or no bit?
BIT,
By Alessandra Deerinck
The choice of tack, more often than not, is driven
by its efficacy in terms of intensity of the pressure
exercised on the horse, but If we become
detailed and efficient in our communication to
the horse, we can widen the scope of our choice.
When we are in the presence of a horse, or any
other live individual, they perceive our behavior and
act accordingly towards us. This is the reason why we
have studied the social interaction between human
and horse and formulated Human Horse Sensing as a
detailed method that can be applied to any equestrian
discipline. It works through behavior in a way that
makes immediate sense to the horse, without requiring
to train them for it. Training a horse for a purpose is an
additional resource, but we should not just limit our interaction
to what he has been trained for.
The first step to be efficient in the communication
with horses is to understand their instinctual behavior and
we teach to do so on the ground and in the saddle. When
we can understand the equine behavior, we also have to
learn to modulate our movements in a way that horses can
always immediately understand us, and most importantly
we need to see and take in consideration how horses respond
to our actions.
Such modality makes the interaction become cooperative,
like a dialogue where human and horse both contribute.
The meaningful elements of the communication are
not words, but movements, and their direction and frequency
are key points that the horse can perceive by sight
or touch, and understands them instinctually.
Riding a horse puts us in a position
where we occupy part of the horse’s
space, the communication with the
horse happens mainly by the way of
touch, through pressure and release
and is mediated by the tack we choose
to use. The saddle is where we seat, and
the bridle allows us to reach the head of the horse. In the
past issue of Elite Equestrian, we talked about proper bit
design, now we would like to talk about the way to make
contact with the horse’s head using a bitless bridle.
Rider and horse both need to learn the elements that
are meaningful in the communication by touch. We teach
the rider to gage his contact by its direction, frequency of
request and most importantly to distinguish between the
kind of interaction (cooperative or competitive) they are
having with the horse. To prepare the horse to be ridden
in a bridle, with or without the bit, we work to have him
respond to our request that is made on the ground with
the lightest touch, using a longe line. The goal is to have
the rider learn to use the lightest touch by tension and by
release, and to get the horse to respond to the direction of
the impulse we send him, in a prompt and detailed manner,
Interaction becomes
cooperative.
always without applying painful pressure or a fixed side
rein. The horse learns to respond to the lightest tension of
TRAINING & Showing
the reins when we ride. He will comply with our request
not by avoiding the pressure, but by following the direction
of the tension or release.
What is very often overlooked is that the structure of
the tack we use determines the direction of the pressure
not just its presence or intensity. When talking about
bridles or choosing which one to use, the anatomy of
the equine facial region should be always kept in mind.
In order to efficiently communicate with the horse, we
need to learn how to properly gage our contact through
touch, and one of the ways to handle it in a detailed
manner is to consider its direction
and length of time relatively to
the anatomical location where
the horse receives it. The head
is where all of the sense recep-
tors are located and the horse
orients it to perceive the environment,
but also to properly move his body according to
what surrounds him. When we ask him to position his head
according to our instruction, we need to be conscious
of these key facts. There are disciplines that require the
horse to have a certain body carriage, and some riders
achieve it by constraining the horse with tack or hard
contact, but a horse that accepts the presence of the
rider on his back, would naturally assume a correct
head and body posture to achieve the correct carriage
if the rider is sitting properly. Most importantly, the horse
perceives all of the rider’s movements, not just what we
would like to send as our input to the horse. Furthermore,
causing painful pressure inside the mouth, or on the facial
region will make a horse reactive and possibly defensive,
which reflects on its carriage, and can cause a conflict
instead of a cooperative interaction between rider and
horse. In the learning process, an instance that has a
negative content will not be something that the horse
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