(“Not every time they interact with one another is as with the touch of a feather.”)

We’re bombarded, if we choose to listen, by an unending string of cautions to keep us true to our riding principles. (I avoided calling it “our art” because you don’t need to flaunt pretensions in order to have scruples.) Regardless, how long have I been saying “Use only as much strength as you need and use as little as possible”; “If you don’t ride the way you believe you should ride, you end up believing that you should ride the way you do”; and “Where Art ends, violence begins”? You can find these quotes in videos I made 30 years ago.

So the message is: Don’t cross over that line! But how to decide where the line is? Ultimately, you have to decide how you view your horse. And what, at heart, you really care about.

At one extreme are the barrel racers, the polo players, and all the other practitioners of what some of us would call extreme horse sports. Many of them love their horses too. They cry real tears if their horse is hurt. But we would argue they relate to them in a different way than the way we understand ours.

Anyone who introspects at all recognizes some mystical quality which permits a horse to allow us to mount him and do the things that we do. Ever try to ride a zebra? How we take advantage of that permission says more about us as people than it does about the horse.

Without succumbing to the hyperbole of the self-appointed Master bloviating about the Centaur Moment, we all recognize that a horse which performs with confidence, trust, and calmness is a far more pleasing ride that a horse that relates to us with suspicion or anxiety.
But in case you didn’t notice, horses are horses! They have a pecking order. In the field they relate to each other with shows of power and dominance. And not every time they interact with one another is as with the touch of a feather.

It’s unwise to generalize about how all horses will react to a particular strength of aid. Just as there are “hard” dogs and “soft dogs”, the nature of our input must be tailored to the horse and the situation. Patient, incremental training, and demands which ebb and flow without maintaining a constant amount of pressure (either physical or mental) must be basic to how we approach our riding. But none of this precludes a judicious thump or bump when needed. If we do “raise our voice”, we must be sure not to proceed while undesirable side effects roil the horse’s concentration nor to make a correction that creates any lingering insecurity. As we monitor the typical horse’s swing between lack of confidence and overconfidence, we seek to narrow that pendulum swing to a point of mental equilibrium and equanimity.

Twenty-some years ago when the real Spanish Riding School toured the US and came to Massachusetts, the Woodses arranged to attend a performance. Susan was in charge of acquiring the tickets and unbeknownst to me, she splurged unconscionably. We were led to our seats—folding chairs placed inches away from the dressage boards. Glasses of wine, plates of fruit and cheese were brought to us. The proverbial royal treatment. But it was so worth it! What stands out in my mind beyond anything else from that evening was the opportunity at very close range to peer into the incredible depth of calm in those horses’ eyes as they worked before us. Unforgettable!

In upper level dressage movements there are elements of display behavior. A stallion passaging around his band of mares in the field is hardly emotionally neutral. To walk the line which preserves the horse’s comfort zone while producing elegance and expression is the way to make the result both beautiful to see and joyful to do.