(“It should call to mind Mr. Wizard at his workbench”)

As you begin your ride each day, your warm-up should include focusing your horse’s attention, loosening him physically, and producing a working acceptance of the aids from which further schooling can develop.

Whether it takes you a few moments (in the most desirable circumstance) or a large portion of your ride, your job is to get past that dreaded “denial of service” that your horse may confront you with. Here I am not referring to violent misbehavior but more that intransigent, stone-like attitude that can be difficult to chip through.
There are certain riders I can picture in my mind who always try to go about this process the same way. They chug around in the trot—some sending the horse very forward, some in a slower tempo. But routinely the horse is over flexed at the poll with his chin tucked in and he’s cranked around to one side with the rider actively pummeling the horse with that leg. This goes on seemingly endlessly, and only in rare cases does it come to a satisfactory conclusion. My wife refers to this methodology as “framming the horse around.”

I don’t deny that there is a valid technique called “holding and driving.” It is old-fashioned, and in some limited circumstances, it works. There are more occasions, where it simply does not. The horse can be just as stubborn (and quite a bit stronger) than the rider can be.

An alternative is to “tinker.”This is not to be confused with brain-dead fiddling with the horse’s mouth. Rather, it should call to mind Mr. Wizard at his workbench, hunched over an array of wires, batteries, gears, and other mysterious objects–all of which he will magically assemble into a device that will unravel some secret of the universe.

Tinkering is pretty darn hard to describe. It is usually done in the context of an exercise, for instance, shoulder-in on a circle or a working turn on the forehand (which is like a very large-angled shoulder-in (nearly 90 degrees), ridden on a four meter (or less) circle.

Conceptually, tinkering involves “channeling aids” that shape and herd and mold the horse into an alignment where he softens, yields through his top line, and consents to be connected.

But to tinker also implies the willingness to experiment—to feel the horse telling you which combination of aids he needs in order to face the bit and to recognize the reward that awaits him when he becomes pliable.

As always, there will be exceptions, but I like to think of this as a goal-directed persuasion and not a coercion. Feeling your way through the problem—dangling hints of potential rewards—and not presenting your horse with a Ted Cruz-like “bulldoze- your-way-through-the-opposition” frontal assault is really the essence of this strategy. Dressage, remember, should be consensual!