hobbyhorse23
Well-Known Member
Exactly, Littlegoesalongway. Exactly. Bravo.
If you think of it as pulling on their mouths and endlessly taking without giving then of course you're going to hate it and resist it! Who wouldn't? But driving is a dance between two individuals just as work on the ground is. The difference is that in NH groundwork the two partners are working off of body language. In driving, it's like both partners have been blindfolded and must now do their dance entirely off the feel of their clasped hands. When you can see, the only thing you may notice when you hold someone's hand is the feel of their skin and how hot or cold it is because you're overwhelmed with other sensory input. When you close your eyes and concentrate, suddenly you realize you can feel their tension, how close they are to you, which way they're moving, and you can pull them close or repel them simply by modifying your energy and the quality of your touch. You don't have to pull or push them! You just soften your grip and hint seductively that they should come close, or firm up the muscles in your arm and use your energy to move them away from you. In that dance there is nothing wrong with taking a firm clasp of each other- lighter is not necessarily better. Lighter may mean less communication, less support. It is the same with driving. If you're only using one rein at a time then the horse is left floating out there in space, blind and without guidance in between cues, with no idea what you want them to do or how you want them to carry themselves. It's like trying to salsa blindfolded with only your fingertips touching! They WANT that support, that guidance, and learn to seek it as a comfort. This is your way of being the herd leader when you're in a cart behind them.
One of the hardest things for most new drivers (including me) is to correlate what we feel with what is actually happening. I remember my first clinician telling me to trot my horse out, trot him out, I was barely moving, trot him out! Well, I sure felt like I was trotting out and thought he was nuts!
Then I watched the video my mom had been taking of our lesson and realized my horse was barely jogging. When you aren't used to something it can feel like you're doing things to excess but with more experience you may realize your trainer was right. My arms were literally trembling in their sockets when I finished my first driving lesson with a full-sized horse. Those reins were long and heavy, the Fjord had a thick neck and was used to strong, advanced contact and my muscles were not used to keeping a grip on something in that elevated position for that long! But if I look at the pictures of that day he was going beautifully, using his hindquarters and coming onto the bit correctly at the poll and looking perfectly happy even though I felt like I'd been lifting weights all day. Since then I have helped many new folks learn to take up contact and every single one felt like they had it as soon as they had any hint of connection with the horse's mouth but from my side of things the reins were still completely drooping and the horse was strung out and saying "What the heck??"
Trust your trainer. Try it. Listen to the experienced horse- was he saying he felt your contact was abusive? Was he tossing his head and gaping his mouth and trying to run backwards when you wouldn't take the pressure off? If not, chances are your trainer was right and the contact simply felt strange and unnatural to you because of your own western and NH background.
It is amazing to feel how the lightest touch on a lover's back or on a leadline connected to a rope halter can bring such a sensitive response. It is also, however, amazing to throw yourself into the dance with a partner that you trust, catching and supporting and directing each other with vigor and a firm connection. They aren't mutually exclusive, just two very different sides to a wonderful coin.
Don't be afraid to learn this new kind of touch! It's only controlling and restrictive if you make it that way.
On a couple of separate notes....
Leia
The snaffle is NOT a commonly accepted driving bit for exactly the reasons you list. Only minis seem to use them regularly! Traditionally, almost all driving was done with bar bits so as not to squeeze the horse's lower jaw. It simply works better with the heavy, long reins used on big horses and the long gradual turns most commonly found in coaching and other traditional forms of driving. I found when I switched to pair driving that even the French Link snaffle my colt drove well in solo put way too much drag on the corners of his mouth with the heavier reins- we had to switch to a Myler Mullen to relieve the pressure.
As others have already pointed out, most of your problem is coming from having an incorrect visualization of what contact is and should be.In riding I've hated the feel of the bit in their mouth so much that I rode the last 10 years in a rope halter (they can respond to a very light feel there too.) However, it isn't safe to drive in a rope halter, so I need to develop an understanding of using the bit and reins.
There are some things I don't understand:
1. With the weight of lines (more full size driving than minis) how can there not be the nutcracker effect on a snaffle just from the weight?
2. In a driving lesson I took a couple of years ago, the instructor wanted me to "take more contact" more, more, more, etc. When she finally said "There, he's going much better for you now," I was pulling with both hands to 15 or 20 pounds or more. This certainly was not using one rein at a time. It was pulling both reins with heavy hands. He may have been hauled into a posture that looked right, but it sure was not "contact", it was abuse.
3. In dressage lessons in the past, the instructors were always telling me "more contact, more contact". But not telling me what you are saying, above. (Or anything else other than that there was too much slack in the lines.) ***I still do not understand how one can pay $45 or $60 or more for a lesson and not get useful information - the common way of teaching that I've experienced (until I gave up!!!) is to have you go around and around in circles until it "happens" automatically. I only learn from detailed information!
How does one develop "more contact" with one rein at a time? (Without pulling.)
Do you take a feel on one rein, then the other, I suppose (half halt type). If the horse accepts this contact or feel, then you have a live contact with the mouth. How does one take "more contact, more contact" if the horse does not give to it? More feel on each rein until you get a give?
What do you do when you get the give? Release? How long is your release?
4. How do you push the horse forward onto the bit? Verbal encouragement, clucking, smooching? The whip?
So you hold your hands steady and the horse takes more contact itself? Or if not accepting the contact, puts more pressure on the bit itself? Then you hold steady until you get a give? Then you release to reward and teach?
If you could give me some clues how you break down what you said above, I would appreciate it! If not, that's ok, I like the image you described. Thanks again
One of the hardest things for most new drivers (including me) is to correlate what we feel with what is actually happening. I remember my first clinician telling me to trot my horse out, trot him out, I was barely moving, trot him out! Well, I sure felt like I was trotting out and thought he was nuts!
It is amazing to feel how the lightest touch on a lover's back or on a leadline connected to a rope halter can bring such a sensitive response. It is also, however, amazing to throw yourself into the dance with a partner that you trust, catching and supporting and directing each other with vigor and a firm connection. They aren't mutually exclusive, just two very different sides to a wonderful coin.
On a couple of separate notes....
Unfortunately, I have not found that to always be the case. Used harshly from the beginning of a horse's training it may teach them that they cannot travel in any other frame, and it is practically impossible to get a horse in that situation to stretch their topline or truly work to the bit as they don't seem to realize it is possible. That's not always the case of course, I know plenty of high-powered show horses who stretch awesomely when the check is unhooked and work just fine without it, but I have definitely seen some who are far more efficiently chained by their minds than by the check itself.
Worse- sometimes they don't learn to back off from it, they learn instead to lean into the pressure and take all their support and guidance from it instead of the driver. Those are the horses that lug on the reins like a locomotive when you take off the check! Their understanding of "contact" is the same "pull" that StudioWVW was afraid of. It does not have to be that way but too often careless training does produce that response. As always, it's in the way the equipment is handled and not necessarily the equipment itself. (Yes Fizz, I know. I agree with you on checks but am trying to be fair to the show ring folks who get understandably tired of being castigated on here! I have seen check-trained horses moving perfectly correctly and quite able to do so with or without the check, and they don't deserve to get blasted just because they have one on as required by the rules.)
I have never been impressed with this gimmick as an end to itself, but after doing more reading on the French dressage masters and their use of one-rein bending exercises at a halt or walk I used a modified form of this exercise with Turbo to introduce him to giving to pressure and educate his mouth when I first started him. I did not of course bend his head all the way around (that would have been useless, as you said,) but I stood at one side and took up a light and playful pressure on one rein and waited for him to make the slightest move to give to it. Being a stubborn colt he tried every evasion and resistance in the book just because he resented being "pulled on," but I'd set a good groundwork of positive rewards and patience in other exercises so was able to redirect him more cooperatively. As soon as he gave the tiniest fraction I made a fuss over him and repeated the exercise, first bending to the side I was standing on and then to the other side to make sure he was really responding to the rein cue and not to my body position. He got it very quickly and we progressed to using the rein cue to ask him to lift his shoulder and rock his weight back softly onto the opposite hind leg. I just played with him, experimenting to see if I could get him to shift his weight, lift his shoulder, move his hip, move his shoulder. It was fun and he really liked it too! It was easy to combine that with the cue to walk forward which he already knew and within minutes had him solidly accepting contact and following the bit down when I gave rein. What startled me was how easily that one exercise transitioned into doing really nice soft lateral work within his first few minutes of ground-driving. I hadn't realized that would be a side effect but it made everything so easy. I will do that now with every horse I start.
Leia
