One of the loveliest sights in the equine world is a rider and horse team in perfect coordination. The rider has the lightest of touches, invisible and unfelt except by the horse. The pony basically appears to be directly linked to the rider’s brain, so that thoughts are communicated and acted upon in mere nanoseconds. As a rider, you need to appreciate the pony has the inborn abilities that may blossom with a little bit of schooling; it is you, the rider, who has to learn the hard way. The most important lesson you can learn vis achieving a light touch is to cease being firm.

You start humble, at the most elementary of levels, and you progress right. You don’t make the cardinal mistake most new pony riders do of presuming that a horse can be ridden by exercise of thought control. I repeat, you’ve got to learn more than the pony.

I believe the presence of a professional coach is mandatory. You can’t do everything yourself: there are as much chances of screwing up as there are of succeeding.

Get one thing straight: horses are intuitive. They read you even before you have laid a hand or a bit or a saddle on them. They are attuned to what your body is saying and what your mind may not be saying. You work best with them when you’re utterly relaxed. Let them start to know you at their pace.

Like most animals, horses respond well to praise and poorly to criticism. You’ve got to find the best compromise between excessive gentleness and excessive harshness. You must impress on the horse in no uncertain terms that you are the boss, but you don’t do it with a punishing approach.

You adopt an approach that is like an iron fist in a multi layered velvet glove. There are numerous methods of achieving perfect coordination and understanding with your horse, but a debate of these methods is outside the boundaries of this document.

Suffice it to say that you punish your pony if he errs, never corporally. The very easy act of making him do something repeatedly until he gets it right is punishment.

Naturally, you need a way of informing him when he gets it right. You give him a small reward, a treat, even a break. Let him go off and roll while you gather your wits about you in anticipation of the next session. Most horses are bright enough to work out where they are going wrong and where they are going right if they are handled with the reward/punish approach.

You do need to be very careful to approach things in a very logical step-by-step fashion. When building rapport with your horse and coaching him to get finetuned to you, patience is vital. You’ll find as your horse advances that you have progressed yourself. You have taught him, but he has taught you too. He is just half of an ideal team; you’re the other half.

Horses are Heather Tomspassion and she enjoys sharing her extensive knowledge through her 100s of articles with other horse lovers read more