Episode 243: Why should I bend my horse? (and why you avoid asking more questions)

Episode 243_ Why should I bend my horse_ (and why you avoid asking more questions).mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 243_ Why should I bend my horse_ (and why you avoid asking more questions).mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
And if nothing else, keep in mind that the answer to why Bend is number one for safety and number two for advancement.

Speaker2:
Podcasting from a little cabin on a hill. This is the Stacy Westfall podcast. Stacy's goal is simple to teach you to understand why horses do what they do, as well as the action steps for creating clear, confident communication with your horses.

Speaker1:
Hi, I'm Stacy Westfall and I'm here to help you understand, enjoy, and successfully train your own horses. The theme for this season of the podcast is There is no question, too small. A more common phrasing for this is there are no dumb questions. And because I am an avid question asker myself, I absolutely believe that I actually find that sometimes the most basic questions are the most revealing. I also love quotes. So here are two on this theme. Quote Number one, most of us forget the basics and wonder why the specifics don't work. Garrison win. And, quote number two. Champions are brilliant at the basics. John Wooden. My question to you is, do you allow yourself to ask the most basic questions? Actually pause and think about it. Have you asked a very basic question this week? What is the last really basic question you can remember asking? Why not ask more of them? Pause right now and answer this question and then I'll share what others have said. The question is what keeps you from asking the teacher a question? Here are a few of the common reasons people list for not asking the teacher a question. I should already know the answer. I'm too embarrassed to interrupt. All the attention might come on me. Others will judge me for asking. I don't want to take up others time with my question. I don't know what question to ask because I don't understand what's happening.

Speaker1:
And I share these with you because the first thing I want you to know is you're not alone. So many people have the thought I should already know the answer or others will judge me for asking. These are all really common. Second, if you have a question about your horse that you think is really basic, email me and ask to stay anonymous. Ask your question because other people wish you would. Sometimes people don't even have the words to ask the question they feel building inside of them. But when they hear your question, they will immediately identify with it. So seriously, hit pause and email me your most basic question. Stacy at Stacy westfall.com. The willingness to ask really basic questions is something that I have been practicing for my whole life. Even when it's really uncomfortable, sometimes that means it's uncomfortable for me to ask the question. So imagine when I was transitioning from the Western world and riding reining horses and I wanted to take a deep dive into dressage. You can imagine I had lots of questions and I didn't even have the phrasing correct, if you want to call it correct, I would interchange the terms between Western and English. And it made for really strange question phrasing, but I wanted the answer, so I was willing to ask it in an awkward or roundabout kind of a way, because I literally didn't know the phrasing to ask it in. And sometimes you'll even notice that when you ask a simple question, it might take the teacher a little bit by surprise.

Speaker1:
That doesn't mean the question is wrong. Sometimes it just means that they're searching for the best place to get started on that answer. For example, if a four year old says, Why is the sky blue? It's not a bad question. It's just that the answer isn't quite as simple as you might think it would be. So sometimes seemingly simple questions actually have bigger answers, and that's what causes the teacher to pause. But if you're thinking that it was a dumb question and then the teacher pauses, it can cause this moment of awkwardness and just know that doesn't mean it's a bad question. So I'm going to start this season off with a question that got me pondering this, which somebody asked, and the question was why bend? It's such a great question. Because if you don't have the answer, why will you bend your horse? Well, the answer is you probably won't if you don't know why you would bend. You probably won't ask the horse to bend. Or maybe you will. But you'll do it because the instructor told you to. But if you actually understand why. Your instructor is asking you to bend. Understanding why will give it more meaning and it will make it more interesting for you. It won't just be a robotic thing you go out and do because your teacher said so.

Speaker1:
It will be something that you go out and do and you will be looking for specific things in the horse. This is what will make it more interesting to you. And when it's more interesting to you, you're going to show up as a better teacher, a better person to interact with, and that will make you more interesting to your horse. So let's dive in to the seemingly simple question Why Bend? When I started looking at the answer to this question, the first place I went is a time period in my life when I would not have thought about bending a horse. So I went back to my early days of riding when I was happy to jump on and head off down the road. I've mentioned before that I had a friend whose mom would buy and sell horses, so it wasn't uncommon for us to jump on a horse we didn't know. And because we were young pre-teens or teens, we would jump on this unknown horse and head off down a dirt road. Many times these stories ended with bucking, rearing and bolting. Those are some of what you could call blatant disobediences. They're big problems. And the answer, the solve for these big problems like bucking rearing and bolting, is bending. Bending in its most fundamental form with the horse is for safety. When we're communicating with the horse and we can get that horse to bend its head and neck around or better yet, bend through its head and neck and body, this is the first level of control that will help us prevent bucking, rearing or bolting.

Speaker1:
If you think about a horse that is bolting and running very fast. Picture a runaway on a movie and that horse will be very straight. Picture a horse rearing. And whether you picture one that is rearing on cue or whether you picture one rearing with resistance, what you're going to notice is that the spine is perfectly straight. Bucking is the same thing. If you picture a horse bucking in, say, a rodeo where it's actually desirable. You'll also notice there's no bending. They might twist, but they're still not bending. So bucking, rearing and bolting. When you add Bend, all of those are discouraged. The opposite of bending is straight, and what often comes along with straightness is stiffness. So maybe you're not encountering the big safety issues like bucking rearing and bolting. But if you notice that your horse is tossing its head and that head and neck are really straight, just know that the head tossing and resistance, that straight spine and the horse bobbing the head up and down that straight and stiff is often the beginning of some of these bigger things. So in the very beginning, we bend and we teach bend for safety purposes. Then when we go the next level up and we are above the safety issues. Now Bend is used for improving the horse's balance.

Speaker1:
If you actually watch how a horse moves, how their legs land on the ground, when they have some bend in their body, not just in their head and neck, but in their body, you'll actually see a change in the way that their legs land. Now when a rider rides a horse and they're just past the safety issues and they start riding the horse very straight, let's say, trail riding, and instead of asking that horse to bend and bending throughout their body, the rider just kind of pushes you left or right. Now you imagine you're the horse and you're stiff and you're straight and the rider kind of pushes you left or right, not requiring you to bend. I don't care if this is done with the rein or the rein in the leg or the leg. If the horse is straight and the rider essentially tips you left or right because you're stiff and straight, remember that. Then what I want you to imagine is how your legs land. And what often happens in this situation is that you get this horse that has a really tippy to the left and right feel. And if you watch a video of that horse walking a straight line, a lot of times they'll start doing something that I'm going to call tightrope walking. You can actually see the horse's legs aren't landing straight in front of where they leave the ground.

Speaker1:
They actually kind of move that leg straight to the middle. So the right leg goes straight to the middle and then the left leg goes straight to the middle. And you get this horse that not only feels really tippy, but they also are stepping like they're walking down a tightrope that is from a lack of bend throughout the horse's body, caused by the way the rider has been riding the horse. So in the middle, once we get past safety, even if we're being safe, the bend is actually for improving how the horse carries themselves, how the legs land, and how that horse feels balance wise to ride just above that and all the way for the rest of the horse's training. No matter how high up you want to take it, Bend is for advancement. So we're always trying to balance out as we go higher and higher. This balance between bend and straightness, we could also say between softness and stiffness, because those tend to be the things that come along with bend and with straightness. So as we start to advance the horse, the more we challenge the horse's balance by asking for things like collected gaits, a collected trot, a collected canter, a balanced stop that uses the hind end not dropping onto the front end, changing leads spins. Any of these different advanced based movements? The movement itself challenges the horse's ability to balance Whenever the horse's ability to balance is challenged a little bit, they're going to do what you would do if you were standing there and somebody shoved you and your balance was challenged, your arms are going to fly out.

Speaker1:
There's going to be a stiffness in your body. And that doesn't matter if somebody pushed you or if you're trying to do something that is challenging to your balance. Maybe you step up on something and you're trying to balance and you stick your arms out to try to balance. The balancing act of riding a horse is sometimes the horse can perceive you giving your aides like you pushed them off balance. And other times you can be a very balanced rider. And just the act of the horse trying to do the movement is still challenging their balance. No matter which one caused it. Typically, when the horse has a slight loss of balance, they tend to do the equivalent of sticking their arms out to balance themselves. But in their case, they tend to stick their head and neck out in order to balance. So when the horse is going from the basics to the middle to the more advanced, the more we advance them, the more likelihood of a loss of balance is and the more we're going to help them find that balance through supporting them. And very often that support is going to be with Bend. So that's the quick down and dirty on bending through the stages. What I'd really like you to remember is that Bend is the foundation for those safety issues.

Speaker1:
So many times when people do get to a point where they are satisfied with the level of training that their horse has, whether that is satisfied and that is going down a trail or whether that is satisfied and showing at even what we could call like an entry level in showing the horse, whether that's in Western dressage or ranch riding or barrel racing, whatever that is. If you're at a level and you stop and stay there and you start noticing little things with your horse, like they're getting stiffer, they're tossing their head when they stop, it feels like they're propping on their front end. It doesn't feel as smooth as it used to. Keep in mind that going back to the basics and adding more bend than you might need for your specific discipline, let's say Western dressage, you might add more bend because more bend was actually what stopped the young horse from bucking or rearing or bolting. So even though it might be more than what you need for showing, keep in mind that when you start seeing those glimpses of what could build into being a bigger safety issue, you need to go back all the way to elementary school and be able to solve those issues like you would if you had a full on problem. Because if you want to prevent a full on problem, all you have to do is go back to the basics and practice what would have prevented or stopped those more basic things like bucking rearing or bolting.

Speaker1:
Now, do you see how such a small question? Two words Why Bend is actually a very big topic? Because again, if you don't know the answer, you might at best go out and ride a few patterns that involve Bend. But if you don't really know why you would bend, there's a very good chance you'll head off and use the most basic bend that you can get by with. And if nothing else, keep in mind that the answer to why Bend is number one for safety and number two for advancement. I love answering questions. So remember, you're not alone if you have what seems like a very basic question. So thank you to the person who anonymously asked the question, Why bend? And for all of you listening, remember, you're not alone with your questions. Others are also thinking I should already know the answer. Maybe I'll stumble upon the answer while I'm listening to the podcast. Others will judge me. It's too simple. I don't even know what question to ask. So if you're in the camp where you have the question but you think you should already know the answer, Seriously, email me. Ask to stay anonymous. Ask your question because others wish you would. Thanks for listening. Send me that email and I'll talk to you again in the next podcast.

Speaker2:
If you enjoy listening to Stacy's podcast, please visit Stacy westfall.com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.

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