When I hear people talk about their seat on a horse, they often refer to keeping their bottom in the saddle!

When this topic is brought up, the typical emotions range from a hope of not falling off to a desire to be more in tune with a horse.

A while back I wrote about focusing on your hips and breathing as a way to get more mentally calm and grounded.

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The Benefits of Your Horse Letting All His Air Out

Have you ever experienced one of the following?

Your horse won’t relax.

Your horse never lets down all the way.

Your horse “seems” quiet, or even lazy, but he is still tightly wound on the inside.

This month’s horsemanship idea is as simple as it gets to help solve some of those issues.

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If you’re like me, it’s easy to get on your horse, but still be “heady.”

It goes like this.

You step up on your horse and you bring all your frenetic mental jibberish with you.

Not enough time. Stuff that just happened. What’s for dinner? How you rode last time that didn’t work. Who’s at the barn today? Yaddie, yaddie, yah.

By this time you’ve gone around the ring about 10 times on your horse. He’s been kind enough to carry you, but you’re not really connected to him or to the task at hand.

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When I did my "Insights" interview recently with Craig Cameron, I got inspired.

Craig said, “Horsemanship is really about working on yourself, not on the horse.”

He spoke communicating in a way with your horse so that because of what YOU think or do allows your horse to make small steps of progress. Over time he builds his skills and confidence.

The usual focus in on trying to get the horse to do something, or trying to fix something. It’s the horse that’s doing a good or bad job.

But, it’s really the opposite. It’s about all of us working on ourselves.

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No Stupid Question, Right?

Recently I received an email that said, “Barb, there’s no stupid question, right???”

I said, “If my husband comes in and says, ‘Honey, would you like for me to make dinner for you? … I say, that’s a stupid question!”

In the horse world, all questions are good ones!

The specific concern was how to straighten “the bend” of a horse if his body is bent to right and the rider wants his body to be straight. Specifically, the question was about which leg to use.

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Our horses have so much in common with us emotionally.

In order to learn or perform at their best, they must be relaxed, open, receptive, and yet energized.

With horses, one of the clues that lets us know if we are effectively communicating with them is their eyes.

What we are looking for is a relaxed, yet attentive horse … one who is engaged, but not anxious or reactive.

You can tell so much by a horse’s eyes.

“Soft” eyes are open, bright, receptive and look relaxed.

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It is super easy to just grab a bridle out of the tack room without giving much thought about why you are choosing that particular one.

It’s also easy to use whatever bit you always use. It’s easy to try a bit because someone else recommended it in general (not even for your horse, especially).

But, it’s important to become knowledgeable about bits and bridles because this is THE contact piece of equipment a horse feels in his tender mouth via the action of your hands.

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Last January when Rob Leach, a trainer from Australia, came to Brenham and did a clinic at the ranch, I was reminded of a concept that I have since used more and more in my riding.

I am constantly amazed by it.

It is the power in a pause when you ride your horse.

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Has your horse ever been anxious, or distracted and you weren’t sure how to handle the situation?

There is an action you can fall back on when your horse needs to regain focus … for whatever reason.

It’s an exercise designed to help you regain communication with your horse by engaging him in something he already knows how to do.

It’s utilizing a sequence of actions he knows to bring him back to a feeling of steadiness, calmness and focus.

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If you are a cutter, do you know how a silky turn feels?

If you’re a reiner, do you know how a smooth, sliding stop feels?

If you’re a barrel racer, do you know how a precisely executed, lightening-fast barrel turn feels?

You fill-in the blanks for your kind of riding.

The typical way we learn to experience these things is through hours and hours of riding. If we haven’t gotten there yet, we lament that SOMEDAY … out there in eternity somewhere … we will get that sensation before we kick the bucket!

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