The Real Reason Your Horse Won’t Relax - Karen Rohlf

So I typically kick the episodes off by having the guests tell us who they are and what it is they do. All right, my name is Karen Rolfe and I am a little girl in love with horses. All right, an old real girl, but nevertheless still in love with the horses. And I created the Dressage Naturally program. It combines my education and experience in the dressage world with my education and experience with more partnership based training.

I think it brings together the best of both those worlds. It really has turned into a holistic approach with the focus on creating mentally, emotionally and physically happy athletes. The goal is that both the human and the horse can enjoy the process about learning to be in harmony. Also, I think just as important as what I’m teaching is how I teach. So I’ve always been really focused on a empowered method of teaching where students can learn to independently problem solve and learn to trust their instincts and just become more confident to create the relationship that they want with their horses.

Awesome. So what kind of came first? Was it the competitive dressage side of things or was it this more partnership, natural horsemanship type of training? Yeah, definitely. That’s why I start with I’m a little girl of the horses, because that was my first thing.

I was a real backyard horse owner, had a lot of free time alone with my horse as a kid. So since I survived, I’ll say that worked out really well. But that was always my goal. Like I didn’t grow up learning about horses in a show barn. I learned in my in a little property that we rented for 75 bucks all by myself with my horse and making all those kinds of mistakes and riding beer back and backwards through.

Actually, I did pony club and my first horse took off with me once and the Huntsman had to run down next to me and grab my horse and he led me up to my mom and said take this kid for dressage lessons so she can learn how to control her course. So she did. And then I ended up getting another horse. I outgrew that horse and that horse. I ended up with a really good dressage trainer.

She’s one of the top judges in the world now. And we just kept going and that horse, we were on the young riders team and went up all the levels and that’s the horse that got me into more competitive dressage. And then my trainer asked me to be a trainer at her facility. I was almost took my judge’s license and then at some point I just went, it’s not really how I want to spend time with my horses. And through quite an accident, I had a Grand Prix horse who was nearing retirement and had some soundness issues and I wanted to find something silly and fun to do with them.

And I stumbled across what ended up being a Pirelli clinic, but they had pictures of horses standing on pedestals. So I’m like, that looks silly and fun and that’s how I ended up taking my first natural horsemanship clinic and it just really blew my mind in some of the stuff that I was learning there. It rekindled my just doing non demanding stuff and silly stuff with my horse and I could see the effect it had on his general demeanour and then his massage training. So I’m like, wait a minute. So maybe all along this relationship stuff, this kind of special time, instead of only spending quote UN quote, professional time as a professional trainer with my horses, I saw him blossom and I went.

So it was like a full circle. So it wasn’t like natural or partnership based training was foreign to me. I was like, this is where I started. Now, instead of just by accident, I’m learning methods and applying it at this other stage. And why do you think a horse would blossom from the introduction of kind of fun different training?

The either Pirelli or I, funny enough, did a trick training clinic where sort of same deal. They were like, let’s get your horse to stand on a pedestal. And I had this off the track. Throw a red man. I got.

All four of her feet up on the pedestal. And I was like, Oh my God, this is awesome. And couldn’t really do anything else. We got all four feet up on this thing and. And yeah, she was a Hunter jumper mayor, but same idea.

She had had some ring sourness and some other things that we had always deemed as training issues. And then through just making work fun, that got better. But why do you think that is? Yeah, but I think to look trying to zoom out like dressage is very specific. And so the more I became like a dressage specialist trainer, that was my job, that was my focus.

That was a very narrow lens through which to see a horse. Now, that’s fine if the horse has another life. Yeah, OK. But what I what going to those clinics helped me do was to step back and to see see my horse differently. The, the first thing that we did in this first clinic I went to was talk about relaxation and we moved our tools around and the stick around and we wanted the horse to relax.

And I had a very calm bomb proof. He was shut down and desensitized when I got him. But he was like, I would have said nothing bothered him and he’s low energy, but I started to see the areas of tension. So I started looking at him differently, not just of what movements could he do, but I was looking at his emotions. I go, Oh my gosh, I never saw that you were worried about this.

You just didn’t show worry in a very obvious way. So it was like, I see you when you meet a person, you’re like, Oh my God, I get you. And it was talking about spending non demanding time with your horse. And so all these things that beings need. But when you’re looking through the world through this narrow lens of a dressage trainer specialist, you’re on a 45 minute schedule and the horse is brought to you tacked up and you get to do your specialist, which is fine as long as the horse also has more of a life and more things being taken care of.

So when I got, I didn’t have my own horse for a while, I was willed this horse, Bubba. And so then I started spending more time with him and that’s when I realized, like he and I are having a special relationship. He’s doing things for me that the other training horses didn’t do like this. And I was like, all that silly stuff I thought that you do when you’re a little kid. Actually, the most important part, that’s the trust, that’s the relationship, that’s the ICU and those special nuances.

And I had neglected that. And I was reminded of how important that is. But I think it’s. Yeah, it’s that attunement. It’s that I see you.

I saw that subtle shift. And to have that broader relationship with the horse outside of just here’s what I’m supposed to make you do. But yeah. I was actually just talking to one of my friends on a similar lens of she was working with a woman pretty recently and they were talking about how this woman was a dressage rider and she found that she created relationships with horses through the riding. Me and this other girl were talking about how we find actually taking care of the horses, feeding the horses and all the other stuff alongside the riding is what builds the relationship.

I just think it’s interesting to hear the stuff outside of this bubble where I find training. I call it adversity, right? Because it’s some hard thing that you’re overcoming together. So it’s like trust building, but you need to be doing stuff besides always doing hard things together to have a well-rounded sort of relationship. A lot of professionals struggle with this because they want to be that kid in the barn goofing around with the horses.

But then they also feel almost accountable to the clients and even to the horses to accomplish this thing with this horse. Or sometimes they have to accomplish this thing with this horse and it takes that fun childlike aspect out of the training a bit and thus takes the joy out of the training a bit. And I think the horses really can feel that. Yeah. And I think it’s interesting because there’s everything can work like you can have.

It’s all in your decisions that you’re making. So you could be the rider and the trainer and that’s the only role you have in that horse’s life and you could still do it. It’s the nuanced decisions. It’s what do you do when it’s not working? Do you decide to push harder or push less?

Or do you go over here today or do you walk on a long arena at this particular moment? I feel like there’s a the training arena is you can really build up a lot of stuff, but I like to zoom out and think, OK, what’s my horse’s whole life now? I could play the role of only a trainer in that horse’s life, as long as the horse has a life outside of what I do with it. So a lot of times I’ve worked with horses who have a person, that person and that horse, they go on adventures and they have this whole rich life. And I come in and my role is to train them to do this certain thing in a way that doesn’t violate the trust that has been built with humans.

I can still do it in a way that, oh, I felt that I’m going to give you a break now or, oh, now I’m going to challenge you to go a little more. Got this. The training doesn’t have to be in conflict with the horse’s whole life, but if that horse does not have a whole life, like back in the day, there’d be horses who would come into the training facility. They would sit in a stall most of the time, it turned out maybe a couple times a week for an hour, unless they started trotting and then everybody brings them in. And then their only thing they would have is my interaction as a dressage trainer.

But then other horses in training where when I was in training them, they were going off and doing stuff with their person and their person was. So I like to zoom back and the the little game I play. As I say, if this horse wrote of a book, my life with Karen, my life today, what would the book be like? And I think it’s a really good exercise to play with yourself because sometimes there’s going to be chapters that like, oh, that was a hard lesson today. And other chapters they’d be like, Oh my God, my mom’s amazing.

But I’m the best human in the world. And then other times you’d be like, I love my life. It’s just so peaceful and there’s going to be somewhere like, oh, she was in a bad mood today, but it’s just a chapter because that’s life. But if we zoom out and go, what’s the horse’s whole life and what’s my individual role in it? Oh, maybe he’s being difficult to train because he’s this little stall for 23 hours a day and doesn’t have anybody paying attention to gonna be playing.

Like sometimes turn out with a herd mate is the best training. But I think it’s success can come in a lot of different flavors if we have the intention of paying attention to the whole life and paying attention to what the horse is experiencing outside of our little bubble. Yeah. And you said, you mentioned the word intention and I think that’s one of those words that people are hearing more these days. But I don’t know if there’s necessarily like a clear definition of intention.

Is it just the way I think? Is it the way that I approach the training? Because sometimes I’m thinking, hey, you need to get on the trailer. But maybe my intention is the energy that I’m putting out baby doesn’t tell the horse that getting on the trailer is necessarily all that safe or fun or whatever. So how do you define intention?

That, that that’s a great question. Yeah. Intention to me has some action. It’s like what I’d like to have happen. And it’s a little different than focus, which is I’m focusing on this thing.

But intention has like movement. I’d like this sort of thing to go this sort of way. And I think our intention has a lot to do with everything. Imagine you’re sitting here and somebody comes up behind you and just puts hands on your shoulders. Now, if you trust the person and you know that their intention is good, that could feel like good.

Now imagine if you didn’t know or trust the person and they’re coming up behind you like hand like that’s a whole other. That would create a whole other thing just because the intention behind this. I’m about to choke this person. Yeah. And that first touch that’s going to probably feel different to you than someone who’s coming up to relax you and put your their hands on your shoulders.

And trailer loading is a great example because I don’t know if anybody else has had this experience where you can practice trailer loading and your horse goes on and off the trailer just fine until you have to go somewhere and you’re just a little bit late. I have. What’s the difference? The difference is the intention, The yeah, I’m going to get on the trailer versus I think not all the time in the world. The trailer’s no.

Problem the horse. Such a good point. I’ve actually recently I have an off the track thoroughbred mare and she is she came off the track with the name Spendy and I changed it to Pepper because she’s very spicy. She has had several trailer incidences since I’ve owned her. So I started doing the OK, we’re just going to my intention is actually not even to get you on the trailer.

I want you to be near the trailer and take a deep breath. But I know myself and I know that like when I need to get to the vet appointment or the lesson or whatever, my whole energy is going to change. And so I’ve actually started doing trailer loading practice with a timer. Nice. And the intention is not even like I need to get them on in the 20 minutes, but it’s in 20 minutes, I’m done.

It doesn’t matter really where we are. And that’s really helped me because I can be focused and sometimes those sensitive forces are like, lady, you need to chill out. And so many people would be like, that horse is being really disobedient. And I’m like, that horse is telling me though, I need to go kickbox for a minute because they don’t feel like I’m setting them up for safety or whatever it is that they need. I learned so many lessons from trailer loading because you really see everyone’s a good horse then until they’re standing at the trailer with a horse who doesn’t load.

And it’s like in other sports, they have like pain caves right where they go and they know that they’re going to ride their stationary bike for four hours and like they mentally can prepare themselves for that. But like our sport is different where we might be that intense athlete, but does the horse trust that mindset and those actions that equate wanting the competitive success? And yeah, the timer, because it just sometimes just having a timer can add pressure to the human, to the imaginary cars. So you get to practice knowing as a timer go, but being unattached, like you’re committed, but you’re unattached to. All right, at 20 minutes we stop and re evaluate and go again.

But just having that time was good. And then you can start to measure because you’re going to know, OK, I need exactly 18 minutes and this horse is going to go on the trailer. Then you can relax into that. I’ll often do that with riding. I’ll set a timer for 26 minutes when I get on the horse.

It doesn’t mean that I ended. It just means 26 minutes. I notice that 26 minutes has gone by and I, oh wow, I’m actually, I’ve done everything already or Oh my God, I’m still in the warm up. So it just gives you help with that horse. So then if you ever do want to go to a competition or go somewhere, you have the metrics, you’re like, OK, here’s how I planned XYZ.

So it I like every now and then doing that we want and the feeling of endless time, but we live in a world where there’s not. So I think it’s really good to practice. And another use of intention is that it’s the come from that you’re doing everything from. So for me as a dressage trainer, one of the principles of what I do now is that dressage is for the horse. So that number one, I’m helping horses move with more freedom and balance and relaxation and energy.

And my guess is that was going to feel good to the horse. So that’s my intention when I go out to do the any horse in their warm up or whether that’s the whole ride I want even going. Oh my gosh, I feel so much better now when I did. So having that intention is going to change my decision making if something’s going wrong, I don’t know. I’m like, oh, OK, great, Arnie, I got that done.

But I don’t think the horse is feeling like they feel better this we advance. Yeah, tempies are hard, pirouettes are hard, but we’re building on that base of trust of dressage. Dressage feels good. Dressage feels good. Good.

Sometimes dressage is really hard. And my quads are the horse is going to say because we did squats that day, but you can you can push if you built up that trust because horse knows that the intention is that they feel good. And at the end of the day, no upper level hard movement is worth hurting my horse physically. But yeah, I love the timer thing. Yeah, and I feel like that I think modern dressage sport gets a bad rap because it’s in the limelight and horses these days are so powerful and big, moving and a little neurotic.

But when you look at dressage as a way of training, not necessarily as a way of sport, it really is so beneficial to the horses longevity and soundness. And even I rode hunter jumpers for a little while and my trainer was so big on the flat and she was like, you need to be able to counter canner and leg yield and do all of these things. And not because your horse has to be able to do them, but because when your horse is approaching a jump on a wrong lead, like they need to have security in themselves. That’s just fine. And it really changed the way I viewed riding on the flat because I was like, oh, OK, like this isn’t my horse doesn’t have to half pass.

But like this half pass is going to improve their balance. And it may be hard at first, but actually they like it a lot better than like yielding sometimes. So I think just as a modality of getting horses comfortable in their body, dressage is so like good. But sometimes it’s hard to differentiate when you’re talking to people about dressage from modern sport to like actual dressage training. And that’s actually one of the things that I wanted to chat about was this sort of sweet spot of the healthy bio mechanics, which you put, is this right combination of relaxation, energy and balance.

And maybe we could go into what each of those mean and then how you tie it. All together, yeah, I’d love to talk about that. I’d love that you distinguish between through the art of massage. And then there’s the sport. And those are two separate things.

A lot of the people who are practicing to do the sport are practicing the skill of getting things to work even if they’re not working because it’s a test in a competition, even if you’re if it’s not working, you got to ride and try to make it look like it’s working. And that skill is practice way too much in training. And I hear it so, but I have to be able to do this in the arena. I was like, yeah, but you’re not competing right now. So now I don’t compete, but I still do dressage.

And that’s because I think dressage is really cool. It is for the horse. The basics are for the horse. The upper levels are a gift a horse gives to me if I earn it, and I don’t have any time restraint so that I don’t have to do anything. So I just end up doing it.

If the horse learns it and it’s cool, it feels fun. But the distinction between the art of writing in a test, which is getting it done even if it’s not working, I think it’s practice way too much. In practice, that’s the downfall because sometimes it’s just still working. Yeah. 20 minutes goes by like, didn’t work.

Yeah. Where else? Another day. But yeah, the sweet spot of healthy bio mechanics is that came from I was already a dressage trainer, so I knew how to do it. Then I went into partnership training and I thought, OK, I have these like happy camper horse that now I can ride with no reins and he’s happy to come out and play.

And then I thought, right now bio mechanics is important. Now it’s important. How is he going to trot? All right, how’s he going to move? And so I thought, how am I going to explain this?

What am I doing now to take this happy camper horse doing whatever he wants to now, changing his bio mechanics? How can I explain that? Because I don’t want to just get him on the bit like that. Didn’t. Yeah, that didn’t seem sufficient.

So I realized that when I started talking to my horse to help him move better, I was always having a conversation either about the relaxation, Hey, chill out, or I was changing his energy level. I needed more or less, or I was changing his balance somehow. I was bringing his neck a little higher or lower, whereas moving the shoulders right or left or the whole body right. And so I realized that everything that I wanted was in one of those three conversations. So I thought, OK, let’s separate them out.

And instead of trying to like put your leg on and hold and drive and take the acid rain and all of that at once, I’m like, let’s just make sure when you put your leg on, does it work when it heard a lot of people hold your outside rain there? Like why? Because the horse is falling through the shoulder. Why don’t we just ask the horse and not or align aligned him so he’s not trying to fall through the shoulder. So taking the aids one at a time or those communications one at a time.

So the horse number one understands what that aid means in isolation to a high degree. Then we can play with it and say where does your shoulder feel the best? Here or here, here or here? And then we move them and then we see what the horse tells us. So we play with the conversations individually and I think of them like primary colours, like the red, yellow and blue, and you can mix all the colours from those primary colours.

So it’s the same thing with dressage. You can create any kind of posture and shape if you play with the relaxation energy and balance. So we play with it, and then I listen to the horse and go, how’s this feel? And what I found with myself, even with all my experience and in teaching people remotely who are like across the world that I’m explaining how to do this, that if you muck around and you play with different possibilities and combinations, you will stumble upon a place where your horse goes, Oh my God, I can move better like that. And they start to breathe and stretch and swing and get springier and get more of whatever the adjectives that you’re looking for.

But we have to make sure those three conversations are possible. If you put your leg on universe doesn’t go well, let’s look at that. Now you’re gripping with your leg and that you’re not going to be able to sit properly. And now all these other things happen. I found that when I really highlight the quality, the communication about those three things, a lot of the problems dissolve and your horse starts moving better kind of by accident.

And then you can be more and more refined and thoughtful and methodical about it. But it’s very freeing. Rather than contrast that with, OK, hold your outside rain, drive with your inside leg a sit up, keep your elbows at your side. Don’t leave your rain. Everybody’s getting tighter and tighter and fighting with each other.

And I find when I teach this way and train this way, things are free. You can experiment. There’s breathing room and the horse ends up showing you a place that they will maintain effortlessly because it feels good to them. It’s my starting point. Yeah.

So what what does relaxation feel if I’m on my horse and I’m trying to gauge whether or not they’re relaxed? Maybe they’re, they either could be that sort of lean toward that shutdown type of horse where you might think they’re relaxed, but they’re just like not there. Or you have the sort of thoroughbred typey, little bit hotter, a little bit naturally tense. Off the tractor event. I love their event.

I love them, but they can be tricky in terms of getting them to be comfortable in their own skin and that’s why I find the relaxation. I’m always telling people that their horses need to be relaxed, but sometimes I don’t think I know necessarily how to explain that feeling to them. Yeah, relaxation to me is a fascinating, very deep subject because you can have relaxation in high energy movements. So to me, power is relaxation plus energy. So if it’s just energy with tension, then it’s not powerful.

Bruce Lee talked about allowing the punish and relaxing. So relaxation is mental, emotional, physical. So you can think about mentally relaxed is, I know the answer. Emotional relaxation is I can deal with this. And physical relaxation is there’s lots of levels.

You could be asleep, but then there’s also just this suppleness, looseness, pliability, openness within the body. And that’s where I think relaxation gets interesting when you add energy to it. I have this quote. Everything comes from and returns to relaxation. That’s a good place to start because it’s hard to feel sometimes.

You get a horses really powerful. Are they relaxed? Yeah, they might be. So can they start out relaxed and then you do stuff and like can you return to relaxation? And some horses can hang out nicely but you do something and then they can’t stand still afterwards for a moment.

Make sure you return to relaxation. So all the way through the bell curve and do it. And you should be able to do high-powered things and then immediately go back to relax. Tricky is the shutdown horse or the horse that goes introvert because they can seem quiet. Not necessarily.

So it’s like breathing. Are they breathing? Are they moving their lips? Are they like, so you can have a horse that does hard things and you stop and they’re like, when there’s like, this aliveness to it, relaxation is not necessarily standing still doing nothing. Could be.

Yeah. So this is where a little feel comes in and I find when horses are relaxed they can go deeply relaxed and they can call them out of it pretty quickly. And I want them to like you go to dressage shows and everyone’s keep them going. And then I will remember watching my first raining competition. I’m like, everyone’s just standing around and then they Mosey in and then they do really big stuff.

They Mosey out. We’re like horses who work cows. Like they have to be really calm, but then call upon like, are we pushing our horses all the time and dress up? We got to be able to relax on them and relax. Like in the hunter world, you guys stand around, then you go jump a horse, then you stand around.

It’s funny, the dressage world is very different. They take all these horses and they like, keep them going. Don’t let them shut down. And like, now they’re going to start saving their friends even more. Like relax, let them know that there’s this breath in, breath out kind of feeling.

So I think if you’re looking for it, you’ll start to feel the difference between a horse who’s just standing quietly, but they’re frozen and introverted because they’re not going to be interactive. A relaxed horse can go deep into relaxation. Then they go hey, and they’re like hi, because they’re not holding on to tension. But that can look really different on different horses and they can be tricky. Tension can hide in there, but there’s this.

I let I think the breathing quality, like what you feel like when you’re breathing, then breath out. We do stuff and then we recover from it. And tense horses, whether they’re energetic, tense or shut down, tents have this holding. There’s a holding energy. There’s something frozen in there that I think if you commit to intention of noticing that when you walk through the bar, you’ll start to feel it.

It’s interesting because. I work with a lot of horses with behavioral issues. And so a word that gets thrown around a lot is dysregulation, right? Because these horses typically, they’re really good at going up, but they’re not good at coming down. The owner will come and look at it and maybe something Spooks the horse right and I’m.

Proud of the horse. Because we had a before, during and after they’re here and then they go here. But then they come down and people think I don’t want them to come up. And I go, oh, we all come up, right? Like we, I’m like, my heart was racing when that deer jumped out of the woods.

It’s they’re a prey animal. Their heart should be racing because this thing jumped out of the woods. That’s rightfully scary now when you’ve been in the arena every single day and they’re always spooking at that one corner that’s different than oh, this thing happened. They came up and then they came down and it’s that same idea of if they they need to return to something that’s a regulated force. A regulated force is not this all the time that’s shut down.

But and for the listeners, I’m just gliding my hand evenly across the surface. You want them to be baseline, come up, come down. So I guess that brings us to like energy. If you have a tense horse, you might hear the word energy and be like, I want 0 energy. Give me no energy.

I want only relaxation. And and if you’re on a very lazy horse, you’re like, please give me all the energy. How do you approach either raising helping horses? I’d assume raise or lower their energy? Yeah, I love what you.

Describe it’s like that’s the power of everything comes from and returns relaxation. So important to start with relaxation. So when you talk about energy, like if I have a horse that comes in front of me, OK, here’s a horse, let’s make it as best they can be. My first thing I’m looking for is their intention, because that’s going to be my priority, that we need to start more relaxed. But if he’s not starting more relaxed, let’s finish with a more relaxed.

So even if I start, I’m not going to sit there necessarily stare at him like I might ask him to do things. So I’m adding some energy to the mix, but I’m going to play with energy or balance or whatever it is. So of that we end up with relaxation. So relaxation to me is a priority. If the horse comes out in their tents, that’s the most important thing to solve.

Who cares if I got it going? It’s still tense, but I might use the energy conversation to get things moving and to get that feeling of bell curves. Let’s bring him up a little more so he can feel what it’s like to come down from there. And then maybe each time we go down a little bit more, but the energy conversation is becomes interesting due to the relaxation or lack thereof. And sometimes tension stops horses from moving.

Some horses were described as lazy, are actually extremely tense. They’re locked down, their muscles can’t let go, so they’re just frozen, and they’re putting actually quite a lot of energy into not moving. So the relaxation is what’s going to open the energy door. And I just love to say that because it’s very counterintuitive, but it happens over and over again. And a lot of times tense horses, they have too much energy, but the reason they have too much energy is because they’re scared and they’re not relaxed.

So again, we’re coming back to relaxation, but sometimes horses are just like, let’s go big, and they’re just like slightly impulsive. So they’re not freaking out, they’re not scared, they’re just like a big ball rolling down a hill. So a lot of times if a horse is not tense, so let’s say there’s no big problems, it just goes a certain way and I’m trying to express the energy. Then it comes down to the quality of the communications, Like, Oh yeah, I’m going to ask you for energy. And I’m going to have a picture of what energy I want.

And I have students literally pick a number on a scale from one to 10. How much energy would you like to ask your horse for? And I look at that first moment of, OK, I’m going to ask you to go with this amount of energy in my body. I’m embodying it. I’m thinking of it and then some.

The horse does something. And then immediately I ask, OK, did your horse match your picture? What percentage did it give you? 100%, Ninety percent, 80%. Sixty percent, 40% and we start there.

So sometimes I’ll be like ready, go. And then I said, did yours do it? That’s 40%. I’m like, OK, thank him for that. Thank you so much for that 40%.

And how are we going to ask again? Do we need to be clear in our body language? Do we need to give him a longer rope? Do we need to follow through? Does he need a little, hey, pop him in the butt?

Is he too scared? So let’s try again. And we keep practicing that ask an answer moment till the purse till the person goes would you and the horses. Oh God, and we go. That was 100%.

Thank you so much cookies rest. So I really pulled a microscope up to that initial communication because of the horse. Don’t expect to sustain something that wasn’t willingly offered in the 1st place. There’s a good pull of them. A lot of times leg is coming on or if you’re on the ground, you’re being sent out and the horse is giving you some fraction of what you asked for.

And we’re not going to get better from there. Yeah. So without being. And we make it fun and we go. Thank you so much for that 20%.

Hey, let’s, let’s try it again. We’re looking at ourselves and we’re looking at the horse and how do we put just enough pressure to motivate them to do it, but then really thank them for it so that the next time they offer it willingly. And so once we get something like that happening, then we can all right now let’s play a game of sustaining it. So the horse, given their options, goes, I’m going to stay at my #5 energy and start to realize wow, my my humans, It’s quieter and it’s easier to move and they agree. They start to to cooperate.

They start to make it easy and we’re all I’m always measuring with these low energy horses. Did they end up signing up signing into this and going OK, I’m going to do this with you and it’s a slow process, but man that you can really turn a horse around and have them deciding to join you 100%. And if the horse is going too much energy, then either we work on that communication like hey, I’m lowering my energy and this is now meaningful and let’s practice this so you don’t understand what that means when I breathe out and relax, OK, let hey stop. I’m not going anywhere going. So we but I really try to make sure that there’s a communication and Thoris understands, but they’re still having trouble doing it.

They’re like, OK, I understand, let me slow down, but let’s feed up again and it feels then we can play little games and use movements to cause the horse to go. I think I’ll just go a little slower. If the emotions are good, we can do that. Then it’s just education. If the emotions are off the charts, we need to do exercises that bring the emotions down.

And sometimes it’s a balance thing. Sometimes horses are going fast ‘cause they’re really unbalanced and they become like snowballs rolling down a hill. Then I might go, OK, I’ve got enough energy, let’s do a balance exercise. Let’s move somebody parts around and see if there’s a place where the horse naturally becomes more rhythmic because their bodies organized cause imbalance in the body can cause a horse to start rolling like a ball down the hill. Yeah, when I teach, we take each conversation separately.

OK, I have a group of horses. I don’t know what each of you need specifically, but we’re just going to all work through relaxation exercises and then later we’ll do balance during that process. There’s certain horses who make breakthroughs like, oh, that was the thing I need. We’re at the end of that now. The rider has this capability to talk about these different things.

And then the next session is, OK, let’s go play around. Try different energy levels, try different this and that and see if you stumble across a couple strides that feel like, Oh my gosh, that felt good. What did you just do? Like I moved the shoulder to the left three times and I was at that number six energy and all of a sudden my horse started stretching. Let’s try that again.

So you create it. And so this is where it just starts to happen. Not through me dictating what length rain they should have and me telling them what to do because they’re discovering it together and everyone is agreeing the gosh, that feels better. And if they can do that through just quality communication and experimentation, then I can put my trainer hat on and go, OK, that looks good. Can you ask for a little lower energy?

And can you bring his head? His neck may be a little taller. And then that’s easy. Then I can start doing my dressage stuff and go try a different tempo. Can you ask for a little bit more alignment here?

And then they’ve done 80% of the work themselves, and they’re much more open to refined requests because they’ve discovered how to do it together already. Yeah. And. The balance thing I find very interesting because I definitely noticed that I ride a lot of hunter jumpers and specifically right now we have this one mayor and she is like a total sports car. It doesn’t matter what discipline you do.

You look at the sourcing, you go, oh, I want to sit on that thing. She’s just really nice and but she is like 17, two hands. She’s five years old and like she had a baby young. So she’s like just learning her job. Now she has the issue of the owner and the riders really want to shorten and compact, but then she just shortens the neck and the hind end doesn’t follow.

And I’m like, oh, this horse actually needs to like lengthen her body and lengthen her neck. And I think that’s going to make her feel like she has so much more control over the situation. It’s not that the balance goes out the front end, but it’s that once you can get the neck to equal the back in terms of like length, you just tend to have so much more comfort because you go, OK, I can just sit up now. And the horse goes, OK, yeah, we just sit up versus let me shorten and then AB and drive you into that shortened contact where then they go, they get a little claustrophobic and maybe they start running what even is proper balance? Because I think a lot of people think if my horse doesn’t look like Vallegro, they’re not in balance.

And it’s one it took I grow 10 years or however long it takes to get to that strength to even hold some of that that uphill balance. But like for the normies, what does proper balance maybe look and feel like? Yeah. And I love that you’re asking. This in the context of what you just said about that horse in the neck, the neck, shortening the neck, it’s so easy because it’s a very flexible part of the versus body, but it causes so many problems.

The whole game in dressage is can you engage and collect your horse without contracting the neck, without compressing the neck? That takes art for writing. The easiest thing to do is say, oh, I’m doing dressage and you’re trying to put their head on the vertical and make their neck, quote UN quote, round. But for me, the neck is an extension, an expression of the rest of the body, and it needs to be. So if your horse’s back is flat and crooked, your horse’s neck should be flat and crooked.

And if you try to take a flat, crooked horse’s body and then or a horse and then make the neck in a shape that doesn’t align with that, you are now disconnecting the neck from the body. And now you’re going to. That’s a big training problem. I’m trying to get that to work together in my program. It’s all based on first being able to ride with no reins.

And I don’t mean you have to go bridalist in the field. It just means put a loop in there. How much can you give and make sure you’re not relying on the reins because the danger of contracting the neck when other things aren’t working is so high. If Thoris is going faster than you want, how are you going to contract the neck? It there’s so many ways to contract the neck and in the end, the neck should just be a extension of the spine and like a big hood ornament.

You’re not really riding the front end horse, you’re riding the body of the horse. So I love that you brought that up because I think you’re absolutely right. Don’t teach that horse how to jam up the neck because the back end’s going to start fishtailing. So that riding without the reins is one of my little checklists. So we have to be able to do the basics of that or at least feel comfortable.

That or find out when you let go of the reins what comes wrong. Let’s solve that differently. Like the reins only have a few purposes, subtle positioning the head and neck, but then it’s just feel and connecting the energy. So I will, if my horse feels like throwing his nose in the air, he’s going to be allowed to do that. And I want to know that.

Wow, that’s interesting. Why? Why is he holding his neck crooked? I’m not going to think I need to straighten that neck out. I’m thinking I need to play with the body and balance the body in such a way that the neck doesn’t feel like doing that.

It’s a contortion and it takes a lot of self-control from a human because I remember when I was in the dressage barn, if your horse wasn’t round, it was like horse went about the bit. Now I’m like show me, show me. And what I found is if you ride the body and the emotions and make sure the horse is understanding, but it gets easy. It just goes where it wants to go. And if the body’s balanced, it goes in a natural place and then you can make subtle adjustments with the ring.

So then the my first thing is OK, happy camper, I don’t need Marines. Then I play with the body and get the feeling that the horse wants to stretch. So when we talked about the sweet spot, one of the things that shows me the horse feels good as they have a desire to stretch, They swing, they open up their stride, they become more rhythmic, their back is loose and be able to use for what it’s meant for, which is locomotion, which is it contracts and relaxes and contracts and relaxes the held rigid and all those things are happening. And now if I have a horse with a strong desire to stretch that neck and not be contracting or do anything weird, now I can take the risk of compacting and engaging my horse knowing that if I now I play a little game of can I engage the hind end and still keep his desire to stretch. So the horse could say I’d like to stretch.

I feel like I can stretch. I go great, stretch into a taller neck, right? They don’t always have to stretch all the way to the ground. They can stretch a millimetre or two inches or whatever I need to take out the contraction. But I’m trying to ride the hind feet.

And that’s the beauty of gymnastic exercises. You take this force who’s free and moving and swinging and has a desire to stretch, and then do smaller circles and do more frequent transitions, keeping that stretchable. And you can stretch them into shorter and shorter rings and a more tall posture and do things like shoulder ends that really requires carrying power from behind. For me, self carriage is really high on my list of things that I’m checking all the time. It’s not.

Finally, when my horse gets to Grand Prix and does the perfect half all, then I have self carriage. No, I’m like self carriage. Meaning I can ride the no rings or I can give my hands in the middle of any dressage movement and things should not fall in a heap. They shouldn’t speed up or fall to the left or right or fling their head up like I’m always. I’m saying I’m just enough connection that I’m connected like a good dance partner, but not so much that I’m holding together.

And if I feel like, well, I’m holding it together, I must give and find out what’s falling apart when I stop holding it together with my reens. That’s what I need to fix somewhere else in the body. Because if they were really balanced in their body, they wouldn’t fall apart for that. It doesn’t mean they should be frozen in a frame, but it couldn’t. They shouldn’t.

I shouldn’t feel like, well, I better keep my left hand locked to their shoulder or they’re going to go flying out the side. Yeah, I know. It’s. I always think back to I did not have a traditional competitive upbringing in terms of horses. I was a mounted games rider and then I got into a venting and then I got into dressage and then I got into 100 jumpers and then back to a venting.

All very well-rounded. But I got so lucky because the dressage trainer who I worked for when I was in high school, she was actually a human physical therapist. And I had this really quirky, off the track, just not thoroughbred mare. And she had a head tilt, and she would always tilt her head to the right. And I remember being like, oh, I just need more like outside rain or left rain or whatever it was.

And she was like, you need to soften your arm. You need to engage this hind leg. You need to. And it just changed the way because it’s so easy to ride based off what you can see. And then you remember that the whole like, other 70% of the horses underneath and behind you.

Yeah. And so it’s always a good reminder of the head and neck are like data. It’s like what is going on in the rest of the body. Maybe you’re sitting a little crooked. That can cause this.

My horse only likes to bend to the laughter. My horse always has its head cocked to one side. So much of that is the fact that the energy in terms of the flow of movement is not coming evenly from the back or from the seat into whatever contact you have, whether that be to a rain or to a bridal list. It’s what’s happening underneath and behind you versus what’s happening in front of you. Yeah, absolutely.

And it’s just. It’s so important to say that over and over again because like you said, when we’re riding and we’re humans and we like to do things with our hands and we’re very visual and what we see in front of us is the head and neck and we want to do stuff with it. And everything is happening behind and underneath us. And I think to approach dressage that has to be interesting to you as a dressage rider of huh, Like that’s the whole thing is like this dynamic of energy and orchestrating flow of that energy. It’s not about getting your horse to do stuff for you or for me.

It’s like that’s the whole game is how to sit in an aligned way so that this happens and develop your horse and strengthen the weak side and supple the tight side so that the movements happen with balance because this foundational balance. I think it’s really important too. And that was a big lesson that I learned couldn’t going after being a dressage trainer and then going back to the the partnership base is what I started to learn to ride a horses I just bombed around on them. And then as a dressage expert technician, when you feel a horse out of balance, it’s really easy to just go, I can, I can balance that horse and I can do it. And then going back and riding bridaless again.

And with some horses who are really unbalanced and you’re riding them bridaless, it’s like it doesn’t feel good. It’s like they’re going to, they feel like they’re going to stumble and you want to quote UN quote help them and to take all that control away from me and say, all right, I don’t have all my dressage skills, but I’m riding this horse bareback. I need some sort of balance. And then you have to be a little more clever. And I found there’s a threshold of balance that a horse needs that if I take the time to address that in a very non dressaggy way, it will help everything.

Using poles and obstacles and patterns, bridalists or without rings, you can just put a loop in the reins and say, I’m not going to solve this using my reins. I’m going to solve it through clever puzzles the way the lens jumper riders do. Put a pole and an angle over this fence and then touch to cause the horse to jump it differently. So the same thing on the ground. You’d be easy to just regulate and use my fancy dressage skills.

But I’m going to have a baseline of you need to be able to walk, try and can, or just steady rhythm and control yourself. And that’s, I think sometimes can be frustrating because it feels like you’re not able to use all the aims that you could. But it’s a little bit sometimes longer in the beginning, but it’s so worth it. Can you have a horse just follow the rail and go deep in the corners because you educated him too and you have no aids on. They’ll picture that horse that you can ride with no reins and he goes straight down the long side into the corner turns.

When you say turn, go straight on the short side. And you need 0 aids for that. Now imagine when you put your aids on. Yeah. And I had a big.

Horse who, who at first when she saw corners coming, she’s like, I can’t fit in there and she’d really fall to the inside. And I just took my time bridal less riding corner to corner, stopping little forehand yield, go down the next side. And I took a lot of time with that. And then when she got that, it was like, oh, now she’s doing like upper level corners and she was lower level because we took the time to get that kind of the balance of them understanding what they can do with their bodies. I even start telling them what they can do with their bodies.

And so you have to be clever and figure out what kind of puzzle to set up. But it can be so helpful. And I can really help the riding because now at least that horse is showing up going. I know how to not, yeah, run into things. Yeah.

I know how to self racially my no and it’s so important like I. Think so much of training frustration goes away when you realize the horses are just seeking safety and if your force is constantly showing up in this mindset of it’s going to be hard or I’m not going to be able to do this thing, they just don’t feel safe and when you love your verbiage because you’re constantly saying that it’s a game and these are puzzles and it brings that like. Fun. Childlike. Aspect to the riding and so much of us, we are egotistical animals as humans, right?

So like we can sometimes take it personally when our force like falls on the inside shoulder when they’re going around a corner or when I put my leg on and they don’t like yield immediately. And it’s you know why? And it’s funny ish that so many people just don’t have the curiosity to even want to understand. Or maybe it’s that they do have the curiosity, but they’re in these programs that don’t necessarily allow them to nurture that curiosity. And that’s why I love as much of a bad rap as social media and whatever gets like exposing people who maybe do want to do things a different way.

Like now they’re actually able to be exposed to things that aren’t necessarily in aligned with the program they may be in, but in aligned with the way that they feel they should be approaching things. And yeah, that that’s a big that was a big thing just throughout this conversation. How much you reference play bring up a really good point and. That there’s so many different ways and models for how to do thing, and there’s so much old tradition in horses. Some trainers will be like, no, you are the boss and you are the leader and the horse needs to come with you.

And then there’s the horses need to do anything that you ask it. I help encourage students to have the relationship that they want with their horse. There is a degree of to keep horses and riders safe in this world. There’s there needs to be a degree of the skill of I need you to do this now. If you’re on the side of a highway and yours is like, I think I’m going to go across and you’re like, no, and I need you to listen to me now.

So there’s that. And then there’s also the oh, I hear you. So what’s the answer? I don’t know. Yeah.

That you have the freedom to create the relationship that you want with yours because every person is different and everything that you want to do with your horse is different. So there’s maybe not right or wrong, but there’s programs that get stuck in. This is the way. And that’s why I try to use the full spectrum. But I know in my heart the relationship I want to have.

And something else you said, I really believe horses want to know what the heck we’re asking. And I do what I call my silly horse tricks. I do the dressage stuff. There’s that end of the spectrum. And then there’s like little touch this with your nose, put your foot in the bucket and all these games.

I’m teaching my horses to play the shell game now. So I have some all these like funny little tricks. And what I’ve noticed is my horses love them. They get jealous when the other horses are playing them. They want to do it and they can’t wait to ask me to do it.

I’m like, interesting. There’s some motivation, like even the quote of quote lazier ones. None of my horses are lazy. The low energy ones that would seem unmotivated when you ride or whatever. And here they are like go, I want to play fight.

So it made me really look at what’s going on there. What am I doing there and how can I incorporate that into the riding? It really helps when you play with your horses in different ways to see what comes out. I really do believe horses are like what do you want most of the time? If we can have that basic relationship and trust, that has to come first.

I was thinking of the you must do it now and you must versus the playfulness and the communication and the motivation. And it’s really fun to see horses that are one way when you ride and then you play a silly game and they’re like completely lit up. The only difference is what I’m asking how I’m asking to do it. So I think that’s been an interesting experiment with me of like, how can I take some of the things that I do over here when I teach them that catch and throw a ball and bring that into half passes and harder work? Yeah, I know.

It’s always. Interesting. Just seeing even just basic groundwork, who are they when you’re not in the saddle? Who are they when you go out to get them in the paddock or whatever it is? And yeah, they horses really are like the mirror of who we are.

And sometimes if there’s a horse that you work with all the time and you don’t like them or whatever, you need to be like, oh, what? Am I doing? Or that sort of thing. How do people find you follow along all of that good stuff? Yeah, thanks.

I’m very Googleable, so if you Google my name or go to dressagenaturally.net, you’ll find my website and there’s a lot of stuff on my website. You can go to the online programs page and find out all the ways to Start learning with me from really entry level to more intense courses. You’ll see on my website there’s three free videos. So if you’d like to just do that, you can get 3 free videos. There’s one on energy, one on impulsive horses and that little puzzle or an impulsive horse who goes too fast, and then one about connection with the reins, which I think is you’ll find most people find pretty unique.

So maybe that’s a good place to start. You can e-mail me. We can go to the contact us page. You can do a private consult for free, and we’ll just talk to you and he’ll point you in the direction of where we think we can help you most. But yeah, I just invite everybody to poke a rail.

And I have a podcast and A blog. So if you get to dressagenaturally.net, you’ll find lots of stuff. And if you don’t know what to do, just e-mail me. Happy to chat with anybody. Thanks so much for joining me.

Well, thank you. And Samantha, I just. Want to say I’ve been, I’m an old little girl with Loris. I’ve been down this a long time. And when I first started doing dressage and more partnership based training, there weren’t other many people around who got it.

And it’s just so fun to meet people like you who we can have this conversation. You clearly get it. So it’s been, it’s really fun to see what’s changed over the last 20 years and it just warms my heart. Awesome. Thanks.