DEVELOPING CONTACT IN A YOUNG HORSE

DEVELOPING CONTACT IN A YOUNG HORSE

My whole horse training journey started the day I made one of my horse's mouths bleed. The horror of that moment changed me forever. I have since dedicated much of my horse training passion towards understanding dressage contact, why it is important and HOW to train it really well. It has made me an effective young horse coach. I am also skilled at solving any issue from teeth grinding, horse's that get their tongues over the bit, tongue lolling, hard mouths or horses that evade the contact.

Training contact has a number of steps that involve way more than the horse even accepting the bit. Horse's that I start or re-train are ridden bitless in a halter or side pull until they are relaxed and confident in all gaits. It is only then that I even contemplate reaching for a bit. This is because training contact is both a mental and physical idea you have to introduce to the horse. Ideas the horse has to understand, accept and feel confident about. If the horse lacks understanding, never learns to accept the bit and is never allowed to develop confidence in how to respond to the bit, the result is discomfort and inevitably - "contact issues".

My approach to developing contact has a number of steps, but I managed to capture a couple of photographs of some key insights that people might find useful to understand.

The photos are of lovely young warmblood mare that is learning my approach to developing correct contact. The first photo shows what happens when the contact has not yet been established. For contact to be established the horse softens at the poll joint and "seeks" or reaches towards the bit. In this first photo this is not happening. If you examine the photo you can see the "loop" in the rein. You can see the tension of the muscles around the poll contracting as the mare braces her neck and the connection between the bit and the riders hands is lost. The tension and bracing can then be seen impacting all the way through the mare's body in the shortening of the strides of the hind legs in comparison to the front legs.

The second photo shows the impact of what happens when she successfully "seeks" or reaches into the contact. You can see how the rein is not "loopy" but now has some weight applied by the horse as she stretches into the connection with the bit. This is the biggest misconception in training contact - it is the horse seeking into the connection that creates contact, NOT the rider taking the reins back and pulling! That just results in the horse bracing, leaning, or getting freaked out and you end up with a anxious spooky or pissed off horse.

Note in the second photo the muscling of the neck that is seeking forward and down. The poll is soft. There is no muscles bulging in a brace. You can also see the impact this has on the ability of the hind legs to step up and under the horse. The whole reason we get the horse to assume this posture is so the horse's spine goes into a flexion, like a suspension bridge. To encourage the horse to do this we need hind legs to be able to engage! When the horse's spine is flexed the rider is supported by both muscles and skeleton. This is opposed to the spine being "hollow" where the rider is supported mostly by the skeleton. This poor posture compromises the long term soundness of the horse.

I hope these photos help train peoples "eyes" of what we are looking for when we are developing a horses contact and WHY contact has a place in gymnastically developing the horse. It is just not a "frame" it is a WHOLE body response!