|
 Feel
is a concept, which is your responsibility as a horse owner or trainer. You
need to learn to distinguish when your horse has responded and how to reward
this. What feel means is the ability to tell when a change has happened with
the horse, adjust and reward the horse. Change may be good or bad, you have
probably heard people say they are looking for a soft feel from the horse.
An example of
this would be asking a horse to bend at the poll while standing still. While
on the ground, if you use the knot at the bottom of the rope halter to pull
down and your hand on top of the horses neck at the poll (just behind the ears).
Ask the horse to lower it's head.
Immediately
when the horse drops its head, release the pressure on the rope. You just followed
the feel of the horse!
Don't take, don't pull, ask. What do I mean by that? Are you a rein puller?
Can you ride your horse at a walk, trot and canter on a loose rein? You're probably
thinking, what kind of stupid question is that? If I let go, the horse will
run off somewhere I don't want to go. Well, if you are constantly holding on
to the reins with a "death grip" you are teaching your horse that
they should be tense with the pressure from the rein. This is the surest way
to develop a horse that pulls on the reins or pushes their nose out. Relax,
from a standstill ask the horse to bend at the poll with the reins. When the
horse responds with a proper bend, immediately release the rein and reward the
horse. This is a feel too. Do you want to teach your horse to collect himself
and be on the bit? This is the first step. What you have to do is follow the
feel of pressure, release and reward.
Feel is more difficult for you to learn to recognize than the horse. When you
are starting a horse, and you are asking for a backward yield it may take 100
pounds of pressure on the rope in order to get a horse to back up. You initially
want to ask with 1 ounce of pressure, but if it takes 100 pounds to get the
response you want - that's what you have to . Buck Brannaman had the best quote
on how to visualize this concept " you want to do as little as possible
but as much as it takes"
Always start with what you want to end up with. This may sound strange, but
if you want a soft horse that responds to small changes, you have to set this
up from the start.
Bill Dorrance
and Leslie Desmond have written a book on this subject "True
Horsemanship through Feel" that is outstanding. We have
found no better book, video, or training material so we aren't going to try
and go into too much depth on this topic. This is an expensive book (around
$75), but is worth so much when you put it into the context of how much time
and money you can waste on misguided lessons and flailing around on your own.
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Concept: Softness
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