perfectly okay with you. So, in these cases, you are giving your horse permission to set his own agenda, which could be detrimental to your future aspirations with your horse.
Still another reason you may be having issues connecting with your horse is because you may be influenced by some of the ideas being taught these days by self-certified ‘horse trainers’ regarding horse handling and care. You need to watch these folks carefully and ask a lot of questions as to why they are doing what you see them do and what results they are expecting when they are executing whatever they are doing. Just don’t assume they know what they are doing because they tell you so, or dress the part, or talk the language, or win some prizes at horse shows or other events. It is wise to remember that these folks are primarily businessmen and women who are in business to make money. So they will do all that they can to ensure that their customers or students return to them for more instruction and handling of their horses. So, spend your money wisely!
When you are working with your horse it is important that you stay emotionally and physically balanced. Your horse, however, if he gets emotionally unbalanced will also get physically unbalanced because, as previously mentioned, he doesn’t differentiate between how he feels and how he acts. But if you can get control of his physical imbalance and rebalance it, in most cases you will be able to bring his emotional imbalance back in balance as well. This will only work if you maintain your physical and emotional balance. But if both you and your horse get in an unbalanced state at the same time then a battle will ensue.
To see how this works in practice let’s take a look at a situation that sometimes occurs when you are riding your horse, either in an open field or an arena, and you ask him to move into a nice trot gait. He, however, for whatever reason, starts off in an energetic, bone-jarring big trot on a straight line. If you become anxious or start to panic and stop thinking, you will, in all probability, begin to try to slow him down by pulling or jerking on the reins or attempt to do a one-rein stop and while doing these things you may possibly also grip with your legs to stay on the horse, which will, unfortunately, only signal your horse to go faster. However; if you stay physically and emotionally balanced, you can calmly ask him to do small circles, serpentines, or figure-eights so that he will have to start thinking about his feet because he doesn’t really know where his next step will land. When this happens he will begin to get back in balance emotionally and physically and he will become smoother and quieter and will start to feel better. You will continue to do this until when you again ask him to trot he will do it with just the right amount of energy because he will have reset himself in balance again.
The key to making this successful is for you to be aware of how you are using your energy in response to what your horse is doing. If you get into a ‘don’t’ mode, your horse will become leery of you and increase his energy accordingly. If, instead, you direct his energy so that he has to think about where he has to place his feet, his energy level will decrease and he will start to pay attention to your directions. The more you practice this positive way of thinking the easier it will get. It is called horsemanship.
The most reliable thing you can do to attain a true connection with your horse is to establish consistency because consistency is very important for his well-being in that it makes him comfortable. You should be consistent in everything that you do while working with him, such as feeding him at the same time every day, approaching and haltering him, leading him, grooming him, riding him, etc. The more consistent you are, the more dependable you will become to your horse. Once he knows he can depend on you, he will begin to put his trust in you. Once he trusts you, he can start to feel at peace with you and once he is at peace, he can then develop softness because he will have this peace of mind.
Softness in a horse, regardless of the discipline he is involved in or his breed, is when he is physically, mentally, or emotionally willingly available at all times to do what you ask of him, no matter what the circumstances, time of day, or the location he is in. True softness is effortless in everything that he does and whatever you ask of him. But don’t confuse willingly available in your horse with him just being available even though he may be light in your hand. Your horse can be light (an external condition), which is mostly technique-based and not be soft (an internal condition) which is a combination of technique, trust, conviction, and feel that is exchanged between you and him. But if he is soft then he will also be light.
As an example of your horse being light without being soft, let’s look at the practice of doing lateral flexions which many people do. Lateral flexions involve bending your horse’s head and neck from side to side in order to have his neck become more flexible countless times over an extended period of time, sometimes years, to the extent that when you barely touch a rein he will start to bend his neck to the side and even bring his head around to touch your boot in the stirrup. The down side to doing this exercise is that your horse doesn’t also align his body in conjunction with this bending so that you will actually lose the ability to steer or stop him which gets magnified when his speed increases. In effect, your horse will have his front end disconnected from his hind end. While it appears that he understands what you are teaching him by you focusing on attaining an end result (but without considering the whole horse and how he operates his body) he is only performing the movement by rote. So, in reality, though he may acquiesce to the lightest touch of the rein, he will have become a mechanical horse. He will do what you request, but without having his heart involved in the process. If you are a light rider who relies solely on technique you may never have a horse who is soft internally.
Softness in your horse is different. It cannot be achieved through technique alone, although technique is a part of the process. If you strive for softness in your horse you must give him the best you have to offer of yourself and the start of this is to always be consistent when you are with him. And the road to being consistent is for you to give your heart to him because softness must first come from you before it can come from inside your horse. This is sometimes a difficult thing to do initially. It begins with small changes in you that take place over time which finally culminates in you achieving a permanent change.
Also, for you to find a way to offer your whole heart may take a while (especially if you have never done it before) as it may also be for your horse. But offering your whole heart to reach the whole horse is a path worth following because once the whole horse comes to the surface it is a really magical moment which can be treasured for as long as the two of you are connected. To give something you have never given before to get something you have never gotten before is a life-changing event.
Last of all, when all is said and done, for you to have a solid connection with your horse you must be genuine, which means that you must be honest, sincere, and real. Being genuine is about living and communicating in line with your actual inner feelings and values rather than pretending to be someone else. If you are genuine your horse will know it and trust you, but if you are a pretender, he will know this also and will always be wary of you. You may fool other human beings, but you will not be able to fool your horse. It is in your best interest to always work diligently at making yourself worthy of your horse because with his great dignity, power, and beauty he is a truly a majestic creature.