Episode 39: The Two Most Basic Cues When Riding a Horse

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Speaker1:
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.

Speaker2:
Hi, I'm Stacy Westfall and I'm here to teach you how to understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. In this episode, I'm going to explain the first two cues that I teach a horse when I'm riding them under the saddle, and in the segment on call with Doctor Marney. We're going to discuss equine dentistry. Let's get started. It's kind of a bold statement to say that there are two simple cues that fixed most issues. And when I say most issues, I'm talking about things like bucking, rearing, head tossing a lot of the issues that we experience under saddle. How is it possible that two simple cues can fix most of those issues? Well, first of all, here's the warning they're simple. But just because something is simple doesn't necessarily make it easy. And we're going to talk about that from both the horse's point of view and the rider's point of view. I want to talk about these two cues in three different phases, and I want to discuss why I think people leave elementary school too early with their horses. You've heard me reference in the podcast that I like to say that horses move through elementary school, high school and college. If you remember, I actually did a podcast a while ago that talked about how riders don't follow the same path as the horses. That would have been episode six, and in that episode, I referenced that most people learn how to ride on a horse that's in high school.

Speaker2:
And then if you want to know more, you tend to either move up to a horse that does more college level, more advanced stuff, more showing stuff, or some people will move kind of the opposite direction and say they want to start a cult and they'll go down to like elementary school. Or maybe you jump online and you buy a horse and you kind of take this mystery bag of I'm not quite sure what I'm getting. Either which way, what stays the same is that the horses, when they're going through their training, move through stages like elementary school, high school and college. Just because that's the order does not mean all horses even reach high school. So what are these two mystery cues that are so important? They are very elementary, but I'm going to go over how I use them at different stages. It is bend and forward motion. If you have the ability to bend your horse consistently, and you have the ability to ask the horse to go forward and he consistently goes forward, this is the beginning of safety. These are the two cornerstones of my training program under saddle, and how this looks and why this changes and gets people confused is because let's look at it like this. In elementary school we ride the horse and initially it's a single rein,, so it's a direct rein inside rein, which I'm going to call bending. And we ask the horse to go forward. And when I'm coaching people, I'm saying go forward is both legs.

Speaker2:
It's both legs used evenly together. And then when we want to stop this horse, a lot of times it's a single rein that's adding more bend and asking that horse to stop. So you've got basically bend and forward motion. And then when you want to get rid of the forward motion, you have more bend. And this is why I call them these two cornerstone elementary cues. Now when we go up into high school, those two cues don't go away, but they start to get a little more masked by the other cues. In high school, we start to use an inside rein, and an outside rein,, and sometimes that can be called a bending rein, and a leading rein,. And then when we go even further up into college, what's going to happen is maybe we have no reins, or maybe we have a neck rein, but we're going to have a really advanced level of communication with the horse. So up in the college level or it's actually mixed between high school and college, you'll start to hear people using phrases like, if you're riding English, taking some dressage lessons, you'll you'll hear people saying that it's going to be the inside leg going to the outside rein, that's going to steer you. So it's this combination. And the interesting thing is that that inside leg is a version of both legs, meaning go forward to the outside Rein, and that outside Rein, in the advanced training has now replaced the inside rein, all the way to the point where, both in dressage and in Western riding, that outside rein acts like a neck rein.

Speaker2:
And when we neck rein that horse, we would lay the right rein on the horse's neck and expect it to look left. Well, that left bend was instilled there from your elementary school exercises where you had that single rein, that ability to bend, and the ability to go forward. This is why this is the foundation. Now, there's a couple reasons why I think that this is underused in the way that I'm going to describe it here in a minute. When I talk about popcorn and I want to go over those two really quickly. I think it's underused because people start in high school. It's that episode six thing again. The horse's path is not the same as the riders. So if people start in high school, they don't really understand that the horses could be controlled by this single rein,. And then on top of it, if you've always driven your car or ridden your horse with two hands on the steering wheel, then it feels like a lot less control when you go down to one rein,. So typically if I'm coaching a rider and that rider is having issues where the horse wants to throw its head and it's really being reactive in its face, I know that if I can talk the rider into bending that horse, let's say we're going to the left if I can.

Speaker2:
If I can talk that rider into bending that horse to about 45 degrees worth of bend. So straight ahead it would be like 12:00 or. That's going to be straight ahead and straight to your left is going to be 90 degrees. And that would be over towards 9:00. If you go about halfway between 12:00 and 9:00, that's going to be that 45 degree mark. When you add somewhere around that amount of bend, you start to take away the horse's power to be able to throw its head up. And this is why if you watch horses that are bucking in the rodeos, they're straight ahead. If you watch horses rearing, they're straight ahead. If you watch horses that are giving the majority of problems that riders have with the horses bucking, rearing, um, all this kind of stuff, you're going to see that the horses are very straight. As you bring the bend around, you're going to make that a little more difficult for the horse to do. And the cool thing is, if you've got forward motion, you're also going to end up getting that horse to cross those hind legs a little bit and be stepping to balance themselves. So it's kind of cool because this very elementary school exercise actually helps to get these horses engaged right off the bat, because they are balancing themselves, because when you bring that head around, there's that possibility for them to become unbalanced, which is actually what is keeping them grounded.

Speaker2:
And yet when I say unbalanced, as they learn to balance themselves in this bend, they're powerful. And yet in a way that is less likely to have them throwing their head and doing some of these other behavioral issues that we see. I know that this is one of the foundation exercises, because when I took up the challenge to go to road to the horse in 2006, when I met popcorn, I knew that under the time frame of starting a cult in a very short amount of time, three hours to go from unaltered to riding. I knew that I was going to have to boil that down to the bare minimum, and when I came down to it, skipping some of the groundwork stuff I've already talked about in other episodes, I knew that I needed to be able to get him to bend his head around all the way around to where he would touch, like the rider's stirrup or his side. I needed to be able to bend from the ground, and then I needed to be able to bend him from the ground to about 45 degrees of bend, imagining that if I were mounted. So bring him around to that between 9:00 and 12:00, that halfway between there. And I needed to be able to use a dressage whip from the ground on his insides, the side that I'm standing near where I'm getting the bend and ask him to trot around, and if he would trot around and give that bend.

Speaker2:
And then if I could take that bend from 45 and bring it past 90 all the way around and have him stop. I knew these were my baselines for being safe, getting on him, and then when I mounted up on him, I also knew, first of all, that he knew how to move forward off from the dressage whip, because I'd already trained him that from the ground. And I knew that as I brought his head around to 45 degrees, that I was going to be inhibiting his ability to buck, and that I knew that if I brought it around even further, that I was going to be cueing him to stop, because that's where when his feet stopped, I would release the rein and let him have his head straight. And this is how I was safe getting on this horse that had very, very, very little training. Now, the difficulty is that when I start coaching a rider to let go more and they have that feeling of fear, what they're lacking at that moment, is there lacking that understanding that sometimes less is more? I can see it. And believe me, I remember in the early days I could. I can still feel it back to when I didn't know that bend can be your friend, which I find myself saying over and over again at clinics. Bend is your friend, bend is your friend. And then as we've talked in the podcasts, as soon as I say bend is your friend, I have to be able to say it's elementary school.

Speaker2:
Someday we're actually going to do Counter Bend, and someday we're going to want this horse really straight. And I don't say that to complicate. I say it because so often I see riders that are like, but this person says bend is good, and this person says bend is bad. And it's because it's a very big world of things we can do with the horses. But there are foundation exercises like bend and for safety. They are your friend If you know that you've been riding your horse around and you've got this resistance, and let's say that your horse is tossing its head, you're having trouble slowing it down. So you've got the urge to be using both reins to slow the horse down. And that horse is rooting or tossing its head. It might be too big of a jump for you to immediately try to ride with the experience that I'm describing to you. So what I would encourage you to think about doing, I would encourage you to think about what would it take to be able to bend this horse a little bit more. So maybe you just start creeping a little bit more, bend in and lengthening that outside rein just a little bit more. But it's not like the outside rein is a full drape. But here's the reason why. At some point, getting comfortable with this is important.

Speaker2:
The reason it's important is because the horse is more comfortable when it's not as restricted. So let's look at it from the horse's point of view for a little bit. What I want you to think about is that from the horse's point of view, when the rider is using all four aids, that's a lot of pressure on the horse. And if the horse is only trained at elementary to early high school level, when you get nervous and you close all the doors, so maybe your legs are closed a little bit, or you're actually trying to keep the horse going, or you're closed out of fear, one or the other, and then you've closed your hands. So you're kind of holding because you're like, he really wants to go. He's very forward. I want to slow him down and and I and I and I'm not quite sure when you close all the doors and there's not clarity to your aids. There's not pressure and release. There's not a lot of feel there. The horses a lot of times will respond by rooting and throwing their heads and trying to get an escape because they're not feeling that give and take. And what I want to encourage you to do is to think about it from the horse's point of view, where you've either got to get better at softening at some point with both hands, or if the horse needs to go back and remember some of these early elementary lessons.

Speaker2:
It's really interesting when I do get people talked into using that inside Rein, as your primary rein,, and sure have that outside one. Whatever length makes you comfortable to have a little bit of contact, but start really giving and taking on that inside rein only because then you'll have the clarity of being like, I'm now pulling with my left hand. The horse did what I wanted. I'm softening with my left hand. Now I want something else. I'm pulling with that left hand. I'm now softening with that left hand. And I think the simplicity of that compared to I'm pulling with my left hand and my right hand. Maybe my left hand's got a little bit more pressure than my right hand, but I think I've got this. Oh my gosh, he's still going faster. The clarity that comes from simplifying down to this bending rein,, which is going to be inside rein, and then both legs as gas pedal. Or if you want to stop, you stop using both legs as gas pedal and you bend that horse until they stop, which again, I actually teach all of those cues from the ground before I mount up. As I wrap up this segment, I just want to remind you to remember that these early exercises are the foundation of a horse's training. And if the horse feels really confined by a rider using all four aids, whether that's out of fear or whether that is out of trying to accomplish more, when the horse starts giving you feedback by tossing the head and rooting and throwing the head, then you're going to need to be able to answer that.

Speaker2:
And a lot of times there's going to be more clarity. If you can reduce it down to the most simple cues you can pick. So in my world, that's going to be I'm no longer going to be using an inside leg and an outside leg. I'm going to use both evenly. And I'm going to pick one primary bending rein, someday, as that horse moves through high school and starts to learn how to spiral out and starts to learn how to counter bend and starts to learn some of these things, then that horse will be able to handle a little bit more of those, confining all four aids being used at the same time. But as soon as you start having trouble, even when you're up in college, you'll have to go back down to the elementary school exercises. And a lot of times I find that the horses don't really have a solid foundation. Or maybe they're doing a little bit of what happened back in the day when that are you Smarter Than a fifth grader TV show was on, and it was funny that fifth graders knew more. Sometimes if you don't practice something, you really do lose it. So maybe your horses just need a little more practice in the foundation exercises. Let's listen to this question that came in.

Speaker3:
Hi, Stacy. First off, thank you so much for your podcast, I love it. Super helpful. I have a question about my gelding. He is about ten years old. We mostly do trail riding. Um, some other just fun stuff to develop our communication. Our main question though, has to do with when we go into a lope. He'll often complain and sometimes offers a small buck and I. It seems that it's really a bluff that he is pretty lazy. He just doesn't really like to work super hard. So my usual response is I just ride through it. They're pretty low level bucks, so I usually just ride through it and maybe work a little harder until he has a more positive, um, attitude and frame in his body. And then we'll slow it down and carry on with whatever we're doing. So on the one hand, I don't feel like it's a huge problem because I can kind of ride through it and we usually are fine in almost any situation. But the other part of me wonders if I need to, quote unquote, fix this. You know, he's cussing at me and that situation, so do I really need to address it more? And if so, how do I address it more thoroughly is my question. So thank you so much for considering it and um, hope to get some feedback soon.

Speaker2:
First, I'd like to thank you for your question. And I have seen very similar behavior before in other horses, so I can totally see where you would be completely correct in your observations about your horse. Here's what I have to offer you. First off, whenever I see a pattern developing, if it is not something I want to see in the future or not something I want to see more of in the future, then I know it's time to get ahead of it. Good job. You've already recognized that you've got a pattern going. He's fine until you ask him to lope off, and then that's where he starts complaining. Also called swearing in my book. And so you've already observed that this is where you're seeing a pattern. But right now what I want you to think about is it sounds a little bit like you might be addressing it after the fact instead of proactively. So here's how it goes. If I were working with a horse like this and and and I started to see a pattern develop. Well, that also means that in part of him having the conversation with you at different times, you're going to let the horses ask different questions and say different things. Well, when you start to see this complaining attitude coming up in a horse, then you get opportunities to nip it in the bud before it becomes full blown swearing.

Speaker2:
And if it gets to the point where it becomes swearing, then you need to also see that there's been a pattern there. And now, because you know the pattern, you can now get ahead of the problem. So let's just use the example that he's fine in the walk and trot. And it's not until you go to lope off for the first time that he starts swearing at you. So what I would suggest you do is instead of loping off and then saying, you shouldn't have said that we're going to go, okay, walk, trot, and then where you would normally have loped off, you're going to work in a small ish circle, depending on your horse's size, with some bend, and you're going to say, hey, we're going to trot this circle. I know you like to trot, you don't like to lope, we're just going to trot the circle. But now you're going to trot this circle and let's say he's going four miles an hour. I don't know what. We're just going to use the numbers four, five and six. So let's say he's trotting a four and you're going to say, hey, I know you don't want a lope, so let's try a little faster. So you're going to hustle him up to a five. And when he gets to the five you're going to back off a little bit and and kind of less hustle.

Speaker2:
But you're going to still expect him to carry the five. And he's going to make the mistake. And he's going to go back down to four because we've already agreed he's kind of a lazy horse. And then you're gonna be like, oh, I'm so sorry. You're confused. Let's hustle you back up to a five because I was expecting a five trot. I don't need you to lope. I just need you to trot a five, and then you're going to do that for a few times, and then you go like, oh, I really need you to hustle up to a six. You don't have to lope. You just need to trot really, really fast. And I'm going to back off a little because I'm not going to be working way too hard to get you here. So I'm going to go ahead and expect you to stay there. And so I think what you'll find is during this conversation, you will probably be addressing some of the complaining at a lower level. He might be, you know, thinking about ringing his tail to complain. He might be thinking about trying to take his head away from you a little bit to complain. Meaning he wants to be straighter, not have his head bent as much. And this is where the cues that I was just talking about come in.

Speaker2:
Really important. Because if we can bend the horse with that inside rein, and if I'm riding this horse, the outside rein is is kind of got a little bit of a drape in it. And I'm holding on to the saddle horn. And if I can hustle him around like that, I can make that circle bigger or smaller. Because if you add a bunch of gas pedal, you can kind of squirt them out into a bigger circle, and then if you want to let them turn a little bit more, you can you can lead them around with that hand. And so by keeping the bend in him while you work on these transitions of speed, and you're not even actually touching the lope transition, you will cover a lot of these questions that he's asking. We're going to be nice and say he's asking questions instead of swearing. He might be swearing and asking questions, but we're going to say that you can cover a lot of these without even going into the lope, because for some horses, that little extra umph they have to put to go into the lope, they think it's just outright too much to be asked of them. And so they're like, oh, I can't believe you asked me to do that. And that's when you get that little swearing type thing. Well, if you work on your hustling trot for five and six speed, then you're going to do two things.

Speaker2:
You're going to solidify something that is a lower level activity of trotting, by taking it to a higher level of activity. Plus somewhere in that six range, the lope starts to overlap with the trot. So, for example, a horse might be able to trot for five, six and seven, but they can actually lope six, seven, eight, nine, ten. And so there's an overlap there. And what starts to happen is your horse will start to be like, you know, you know, what's easier than trotting really or really, really fast is loping. And then when he breaks into that lope of his own choosing, you're like, oh, I'm just asking you to trot a six. I'm just asking you to trot a seven. And then he breaks into a lope and you go, oh, that's an interesting idea. I think I could take that. And then it changes the way that you ride because you're less aggressive about getting the lope, if that's one of the issues. Not necessarily saying it is, but the other thing, biggest thing it does for him, the comparison between the big trot and the lope will make him a little bit more respectful the next time you ask. And yes, I would personally use this preventative method for as many rides as it took for me to feel like there was an attitude shift, because I think you're going to detect the attitude shift across the board, meaning that you'll get on to ride off at your walk and your trot, and they'll be a little bit more of a ooh, she's a lot more serious than I used to think she was.

Speaker2:
And when you detect that attitude shift after you've done this for a few days, don't just do it one time inside of one lesson. Do this for several days. You know, I don't know what the degree of it that's needed. So you might hustle him more on day one than you do on day three. But don't just immediately ask him to go off and have and be straight and expect it to work there, because you guys have been brewing this pattern for a while, so you need to take a little bit of time to undo the pattern. But when you suspect that the pattern has been broken, then go ahead and offer the the the original walk trot loop a little bit more like you used to and see if he has improved. If he hasn't, you go back through this again and at some point when you make that comparison enough, he'll be like, boy, I kind of want to know how to stay on her good side. That's what I have to offer. Thanks again for your question.

Speaker1:
Supporting companies make this show sustainable. Thank you.

Speaker2:
In this week's segment on call with Doctor Mani, sponsored by Equa thrive, Doctor Mani and I discuss equine dentistry. I'd like to say a big thank you to Equi Thrive for creating the opportunity to talk with Doctor Mani, and for sponsoring this podcast. Doctor Mani Mcinturf is located in Tennessee, where he is the co-owner and president of the Tennessee Equine Hospital, which has three locations throughout Tennessee. He is an equine practitioner with over 30 years of experience with a focus on the equine athlete. Let's take a listen to my conversation with Doctor Mahoney. Doctor Monty, thank you for joining me on the podcast today. Today I would like to ask you about dentistry and having the horse's teeth taken care of. Could you please share some of the symptoms that a horse might be exhibiting if they need dental work? And yeah, let's just start with that.

Speaker4:
Yeah, sure. You know, I'm going to start with thanks for having me today. I'm enjoying being here. That just just, uh, on a on a note, a quick note about dentistry. I have the simple question asked all the time, like Doctor Monty, what do horses do in the wild? They don't get their teeth floated. You know, how come they don't have their teeth floated? And I simply say, you know, it's part of natural selection. The horses in the wild with with good teeth are stronger and run faster and do better and reproduce. And they actually live in nature beautifully. Horses with bad teeth typically don't carry their weight properly. They have trouble chewing. They're not as healthy, they're unthrifty, and they're horses that actually end up with natural selection being the ones that the that the wolf or the bear or the or whatever their predator is happens to catch first because they're the weaker ones. And I say that to say, when we've domesticated horses, we stop breeding for good teeth. We started breeding for other great attributes, like the way they move, the way their feet look, the way the how handsome they are, what color they are.

Speaker4:
And we really got away from breeding for teeth. Right. And so the domesticated horse has a lot of dental issues, and they don't have the predator that the wild horse has. So I say all that to say. A horse's teeth continue to grow in length as they get older, and if the teeth match match up well, either front to back or side to side. A horse fouls his own teeth. He doesn't need a dentist. But if a horse has an overbite or has an underbite or a malocclusion from side to side, they get these really sharp points. And those sharp points result in behavioral problems, difficulty chewing, weight loss, maybe tossing their head when we're giving them a little bit of bit pressure, um, or how they start carrying their head a little differently because it's uncomfortable when we've got them, when we're trying to pull them into collection or whatever we're doing when we're riding. So this kind of bad behavior is, is one of the things we look for as riders.

Speaker2:
Yeah, that is a really great observation. I never thought of it like that before. And it makes sense because I have to admit I love minis, but minis seem to come with a whole basketful of dental problems, and that would make sense because you're right, they wouldn't have been breeding thinking for teeth. They were breeding thinking about a whole bunch of other things. Not necessarily.

Speaker5:
Exactly. That's great. Yeah. The wild.

Speaker4:
Yeah. The wild horse population. If you do a dental exam on them, you're like, wow, these teeth are great. How come? Well, genetically, they bred good teeth because those are the stronger ones, right? And it just makes sense.

Speaker2:
Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. I've noticed a few times because sometimes people will say, I haven't had a chance to have their teeth done, so I'm riding them in a halter. And it's interesting sometimes when I see young horses, even with halter pressure, I can see the horse opening their mouth or doing different things, because that pressure is still going to touch the side of their cheeks, which is still going to cause that irritation. So you almost don't really escape the dental problem just by avoiding the bit. Because and then I've heard, you know, and I've had the dentist explain explained that, you know, even when when the horse is just, you know, pretty much move, move around. If they've got dental problems, they're uncomfortable. That makes sense.

Speaker5:
Yeah. Very good. Definitely. Well, thank you so much.

Speaker2:
That is very good stuff. Would you have any tips on choosing an equine dentist?

Speaker4:
Well, I appreciate you asking that. I'm a veterinarian that also does dentistry, and there are a lot of veterinarians across the United States and that that do dentistry. And for some reason, you know, we've got this, uh, this aura put on us that we don't like to do teeth and and we don't do teeth. Well, I can tell you from my experience, there's a lot of good veterinarians that do dentistry. So I would encourage you to start there. It seems a little self-serving, but it's actually the truth. Um, and our prices are very, you know, compatible to the market. You know, I would encourage you to, to to find someone that you trust and someone that wants to move cautiously. I do believe you can overflow Overflowed the teeth. You can do too much at one time, which changes the bite and changes the the jaw, which changes the temporomandibular joint, which can cause pain. So I encourage you when you when you find something you need to correct, try to correct it in phases instead of too aggressively. If you think about going to the dentist yourself, it's not the most comfortable thing to go to the dentist. And if the dentist does too much work to you, you pay for it for a couple of days, right? With with some jaw pain. So let's, you know, I would just kind of move, move slowly there, you know, and get a reference from a friend that has had a good experience. And but I encourage you to look in the horse's mouth at least annually, preferably twice a year.

Speaker2:
Awesome. Very good. I love finding I love finding vets that have multiple areas of interest because that always interests me. If I find a vet that does dentistry because I, I kind of feel like I've got all my bases covered because sometimes you don't have just a dentistry issue and it's super convenient if my professional knows both areas. So I love that recommendation. Thank you.

Speaker4:
Well thank you. Thank you very much.

Speaker2:
I hope you found that segment helpful. And I thought the information on the wild horses was fascinating. If you have time to thank Equine Thrive or Doctor Marni or both of them, I'm sure that they'd appreciate hearing from you. You can find Doctor Mani Ratnam as in Tennessee Equine Hospital Comm and Thrive is at Thrive.com. I'll put links to both of those in the show notes. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you again in the next episode.

Speaker1:
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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