Ep 27: Developing Feel, Timing & Balance with Your Horse
We often underestimate how much our horses rely on our feel, timing, and balance.
I’ve touched on this topic in previous episodes, but this week, I want to dive into some of the reasons why it is so important to understand how a horse’s anatomy impacts its responses.
In terms of vision, our horses’ eyes work a little bit differently than ours do. Horses are blessed with some skills in their vision that we don’t have, such as better nighttime vision. However, there are some key differences between human vision and equine vision that pose challenges when it comes to training.
Horses do not see things the same way we do. This is why it is absolutely essential for us to develop consistent feel, timing, and balance so that our horses can rely on our cues rather than their own sight.
We, as humans, have binocular vision—meaning, both eyes work together to form images in our brains. Horses, on the other hand, primarily have monocular vision—meaning, each eye works independently of the other.
A horse can see roughly 350-degrees around its body, but there are approximately 5 degrees directly in front of and behind a horse that are blind spots. This is because the placement of horses’ eyes are designed to support three main abilities: 1) spotting predators 2) looking for footing 3) identifying food.
A horse’s line of vision acts somewhat like a bifocal lens. The bottom part of horses’ eyes are used primarily for identifying things that are close to them, such as their footing and food. The top part of horses’ eyes, on the other hand, are used to identify objects further away, such as movement from a person or another animal.
When horses see the world from a different perspective than we do, they will occasionally perceive a situation to be more dangerous than it really is. This fear is driven by the blind spots in their vision. Any time an object enters the blind spots in a horse’s field of vision, there is a moment in time when the horse is unsure of where that object is. This uncertainty almost always causes a reactive response, especially in younger horses.
So, why are some horses scared of things that other horses are not? It is because they have become comfortable with situations that other horses have not. This level of comfort comes from a strong foundation of trust.
If you have ever tried to get a horse to cross water for the first time, you know how “scary” of a situation it can be for a horse. This is because the horse likely can’t see the water, but it can sense it in other ways by sound or smell. The only way that horse builds enough confidence to cross the water is by giving into our encouragement. But, the key is, our horse has to trust us enough to take that step.
When we are riding horses that encounters scary situations, it is our job, to help those horses get their minds off of the thing that they are unsure of or the things that they are perceiving to be dangerous. The trust you build with your horse will overcome the fear.
During competition, our horses rely on our cues the same way they rely on our cues to cross water. If we send inconsistent cues, our horses become confused and untrusting of us. But, if we send consistent messages to our horses through our body language, they will begin to understand our feel and trust in what we are telling them to do.
If you’ve listened to my podcast for a while, you have heard me talk about correct repetitions a lot. One thing to understand is that correct repetitions aren’t always for our horses. Many times, those repetitions are for us. When we take the time to develop our own muscle memory, our timing becomes much better and more consistent. Once we achieve that consistency in our feel, timing, and balance, that is when we enter into the state of feeling “in tune” with our horses. That feeling of being “in tune” means that our horses trust us and consistently respond correctly to the things we are asking them to do.
Training Tip: When you take a horse to a trainer or buy a horse, it is important to spend some time understanding the feel that horse has been trained with. If you don’t replicate that feel to some extent, it will be very difficult for you to gain confidence with that horse because it is used to different cues.
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