Anticipation
Approach & Retreat
Bending
Bits
Buying a Horse
Common Sense on the Trail
Curb Strap Tying Info.
Exaggeration
Expectations
Feel
Feet
Focus & Time
Ground Driving
Ground Manners
Ground Tying
Haltering
In the Saddle
Introducing a New Horse
Lateral Movement
Leading
Longeing
Mecate Reins
One Rein Stop
Posture
Pressure
The Process
Progress Strings
Punishment & Correction
Reins
Respect
Reward
Round/Square Pen
Rope Skills
Senses
Slobber Straps
Softness
Support
Tools
Training Home
Training Stick
Trust
Trailer Loading
Trailer Unloading
Tying from Above
Tying a rope halter
Visualization
Yielding

This is a concept that may seem odd since your horse might do what you ask. Instead of just going through the motions or completing an exercise, emphasize the quality of the movement and posture of your horse. You probably know what a relaxed calm horse looks like; their head is even with or below their withers, their eyes are soft looking as opposed to open all of the way with the whites around their eyeball showing, their back is relaxed, and they move their feet freely. This is a tense or braced horse vs. calm and relaxed.

These pictures are a good example of what we're talking about.  The first picture shows us working a four year old mare with lateral movement exercises.  She's doing the movement correctly but the attitude of the horse is not good, her head is high and she's not moving her feet too well either.

You want a willing compliant horse that doesn’t get upset or worried in a given situation. The horse not only does something that you have asked, but does it without being scared, nervous, or high headed. This should be the case whether you are just asking your horse to stand quietly or you’re trotting around an arena. In a horse show situation; merely completing a pattern is not good enough. Work towards softness in patterns, movements, and exercises.

This picture shows the same horse two hours later doing a similar lateral movement exercise down the outside rail of our arena.  You can see the relaxed attitude in the horse.  She's picking up her feet, and more importantly -- putting them in the appropriate place. 

Think about this in terms of yourself -- if you have ever had a massage or a backrub and you get to a relaxed state where you’re not tense, aggressive, or assertive, and you feel like all of the stress has gone out of your body. This is the feel you want to work towards with your horse.  You're thinking about good things and aren't stressed about your immediate environment.  Horses do this too.

You get to softness through repetition, desensitization, and making things into a good experience for the horse. You can ask for softness in your horse and condition this behavior into everything that they do. When standing with your horse, ask for softness by yielding the horse at the poll. This is the atlas joint or the last vertebrae in the horse’s neck connecting to the skull. You want the horse to move off of feel and learn to adjust their posture when you ask. This is a good place for the horse to be. When their head is down naturally (no tie downs, martingales or gimmicky hardware) the horse is not resistant or braced. If you ask the horse for this posture and then reward for softness in the posture, you and the horse get what you each want. Horses want to do the least stressful thing they possibly can; you have to learn how to recognize it.

One way to see this is by asking your horse to back up. This is tougher for a horse to do than moving forward because it’s usually a fleeing response to stimulus or a way out of a situation. The horse is thinking about how to get out of there in a hurry. Does your horse lower its head and pick up its feet when moving backwards? Or does it brace itself, shuffle its feet, hollow it’s back, and keep it’s head held high? Work with your horse and recognize when your horse shows a sign of softness and reward for this.  Once you know what to look for and reward it, you'll make huge improvements in your training program.

I was out trail riding and noticed that the person behind me was having problems going uphill. Their horse was rushing up the hill, head held high, and transitioning between walk, trot, and canter. Basically, this person didn’t have much control of their horse. But what I noticed was that many of the other horses were calmly walking up the hill. I got to thinking about this and what was causing the problems with this horse. Many things were occurring; the horse didn’t have his feet under him, his rider was sending mixed messages (kicking the horses sides but holding the reins tightly), and the horse wasn’t comfortable unless it was right on another horse’s rear end. None of these things alone are good, but packaged into one situation can be dangerous. Getting this horse to be soft going uphill is going to take a lot of work. This horse needs to learn to move it’s feet and the rider needs to learn to ride in a loose rein for a start.

So think of softness in terms of willing movement where the horse feels comfortable and is not stressed out. A soft horse will show you this with their posture and body language. You want to work towards softness in everything that you do with your horse, everything!   Besides, it's easy to go the other direction if you decide your tired of that calm and relaxed horse that your creating.

Next Concept: Approach & Retreat