There are numerous facets of humans that are similar to horses. Among the more notable similarities: we both need camaraderie and fellowship to survive. Horses are herd animals, people are political animals. The core of both natures is that an individual horse or human will always need another of his kind to go on. Another notable parallelism between the two species is that when in a required form of fellowship, an individual horse or human is the subject of pressure. When several minds mingle and share similar space, pressure is inescapable.

Extend this parallelism a bit more, and you can see how pressure, though often having negative connotations, can become a positive driving force too. Some people excel under pressure—using the typically undesirable force to compel them to perform at heightened standards. This is also applicable to horses. Implement some type of pressure in your training and your mare would better and quicker understand her lessons. Though there are limits to using pressure as a training tool.

What does a person do when he constantly experiences pressure at work? He quits his job—or his health becomes undermined. He either escapes the pressure or loses to it. Again, this human condition parallels horses. Apply too much pressure, and your mare would start to go looking for avenues of escape. The flight reaction springs to mind. Well, you’re fortunate if your mare chooses the flight reaction over the fight reaction, in fact. But occasionally a trainer would ignorantly force his steed to the final resort of fighting back to escape the pressure. Horses trained under regimens of unceasing punishment, cruel pressures, and those based totally on fear and force are not fit for horse riding or other higher equestrian sport. They can only be a potential danger to themselves and their riders.

A mare only becomes really fit for riding if she establishes a relationship of mutual trust and confidence with her rider. This relationship must be rooted in her coaching.

Don’t be fooled though; as mentioned earlier, pressure is integral in training and lessons. Dressage and likewise all high level equestrian sports need firm training and compelling pressures. The key is in always knowing the resistance brink of your mare—just how much pressure she can take before she goes searching for a way to be rid of the source of pressure.

As such, it is clear that lessons that can benefit from using pressure positively are most advisable. And pressure is best utilized in acceptable levels. This implies that lessons should be broken down to smaller parts in such a way that the pressure asked for in each part serves to force the pony to learn faster instead of causing her to escape the situation. Of course, the release from the pressure and the corresponding rewards for proper or correct responses build on this idea and help improve a lesson in which these are incorporated. These serve as the small holiday getaways from the little pressures horses are subjected to in training.

Horses are Heather Toms’ passion and she enjoys sharing her extensive knowledge through her 100’s of articles with other horse lovers… like all things about horse rugs.