Is your horse connected to the bit or is he evading the bit?

Hi guys!

This is a comment that I wrote to Natural Horsemanship trainer Randy Byers on the question that he posted on his fan page. I hope you will find it interesting and that it might give you a clearer understanding of some very important topics.

This is Randy's question to everyone:

I really enjoy receiving newsletters by the most of the big names in the horse world. I recently received a leg-yield article that explained that we need to have elastic hands for collection. This person used an illustration likening it to rowing a boat. Do you agree that our hands should be elastic or a barrier to maintain a solid foundation to tell the horse we want your head here?

This is my comment:

I'm very interested in this subject of how to use your hands in the development of the horse, and very happy to see that you've brought it up for discussion.

My passion and profession is Natural Horsemanship but I've practiced dressage most of my life and also ride gaited horses as well as western. I've mostly experienced the "rowing a boat" action with dressage riders. The reason in dressage for this elasticity (in my experience) is to move your hands upwards and slightly forward and then back down again fluently, to the same beat of the footfall of the hind feet. This creates connection and is supposed to allow the horse to gain more natural movement through his entire spine.

This will again allow more "schwung" to take place, where the hind feet swing underneath the horses center of balance thereby creating a higher elevation and collection.

It might be of interest to you to read a question in Horsetrader about this exact topic. I wrote this question to one of my dressage mentors, Ray Ariss. Ray covers this subject in his "Hey Ray" column better then any other trainer I've ever spoken with and has taught be a lot about connection, what it means and how it effects the anatomy of the horse to further collection.

Personally, I don't move my hands when asking for connection as it simply confuses me, although I do know how to do it and I understand the theory after seeing it in practice:-)
However, I do ask for connection from the horse in another way.

The Link is:
http://news.horsetrader.com/?s=celie+weston

When a horse "gives" to the bit, the question everyone should be asking themselves is:

Is he connected to the bit or is he evading the bit?

Anyway, that's my take on things. Thanks for a great page, I really enjoy chatting with folks and trainers too.

All the best
Celie Weston