Let’s get one thing out of the way…

First and foremost, despite a horse's strength and remarkable ability to cause serious damage to both large objects and human beings in a split second, it is rarely the horse's fault. I don’t mean to imply that the handler or rider caused a wreck on purpose, just that without the benefit of many many years of experience, what the horse perceived as a threat is seldom apparent to a human. And since horses are flight driven animals, whose only defense is to flee, the human is simply the squishy speed bump between them and certain death.

Point being that there is rarely any malice involved, something caught their eye and tripped the auto pilot switch on their on-board survival mechanism. In their world, to hang around and wait and try to figure out if it really was a threat, can get them killed. It is as simple as that. So next time your horse gets nervous, keep in mind you are the predator (lion) and they are the prey (the unfortunate giraffe they asked for a ride to the water tank) and see if that doesn’t help you out a bit.

It is important to accept the above as true. You can repeatedly replay your latest wreck or continue to tell a trainer that the horse just won’t do it right, and you want him fixed, but you will make very little progress. Remember that a human being introduced him to be handled and taught them to carry a rider and potentially to perform a sport. So, even if it isn’t the current rider, somewhere along the way a person put too much pressure on him, confused him with conflicting queues or just flat out screwed up his training. Horses get anxious just like we do, and when a horse is filled with anxiety, the amount of time before he flips the flight response switch is a fraction of what it was. And a wreck is almost imminent unless someone takes the time to help him work through it. Believe it or not these wrecks are hard on the horses also, trauma is trauma. I think many times we riders forget that. So, it is not only the rider that has to be handled with ‘kid’ gloves after an incident.

Rider Biomechanics will invert your thinking. God willing we have the superior intellect and are emotionally more mature. So doesn’t it make more sense for us to put ourselves in their horseshoes and see the world through their eyes? Isn’t it smarter to utilize our intellect to ‘help’ our horse process things, instead of expecting them to understand what we are thinking? Rider Biomechanics is a way to teach a horse to be correct and balanced, in a frame that enables him to become the best athlete possible. No matter what sport you perform, or what type of riding you do, a balanced calm horse is a safe horse. And every rider wants that.

Once you have dispensed with the blame game, you can begin to really learn how to be a ‘performance partner’. Not merely how to stay out of a horse’s way, but to actually use your body position to assist him in his maneuvers. Then the magic begins.