A number of years ago we had a “theme of the season” horse management philosophy we stressed during lessons; not to be confused with the monthly theme activites such as “Out of Bounds October” (when we did mostly trail riding), “No-stirrup November”, No-Saddle December”, “Jumping January”, “No-fun February” (when I “threaten” to scold and scream at students), etc..
The theme for the first time we did that was “Leadership” and how the rider/horse handler needs to be the one directing the animal. Traditionally, the phrase you’d hear in regards to this in the horse world is, “Show him who’s boss!”. But I feel leadership is the better descriptive word.
Of course there are many styles of leadership so one needs to identify the leadership traits you want to have and a leader of people and a leader of horses should have somewhat similar descriptions.
A leader should be honest, fair, thoughtful, considerate, consistent, give clear direction, attentive, courageous, supportive, and make good decisions in a timely fashion but still be flexible and willing to alter the plans if needed. A good leader is patient, encourage his or followers to express their personality and ideas, but also should enforce appropriate discipline (to be revisited later). A leader should be someone you, or in this case, the horse, wants to follow. You can come up with your own list or add to this one, but the last descriptive word I’m using today is “trustworthy” because that the theme of perhaps tomorrows update is “trust”.
But next, a bonus paragraph: For those that wonder what “ride the spine” meant in yesterday’s update. “Ride the spine” means that for a horse, like a person, to be beautiful, it must have good posture. Good or correct posture simply means that the vertabrae and other bones are in line, or balanced (but not stiff), with the body. I’ll go into further details another time, but basically a rider should always be considerate of how the horses spine is lined up with the task it is doing. One example: If the horse is traveling in a circle the animal’s spine should be softly bent in the arc of that circle.
Hope everyone had a good social distancing day today. We did here, but I must say, we used Skype or similar technology with the kids a couple times as well as several other couples last week and this past weekend. Between that and also strategically physically distancing at outdoor or safe locations, I’m pretty sure my social life was busier in the last ten days then it has ever been in my life!
Gypsy and Bloopy: Good posture (along with genetic conformation, nutrition, among other things) can help horses live long comfortable lives. No sway backs on these two 30+ year olds!
