No Wrong Answers

Welcome to another episode of ‘I’ve been trying to write about this for weeks but every time I try it goes haywire’.

I could have waited another six months until I figured out how to write about this new language I am trying to learn how to speak, but I kind of want a record of this time when I am still figuring it out. I want to be able to track my progress.

When I started riding Ava recently I made a very conscious decision to do it without anyone observing. My new way of training is starting to consolidate, but I’m not yet confident that I can defend it if another person chimes in with suggestions from a more traditional viewpoint.

I decided to go full tree hugging hippy and embrace what some people call ‘consent based’ training, and others call ‘horse first’ horsemanship, and I haven’t really found a good descriptor for as yet.

It involves reframing training from a set of questions that each have only one right answer, to a set of ideas, or maybe suggestions, with no wrong answer.

And sure, there are still what most of us refer to as ‘aids’, but they are only there as backup to the vibes, and they are more for my benefit than hers.

I think a lot of people like the idea of consent-based training, but aren’t able to let go of control enough to really embrace it. Or they are just a bit mired down in their own extensive background of methods that have always worked that it’s easier just to fall back onto what they know.

As someone who is a raging control freak, letting go of control and embracing an attitude of ‘just do it and see what happens’ has been part of my healing journey. It turns out I was willing to get very radical in order to find the root of my fears around riding.

So I climbed up onto the back of a pony who in her nine years had spent barely an hour under a rider (and all of that on a lead or lunge line) and started asking her to do things like go, stop and turn.

As someone who has spent many hours on horseback in my lifetime I had plenty of preconceived ideas about which of my physical cues meant go, stop and turn to me, what I really wanted to know was how these cues were interpreted by the pony. And from there establish a set of cues that made sense and were easily understandable by both of us.

The concept of clear and specific aids is an enduring one in horse riding. People talk about a horse having ‘buttons’ and going to a trainer to have these buttons ‘installed’. And so we tap tap with our heels and we squeeze squeeze with our hands. But the ‘aid’ that has the biggest physical impact on our horse is our balance and weight on their back.

When we think or speak phrases, or visualise ourselves doing something, our bodies respond involuntarily. Horses can sense these tiny movements and shifts in our balance. You bet they can find patterns and meaning in those movements.

When I look up and think ‘open seat’, and imagine my seat and legs creating a space for Ava to move into, she pricks her ears and strides forward.

It took less than a dozen 10-15 minute rides for us to be able to walk all around the arena, in straight lines or arcs, and perform balanced full-body halts on pretty much just vibes.

At least that’s how it feels to me. Ava is probably tuning into what she thinks are obvious cues from my balance and muscles. She’s a pony who has always encouraged me to work more softly and quietly. She helps me to tap into the quiet buzz that exists between horses and people, if you listen. When I get it right she even rewards me with pony kisses.

For the most part she is right there, asking the questions, offering the answers, confidently participating in the training. But what happens when she says no?

Well one day she did. I tried to steer her in one direction but she walked back to the mounting step, pulled up alongside it, and turned around to look at me. Without even thinking I dismounted and gave her a cookie.

No, she didn’t develop a habit of asking me to get off. She hasn’t done it again. I don’t usually dismount at the mounting step, I usually pick a random spot in the arena. I don’t know why she asked me to get off that day, I just took her word for it. Since then she just continues to pick up more cues and move more confidently.

I know a lot of people have reservations around training like this. I’ve read plenty of articles from high-profile horse people who think it’s dangerous to give a horse options and bemoan the lack of ‘leadership’, likening it to raising free-range children who don’t have a bed time and only eat chicken nuggets.

For us, right now, it’s working and it makes sense. Frankly, if I was a horse, it’s how I would like to be trained. They are capable of way more than we give them credit for, why make them work only to our pre-conceived notions? Why not let them show us alternatives we hadn’t even thought of?

What has really struck me is how confident and keen to interact with you horses become when they realise that training is an exchange of ideas

and they don’t have to worry about getting it ‘wrong’.

It takes courage to ask a horse what it thinks of you and your training and really take that on board. But when they tell you ‘yes, I like this, this is fun’ – that’s probably the best feeling in the world.