“Stop Looking At His Head”

05 Oct “Stop Looking At His Head”

By Janel Martin

The things a clinician tells you at a lesson…much of it you’ve heard before.  Then there’s those little nuggets of wisdom that help you put things together.  Not the least of which is Stop Looking at His Head.

We all want our horses to be forward, round, active, connected; at least I do. As I watch his head while we’re going around the arena, I ponder why he is not more forward. What can I do to make that happen? Apparently the first thing I needed to do was stop looking at his head. It’s not going to fall off!  While looking at his head, my body position tells him to not be forward. I look ahead and he is much better. Better enough to address some of our other issues, like not soft in the jaw.

I can’t tell you how many times my trainer has told me to flex him. The clinician tells me the same thing but with a twist. Bend him a bit to the outside because he’s blowing off my outside rein. “Remind him it’s there.” Now I start to connect the dots.  Outside rein pressure is straight back, not up or across the withers. When I flex him to the outside he starts to listen to the outside rein pressure in turns, change of rein, leg yields, shoulder fore. We have more moments of connection. Now we’re cooking!!!

The challenge…to take these nuggets home and apply them correctly. Every time I do a clinic, my trainer and I discuss what I’ve learned and how that seemed to help. Being she is my first source of knowledge, we both learn other ways to tackle my issues. She readily incorporates these nuggets into my lessons while still building on foundations we have laid.

Clinics are a great source of information from a skilled professional that doesn’t see me ride every day. It’s a new set of eyes that gives me a different perspective. I always learn something new. And I always hear a lot of what my trainer has told me hundreds of times. (Though she has never told me to stop looking at his head!)

Janel Martin takes instruction from Helen George.