horse. One of the positions is called, “at the girth.”
The other one is called, “behind the girth.” We consider
your leg to be at the girth when you sit upright on your horse with
your heel in line with your shoulder and seat. When you move your
lower leg about four inches back, your leg is behind the girth.
Applying pressure at the girth means, move that hind leg forward.
Applying pressure behind the girth means, move away from that leg
sideways. The leg behind the girth without pressure means, keep your
hindquarters on the line they are traveling now. Applying pressure
with both legs simultaneously means, move forward. Applying pressure
alternately in the rhythm of the horse’s movement also means,
move forward (to make this work for you, your feeling must be developed
enough to know when each hind leg leaves the ground, because that
is precisely the moment to apply pressure with the corresponding leg).
Until that time I suggest you use both legs simultaneously.
The last set of aids left are the reins. They are attached to the
most sensitive part of the horse, its mouth. They also differ from
the seat and leg aids in that their role is mostly controlling and
much less activating or initiating. Because of this, the rein aids
about always have to work in conjunction with the leg and seat to
function. Here are their effects:
Pressure on one side means bend or turn that way.
Pressure on both reins means slow down or stop.
Relaxing on the reins means move forward.
Giving the reins means stretch.
Moving the inside rein away from the neck means bend or turn in that
direction.
It is important that I remind you again that we are riding a willing
partner and not training a horse. Sometimes when you watch a good
trainer at work, it looks like she does not quite follow the outline
I describe here. Like in your daily communications with your fellow
man when you are explaining a new concept, often you have to approach
it from many angles in order to be understood. That is precisely what
this trainer is doing.
So far in our imagined riding we have pulled on the reins to stop
the horse, we squeezed with both legs to make him go, and pulled on
one rein to turn him. This kind of communicating with our mount I
call shouting commands. It is crude, it is abrupt, it is unpleasant
to the horse, and does not allow for anything but the simplest maneuvers
in your ride. In order to turn his performance into poetry in motion,
obedience to the point of constant harmony in spite of highly demanding
transitions and exercises, and such expressiveness in the movements
that some would elevate it to a form of art, you need to talk to your
horse all the time. We need the horse’s attention all the time.
We need our horse's willingness to obey without fail. We need to concentrate
to not make any mistakes ourselves, and we also need to be ready to
help our partner the moment we feel him misunderstand or misjudge
our intentions. We further must realize that he is a horse, and as
such is subject to the natural tendency to want to move the way God
designed him to, on the forehand.
As the first example of speaking in
sentences instead of shouting commands, I would like to use the "half-halt".
It is the most often used
