Teaching Your Horse to Be Light

Have you ever seen a horse that responds to light, almost invisible aids? Do you wonder how you can train your horse to respond that way? The secret to teaching a horse to respond to a light aid is to apply the aids in the following sequence:

First, ask him to obey a given cue; then give him a chance to obey.

If he doesn’t respond, tell him that he must obey the cue by using a slightly stronger aid.

If he still doesn’t respond, enforce the cue by using a stronger method.

Your horse must learn that he must obey your cues when you ask him to obey. Yet, by asking in this sequence—ask, tell, enforce—you allow your horse the chance to respond to the light, asking aid and avoid the harsher telling or enforcing aid. Remember that the aids are signals to the horse—a way to ask him to respond. For example, a horse does not stop because you pull on the reins; he stops because you let go of the reins when he does stop. Therefore, you reward him for stopping.

You must be sure that your horse obeys an aid after you ask him, or he will learn that he does not have to obey any of your aids. Yet, if you “tell” a horse to respond before you “ask” him, he will never have the opportunity to learn that he could have avoided the harsher cue simply by responding to the lighter one.

In order for  a horse to learn, you must apply your aids consistently, in the same way, every time that you ask. You must expect to get results. Even a small step in the right direction is acceptable, because it means that the horse is trying to understand what you are asking and he is trying to please you.

For example, when you initially start a colt under saddle, the colt has no way of knowing that a squeeze from your legs means to walk or jog or lope. He has had no prior experience to prepare him for this. Therefore, when you ride a colt for the first time, you must teach him the aids—that when you use your legs in a certain way, you are asking him to walk, jog, or lope.

To teach him to respond to the cue to walk, first squeeze lightly with both legs. If he does not walk, then bump him with both legs. As soon as he begins to walk, immediately stop bumping him to reward him for walking. After you have done this a few times, the colt will walk when he feels the squeeze from your legs to avoid being bumped by your legs. You have shown him that it is more comfortable to walk from a squeeze than to get bumped. You have shown him that you will reward him—the bumping stops—for walking and obeying your aid. You have shown him that he can avoid the bumping by responding to your light “asking” aid—the squeeze.

If a colt does not walk from the “telling” aid—the bump—you would use a crop or bat and increase the severity of your leg cues to enforce the cue. The young horse thinks, “If she squeezes and I do not walk, she bumps me until I do walk. (Boy, is that uncomfortable and annoying!) Once I walk (as she asks), she stops bumping me and sits quietly. I think I’ll try to walk the next time from the light squeeze so she won’t bump me with her legs or tap my rump with the crop.”

This same sequence of ask, tell, and enforce is used on an older horse to teach him to respond to a light request. Make it uncomfortable for him to be wrong and comfortable for him to be right. Reward him for his good behavior by sitting quietly on his back. Once you ask for something, you are committed to getting it!

Use the same exact cues and the same exact sequence of cues for the same exact responses, every time. A horse will easily understand a cue and this sequence of ask, tell, enforce, if it is repeated consistently, enough times, and if you use the same exact cue to mean the same exact thing, every time. Horses learn through repetition. Talk to your horse in the same language so that he can understand what you are asking him to do. If I spoke to you in English on one day, Lithuanian on the second day, and Chinese on the third, how much would you understand? Your horse often feels the same way. If every movement that you make on your horse’s back means the same thing every time, imagine how quickly he will learn.

(Excerpted from Western Training Beyond the Basics by Laurie Truskauskas Knott, published by Alpine Publications.)