Terry Church: Contact
Discuss in General Chat here:
http://www.createforum.com/naturaldressage/viewtopic.php?p=7093
Question:
I kind of asked you about this at the clinic but it’s come up on the forum and 1) I can’t seem to retain the information that long and 2) I can’t seem to re-explain it. The question is about if ‘correct contact’ be achieved in a halter/hackamore.
The original question was “in order for it to work in a hackamore, you need to have the horse ‘making contact’ with the hackamore. Do we want to encourage that with our horses? Or would encouraging constant contact (no matter how light), cause confusion for the horse in other areas where we expect them to back off any pressure on the nose? How would you differentiate these requests (yeild to pressure vs. light contact)? And, not to re-open an old can of worms, but does the nose band on the cradle bridle also not cause the same potential for confusion? If I normally want her to yield from pressure on the nose at phase one (barely a suggestion), then how is she to distinguish that from maintaining a light contact when I do not want her to yield to potentially the same amount of pressure in the same location? Is it situation or context that provides the differentiation?”
We kind of got it down to the difference being in your intention and energy. But then someone referred to the idea of relaxing the jaw, and if that can be done without a bit. I wanted to mention what you had told me and tried and couldn’t. So… here I am! 
Answer:
The long answer could fill a chapter and requires more than a “this is what you do” formula. But hopefully this will be practical enough, although succinct, and hopefully I haven’t skipped over too much. If I have, please feel free to ask me to fill in.
To begin with, I’d like to revisit a more thorough definition of contact. Most people think of contact as the feel (or pressure) in the reins that determines their connection to the mouth (if riding with a bit) or to the nose (if riding with a bitless bridle). But that idea is just the beginning, only scratching the surface of a complete sense or understanding of contact. Establishing a truly good “feel” in the reins is the outcome or final step out of all the components necessary to achieving “correct” or ideal contact. In other words, ideal contact is a result of how the engagement (forward thrust) of the horse’s hind end sends that forward energy through the rest of the body. As the horse moves forward, it moves into the pressure of the reins – a pressure that is used to ask the horse to soften by yielding to that pressure. Most horses will naturally back away from pressure (oftentimes subtly) losing forward momentum instead of yielding to the rein. This is because the horse initially feels confined and so backs off, and also because learning how to yield to the pressure takes much more mental and physical effort for the horse to figure out – and takes much more skill from the rider to coordinate keeping the horse forward while setting a parameter with the hand/rein.
However, if the horse learns to yield to the pressure of the rein (because the rider knew how to ask) without backing off the forward, then the horse will be yielding not merely with its mouth/jaw or nose, but throughout its entire body. (In dressage, this is referred to as “throughness”). To quickly demonstrate this to yourself (on the ground), take a dressage whip and place each end in the palm of your hands. Hold your arms up vertically in front of your face with the whip still in each palm, spanning the distance between your hands. Pretend that the handled end of the whip is the horse’s hind quarters, and the tassled or lighter end is the head. Now push the “hind quarters” toward the “head” and watch how the whip bends upward. The hand that holds the “hindquarters” represents your forward driving aids and how the horse moves forward into the hand that holds the “head,” representing the pressure of the rein. As the whip bends upward, it represents the action of the horse’s back or entire topline as the horse yeilds to the bit or nose piece while moving forward. You can see how this yielding action goes through the whole body, not just the mouth, nose and jaw.
And herein lies he benefit of riding in this manner: if the horse can yield to the rein through its whole body by maintaining the forward momentum, the horse has been freed from braces, and has thus learned to move in a way free of tension and tightness. THIS is what provides the rider with the ideal contact. It is a contact that requires no pressure or poundage in the hand to maintain once the horse has learned to yield
to the rein – in fact, poundage means there is still a brace somewhere in the horse’s body. This kind of ideal contact can be achieved with either a bit or bitless bridle.
Whether or not a bit is required for a higher quality of throughness, straightness and alignment (in the bend) while performing upper level movements is a subject for another discussion, although I’ll offer the following comment. I’ve never used a bitless bridle to train a horse to Grand Prix, so I can’t empirically say that it can’t be as effective as a bit. However, my suspicion is that it cannot, for a couple of reasons: 1) The mouth is more sensitive and can allow for more gradated responses from the horse. 2) The mouth and jaw are moving joints, directly attached to the spine which goes all the way back to the tail. Tension in the mouth/jaw can be more directly processed out and released by the skilled use of the bit, i.e. the bit can be used to
that end if the rider has sufficient understanding. Likewise, tension in the mouth is a strong and useful indicator of tension in the hind end because of the type of connection through the spine.
Some form of bitless bridle, on the other hand, can be useful while the rider is developing their skill and broadening their understanding with fewer adverse consequences, and is a great reprieve for horses who have an adverse history with the bit.
Hope this helps, and doesn’t further confuse!
Follow-up Questions/Answers
I asked her:
You said “in fact, poundage means there is still a brace somewhere in the horse’s body”
What exactly do you mean by poundage? Shouldn’t you have SOME feel of the horses mouth? Do you mean that you shouldn’t have literally pounds? It probably depends somewhat on the horse….. Either way, could you elaborate on that statement?
She answered:
Yes, you should have some feel of the horse’s mouth. But having a “feel” does not necessarily have anything to do with weight or pressure. For example, try leading your horse at the end of a long rope so that you’re out in front and the horse is way behind. There should be a soft slack in the rope (as opposed to you having to drag your horse along), but you should be able to “feel” what is going on with your horse at the end of the line, whether he is calm or about to run up on you, without you having to look behind you. (Again, ask Laura to help you with this). “Feel,” in its truest sense, is not about the physical only. It’s what you KNOW is happening with the horse. It’s using your inner senses to allow you a fuller, broader and deeper feel. Same thing happens when you hold the reins, and when you ride. You learn to feel whether or not your horse is loose or tight, whether or not he’s tracking up to his greatest potential, or whether he’s holding back somewhere. If he’s tracking up fully, yet putting no pressure on the reins that are asking him to “give and be soft in your hand,” then you have “throughness.” Again, this makes more sense when you’ve actually felt it happen.
I asked: 3. Where is the line between this and self carriage? If your riding a horse bridleless, the horse has nothing to yield to, but if the horse is in self carriage, then is something missing?
She answered:
Self-carriage is when the horse does not need to push against your aids (reins or legs) in order to move within the parameters that you have set with your reins and legs. In other words, he moves forward freely and easily in response to your leg, and yields to the bit at the same time so that there is no pressure there. He has found a place of freedom within the very specific boundaries that you have set with your reins and legs. He is motivated to find this “place of freedom” BECAUSE you are allowing there to be a place where there is no pressure. It’s what allows a horse to be happy and psychologically at ease with what you’re asking of him. Any time there is pressure somewhere, the horse is not completely at ease. This is because the horse has, for millions of years, depended upon its ability to run from pressure (predators) for its survival. A horse is happiest when it’s free. So, if we want our horses to be truly happy with us, we have to have a way of allowing them to be free within the framework of what we are asking of them. Us humans can relate to that. We want to be in charge of our own destiny or direction, and the choices we make, too. It’s a natural, inherent desire within all living species. Our emotional, as well as physical (invisible as well as visible), survival depend upon it. Otherwise, we can not be truly whole. Same with the horse.
In response to Betty’s post on discussion thread posted above….
The questioner asked about a horse that leans on the rider’s hand due to a lack of strength and thus balance. While a horse’s lack of strength would cause it to tense its muscles to compensate, that tension is still a brace. The poundage that a rider feels in the hand as a result is perhaps the “final” symptom of bracing, whether that brace is caused by tight muscles, sore joints, worry, fear, anger/resistance, sore feet, habit, inbalance, weakness compensated for with tension, or any other type of fight or flight response. Softness throughout the horse’s body is our proof, so to speak, that none of the conditions just mentioned are present, and their absence is really what we’re striving for.
This points to the importance of relaxation and a person’s willingness to learn what achieving relaxation really entails. You cannot have softness without it, and you cannot have lightness in the hand without softness. “How does one address a lack of strength and balance in a horse? Does she [Terry] think that we are pushing the horse too much out of balance while riding on contact?”
Then answer could very well be yes. The answer could also be that the rider hasn’t developed adequate timing with their releases, or is trying too hard to “fix” their horse, or doesn’t understand how to let their horse “find their own way” through a movement or exercise, and instead tries to “make” the horse do the movement or exercise. (In the next couple of issues of Eclectic Horseman magazine I go into this in much more detail).
And yes, a lot of us were taught to “support the horse and keep him in balance” with the reins. I believe that the use of the word “support” in this case leads to a misunderstanding of how to use the reins. To say that the rider can support the horse with the leg makes sense because we easily equate “support” with some kind of pressure. But although we use intermittent pressure with the rein to encourage the horse to yield to the bit, it is a means to an end rather than the end result, else the horse can never find self-carriage.
Grand Prix and upper-level riders whose horses show tension have “trained” their horses to do movements. They have not learned or understood how to allow their horses to respond to an aid and maintain softness at the same time. In other words, if a horse can learn to be soft while walking on a straight line or a circle, he can learn to do so at a trot, etc., and can then learn to do so in a leg-yield, shoulder-in, half-pass or pirouette and so on. But maintaining this quality of softness means that the rider has put softness as a priority over the “tricks.” In order for this to happen, the rider usually has to make the choice to put competing temporarily on hold, since it is the learning curve of the person (who needs to figure out what maintaining softness entails) that takes the extra time.