(“Season it, sear it, flip it, and serve it.”)

It’s not that you should categorically be strong or mild. When you relate to your horse, whether mounted or handling him from the ground, you should be appropriate. That implies you need enough experience to read your horse’s body language and behavior to determine what he’s telling you and why.

He’s not going to train himself, after all. It’s up to you to choose your course and stand your ground. Along these lines, I encountered a helpless young woman in a clinic—the classic hunt seat equitation arched back was the give-away—who took literally 20-meters to get her horse to halt from the walk. You can easily imagine what inadvertent message she was sending to him! When we discussed her reticence to confront him in any way, she admitted she “didn’t want to look ugly.”

In the paternalistic tone that I find myself adopting in my later years, I could only manage, “Honey, you have a choice here. You can look ugly for a few seconds or you can look STUPID for a lot longer!” Of course, I made that proposal rhetorically as in “and we both know you are way too clever (or not) ever to let your horse make you look stupid.”

As a rider, you must observe yourself dispassionately from outside your own skin. What messages are you sending anyway? If they aren’t valid and effective (and you make that judgment empirically based on whether or not they produce the desired result) then find a better way to state your case.

To one rider with a cheerfully laid back, under-achieving draft cross, I observed that she was riding her horse the way my father’s mother used to cook a pot roast. Nanny was unbelievably dreadful in the kitchen. A roast? Her recipe: cook it for three hours and stick it with a fork. If any juice ran out, cook it another hour! That might work on a tense horse off the track, but to this rider I suggested, “Ride him like you cook a steak! Season it, sear it, flip it, and serve it.” Get his attention. Get reactions. Make him care. Be sure he’s working harder than you are. And allow him to carry you forward—energetically, round, and holding himself up. A moment of Ugly beats months of Stupid!