From: Katingka
Dear Jessica,
First of all I would like to thank you for taking the effort to answer all those horse questions and sharing all this with so many people. I have read how many emails you receive. I hope you can find the time to think about my question.
You problably don't remember my email that I sent to you a few months ago. It was pretty long and my question perhaps a bit to complicated for a respons in horse-sense.
I still haven't been able to find a good answer to this question so I hope you can answer me. I can image the answer can be interesting for a lot of horse owners who sometimes let a less experienced rider ride their horse in the arena or for (beginning) riders that have trouble slowing a horse down.
In short my question is: What can an instructor do (what instructions can he/she give or what actions can he/she take) when a beginning rider is on a horse in the arena and this horse starts to canter or gallop and won't stop?
I suppose there is no simple answer but I would very much like to know how you would handle this in the savest way. I hope you can answer me.
Thank you very much for sharing your time and knowledge!
Katingka
You're right, there is no easy answer to this question. Since I believe that prevention is always preferable to cure, I would begin by saying that inexperienced riders should not be put on horses that are likely, through lack of training, too much training, or sensitivity, to run off.
It's not fair to put an untrained rider on an untrained horse: they will frighten one another, and someone will get hurt.
It's not fair to put an untrained rider on a highly-trained horse UNLESS it is also a patient and tolerant school horse that extrapolates well and feels responsible for keeping humans on its back. Those horses do exist, but they're not easy to find.
Putting an untrained rider on a highly-trained, sensitive horse that has a large vocabulary in the language of the aids will also result in chaos. The horse will interpret every movement and shift in balance as a signal, and the rider, who will have no idea that s/he is giving any signals at all, will not understand why the horse keeps doing things "without being asked", and will punish the horse for "being bad" when in fact the horse is being very good indeed. When the level of tension gets high enough, something bad will happen.
Beginning riders who are properly started on the longe will learn to sit, breathe, and control their own bodies long before they are permitted the use of reins. Beginners who are simply put on horses and told "pull both reins to stop, one rein to turn, kick to go" will learn to be abusive without having the least idea that this is what they are learning.
Riders who are taught the correct way to sit and use their bodies and balance and breathing to bring a horse back from walk to halt, from trot to walk to halt, from canter to trot to walk to halt, and then from canter to walk and from trot to halt, are much better able to deal with a runaway horse, and are also much less likely to find themselves run away with. Riders who learn these things on the longe will develop correct habits and reflexes, and won't automatically use their hands first (or hard).
But since it's good to consider all eventualities, there are some techniques that may help individual riders stay out of trouble.
First, it's possible and very useful to teach riders how to perform emergency dismounts, so that they can "bail out" if the find themselves on horses that are bolting out of control. Mind you, this is comparatively rare: in most cases when riders are being "run away with", the horse is simply going a little faster than the speed its rider would find most comfortable.
Second, it's also possible to teach riders to assume a more authoritative position -- straight, tall, with legs stretched down, upper body stretched UP, eyes looking forward, and chest open. Like the emergency dismount, this "ride the halt" position can be practiced at a standstill, walk, trot, and canter. A rider who can SIT UP instead of automatically rolling up into a foetal position when nervous will have a terrific advantage in a runaway situation.
Third, riders can be taught to use a pulley rein -- again, not so that they can do it all the time, but so that IF it's needed, they can have something to do other than put constant pressure on both sides of the horse's mouth. This can be taught on the longe, on a quiet horse, at walk, trot, and canter, and should be taught with reins attached to the longeing cavesson, not to the bit, so that the horse's mouth won't suffer whilst the rider learns to hold hard with one hand and take-and-release in an upward direction with the other hand.
BTW, it's also useful to drill riders in what to do in case the horse rears -- like emergency dismounts and pulley reins, the technique can be taught and learned so that the rider will have a plan of action just in case. If a rider has no idea how to get off a horse in a hurry, or how to stop one that's going too fast, or how to redirect a rearing horse's energy forward and downward, that rider is more likely to get into trouble than one who knows what to do -- and what NOT to do -- in each case. As instructors, we all hope, most devoutly, that no horse ever rears with one of OUR riders. But if it does happen, we want our riders to know that they should lean forward, loosen the reins, and use a low opening rein to direct the horse on a curve whilst they send it forward. If the rider does NOT know this, there can be trouble: the novice rider's "natural" instinct is to lean back and pull on the reins, which is a formula for getting killed by bringing the horse over backward.
Of course, it's irresponsible to put a novice rider on a horse that is known to rear or run off, but friends and acquaintances are not bound by the ethics or logic that would keep good instructors from doing this...
By now you have probably figured out that I'm not in favour of people allowing their novice-rider friends to take their chances on a horse in the arena. ;-) It's not good for the rider or the horse. If it must be done, it should be done on the longe, on a lead line, or -- at the very least -- at a walk, or a walk and slow trot, ONLY. A bouncing, jerking, unbalanced, out-of-control rider attempting a canter is enough to provoke even a saintly horse into trying to outrun the monster on its back. Novice riders invariably imagine that horses are so big and strong that nothing a little rider could do would ever cause real pain. Horses have a strongly-ingrained impulse to run away from painful, frightening situations, and the most painful and frightening situation of all, for a horse, is to be attacked by a predator leaping onto its back. If SOMETHING on a horse's back is moving randomly and causing the horse great pain, that horse is very likely to behave as it would if the thing on its back were a mountain lion instead of a flailing, inept human.
So -- there's my answer: proper training of the rider, proper selection of the horse, speed appropriate to the rider's level of competence, and drilling in "what to do if" situations BEFORE anything happens, in the devout hope that nothing ever WILL happen. Then, if and when something DOES happen, at least the rider will be prepared to deal with it, and just as importantly, the rider will not have caused the problem.
The first rule of crisis management, after all, is "Don't cause the crisis." ;-)
Jessica
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