tugs on the line. As soon as he walks there must be a great deal
of reward, maybe even the end of work for that day. The process
is that we give a demand, there is a response and, if the response
is correct, it is instantly followed by a reward. The reward must
be instant to make sure your horse makes the connection between
his response and the reward. Then you repeat this process until
your horse, without fail, walks off every time he hears the word
walk. So, here are the pillars of training an animal. You give a
cue, you expect a response, if it is the correct one, you reward
and then you repeat the process to reinforce the correct behavior.
The key to success is the consistency with which the cue (aid) is
applied and the correct response is rewarded. The third principle
is that as we begin to combine the aids we will apply them in the
order from the back to the front. In other words the legs and seat
act slightly ahead of the reins.
We will now start the second half.
Back to the aids and the half-halts. Quite often you will hear the
command, “half-halt,” from an instructor followed by
the explanation, “inside leg-outside rein”. Observing
the horse you will most likely see that the horse is either on a
circle, in or approaching a corner, in a lateral movement, or preparing
to canter. In other words the horse is either bending or being asked
to bend. The reason why in a bent horse we apply the aids not only
from the back to the front but also primarily from the inside to
the outside is that we want to energize the inside hind leg and
use the outside rein for control. It is beginning to sound complicated.
You wonder: Back to the front, inside back to the outside front.
How do I know when and what to say to the horse? I did promise to
simplify it for you. In order to do that we will assign primary
tasks to our rein aids. These assignments are not just random but
are the logical result of the effect of an aid or a combination
of them. With very few exceptions as you ride, your horse will be
positioned or bent or both and your horse should be moving along
the outside rein. When you travel on a circle, ideally your horse’s
spine should be bent evenly from poll to tail and to the same degree
as the line he follows. Now look at your horse and it becomes obvious
that it can bend much easier in the neck than in any other part
of its body. In order to assure an even bend throughout the horse,
the outside rein must limit the bend of the neck. On the other hand,
if we need to increase the bend through the horse, the outside rein
must allow for the longer stretch of the outside and adjust the
rein accordingly. The next task of the outside rein is to determine
the carriage of the horse. This time there are two good reasons
for it. The first is that on a bent horse the inside hind leg is
the one working the hardest and must, therefore, not be interfered
with in it’s effort to move forward under the horse’s
body. You already know that when firming on a rein, you reduce the
corresponding hind leg’s forward movement. For that reason
you do not want to use the inside rein. What you do want, however,
is for the horse to change its movement into a more upward direction
and so you change the forward energy and direct it more upward with
a firming on the outside rein in conjunction with the
