Michelle Edwards Horsemanship

Horsemanship that feels good to you and your horse.

This content is intended for active students to reinforce the things we discuss in our lessons.

I’m impressed with the way someone’s horse feels, not what it can do. 

I think that for most of us, when we first start out with horses, we don’t realize how crappy most horses feel in their interactions with people. We assume that because people love horses, most horses must be fairly content and find enjoyment in their jobs. And so, we are impressed with the height a horse jumps, how fast it runs a barrel pattern, the agility with which it cuts a cow, or the extreme suspension displayed during a dressage test.

This is an incredibly common English set-up: tightly held reins and a flash noseband. Because the rider lacks the necessary skill and feel to engage in soft-communication and encourage self-carriage, the reins are held tightly and the mouth is strapped shut in order to silence the horse’s emotional and physical discomfort.

For me, there were various shifting points, beginning in my early teens, and continuing to this day – as I learned to recognize signs of distress and understand the forceful purpose of everyday equipment and practices. I realized I’d been idolizing the wrong thing. I’d been focused on a what a horse could be made to do – and using that to determine the success of the rider/handler. 

Over time, I’ve realized that I’m not impressed by someone jumping over a picnic table if their horse is foaming at the mouth or is wearing a gag bit. I’m not impressed with a dressage horse if it has its head held vertical in a death grip and its mouth strapped shut. I’m not impressed with a fast barrel pattern if the horse is flipping over at the starting gate, ridden in a tie-down or has eyes bulging from his head. I’m not impressed by a dressage horse whose head is held vertical in a death grip, or a barrel horse flipping at the gate with bulging eyes. I’m not impressed by western pleasure horses trained with their heads tied down, or drugged to appear calm. I’m not impressed by a horse that “stands” for tacking while grinding its teeth, swishing its tail, or only behaving after being lunged to exhaustion. I’m not impressed by a horse that leads quietly only because there’s a chain across its nose.

For clarity – no session with any horse is 100% softness and attentiveness all the time and this photo captures a moment in time. That said, many people are impressed with “liberty” work done without a bridle or lead-rope. But it is important to remember that the equipment doesn’t matter as much as how the horse is feeling. Is the horse attentive, relaxed, and expressing the motions that go with good emotions – or, as seen here, are they tense and stiff.

The reason I’m not impressed by these things, is because I now understand that all these issues come from how the horse feels. And the horse is saying that things don’t feel good. If the horse doesn’t feel safe, is confused, has pent-up anxiety due to its living situation, is physically uncomfortable, etc, it tries to communicate but it is most often ignored to benefit the person and their pursuits. Often the behavior is normalized – “oh, she’s just full of energy today”. When people don’t know how to address deeper issues (or don’t realize they exist), they rely on crutches to jump ahead rather than improving their skill.  

We’ve all done this at some point. My pony would run off with me when I was a kid. I got a stronger bit and my instructor taught me to tie my horse’s mouth shut so I could ride on the trails and on the beach. But my hope is that as a culture, we stop normalizing and ignoring stress behaviors. I hope that we each learn how to improve our own feel and clarity when our horse tells us something isn’t right. That we become horrified with the flagrant use of equipment to physically control the horse (“crutches”). And perhaps most importantly, that we, as a society, stop idolizing the things a horse can be made to do, and instead idolize how the horse feels throughout the process. 

The headstall set-up and tie-down seen in this photo are not only incredibly dangerous, as they take away the horse’s ability to move correctly and recover should they trip or start to fall, but they are also crutches used to silence the horse’s anxiety due to the rider’s lack of skill, balance and feel. This equipment allows the rider to jump ahead of the process. Instead of bettering their skills so that their horse can move efficiently and stay emotionally connected throughput the barrel pattern, the horse is forced into physical compliance.
Looking at this photo makes my head and my heart hurt. The rider is all smiles. She believes she is enjoying a beautiful ride on the beach with her beloved horse. But the horse is physically retrained in so many ways – emanating discomfort and stress. It is hard to tell how much of the stress and discomfort is from the beach or rider directly, or from the copious amounts of equipment forcing him into physical discomfort. The side reins are incredibly dangerous, as they limit the horse’s ability to balance. They also force an unnatural and uncomfortable body position. The running martingale, while less obtuse, reinforces this compliance. His mouth is strapped shut meaning that if he NEEDS to open his mouth slightly in order to achieve this vertical flexion, as many horse’s do in order to allow their jaw to slide naturally, he is completely unable. The horse’s face is tense and fully of uncertainty. He is holding his abdomen in tightly. Rather than being encouraged to better her skills so that she can ride on the beach in mutual enjoyment with her horse, the rider is using crutches to jump ahead in the process and force physical compliance.

These days, I’m impressed by someone who can simply bring a horse in from the pasture, groom, tack up, and get on—all with the horse looking soft, attentive, and at ease. That’s rarer than people think. I’m impressed when someone moves with quiet intent and their horse subtly feels back to them while they walk, circle, transition, turn, or stop. In a stressful setting, this becomes even more impressive. When something scary happens, I’m blown away by the person who helps their horse regulate instead of blaming it or lunging it into exhaustion. And I’m always impressed when these things happen with simple equipment, soft communication, and no crutches.

It takes TIME and so much practice to reach a point where simple things, like tacking a horse up, trotting around the arena, walking down the trail, leading a horse into a trailer, deworming with a syringe, and other seemingly simple tasks can be done with relation and without stress for both horse and human. The emotional and physical control that we humans have to learn is immense, in order to offer something that feels good to the horse.

I’m still working on improving my own feel and presence to help a variety of horses feel good in a variety of scenarios with increasingly little equipment. The more horses I work with, the easier all this becomes. But none of this is easy. That’s why people buy equipment that will allow them to jump ahead. It’s not easy at all! And it’s hard for people to accept that they may spend years developing the skills to perform day-to-day tasks in a way that feels good to their horse, rather than going to shows one year into riding lessons. We have to let go of long-held beliefs, form new physical patterns, develop more nuance and clarity, read our horses better, and treat them like sentient beings. It’s a journey but, at least for me, it’s so rewarding! 

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