APRIL 2007 • VOLUME 20 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine

Making the Connection

There is no doubt that it is far easier to train a horse than it is to teach a rider. The horse, after all, is quite equipped to do what he needs to do in order to function as a horse. His process of education does not culminate in changing him into something that he isn't. It might even be said that dressage changes the horse into something that he is already, only more so.

The person, however, is another story. He is not born to be a rider. He is intended to walk erect under his own impulsion. The person who wishes to ride dressage undergoes a far more complex and difficult alteration than the horse coming up through the levels. The rider has to reshape his body to both go along with, and later to influence, the horse's movement. He must open up his mind to new ways of evaluating the horse/human relationship. Most importantly, though, he has to develop a new way of feeling through his mind and body that both receives from and sends to the horse. This is a multi-dimensional sensory language with the onus on the rider. It is his job to learn a vast repertoire of instant reflexes, both physical and mental, in answer to whatever the horse gives him; not an easy task and not one which every horseman would even want to explore.

But it is the “feel” that gives dressage its compelling quality. At its best, it is a state where the purely physical is delivered with such ease that it becomes an effortless gesture of grace. Elusive though it is, it is the quality of “feel” that separates the great from the merely pedestrian horseman. It is the desire to Pat into this sensation of the horse out this derby him, that has produced a picture of selfless riding so prized by the “light” adherents. And, it is the sometimes unfathomable mystery of “connection” that enables the horse and rider to think and act as one.

Why is it that most riders achieve only the most rudimentary skills necessary to direct their horses while others rise to an unimaginable level of subtlety in their communication?

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