How Sewing Thread Can Make You A Better Rider

So I’ve been working with my big Westaphlian Gelding Sparky for almost a year now.  When I got him, he was a bit of a mess undersaddle.  He spent a lot of time ducking under the bit (nose behind the vertical), or bullishly moving through my inside leg to get away from the evil things (chairs, standards, strange looking plants, invisible monsters, or bolting (particularly at the canter).  After a year of steady, often creative work, he’s pretty much through all that.  But through it all I’ve developed a bad bad habit of allowing him to lean lean lean on my hands.  It happened gradually so I didn’t really realize it was happening until I rode my trainers horse who was very insulted that I was attacking his mouth so horribly! 

It took me a little while to really understand what was upsetting him so much - he kept tossing his head around and getting very upset - nothing dangerous but it was very obvious he was upset.  My trainer kept coaching me to lighten up on the pressure and when I did and just did teeny tiny light half halts he was much happier.  It felt so weird though! Like I had no contact at all! I was kinda resistant to riding like that until I remembered a clinic with Susan Derr Drake I rode in almost 15 years ago.  She tied heavy sewing thread to everyone’s bits and had us ride around using the thread as reins.  Of course all the horses were very well trained, relatively relaxed beasties and we had the reins still available - they were just tied in a knot to keep them safely out of the way.  

The exercise taught two things. The first was how a horse can feel a very light contact and respond beautifully to it - if you broke a thread you were using too much contact.  The second was that most people, unwittingly,  put much more pressure on their left rein than their right reins.  This was proven to be true in the clinic as I saw left “reins” snapping all around me and barely a right one snapping at all!

Once I finished my first abysmal ride on my trainers horse, I started thinking about this clinic again, realizing that I had gotten into a very bad habit of having very heavy hands! Depressing, but fixable.  The next morning I saddle up my very patient Mustang Dusty who is trained through first level and very easy to ride.   I rode him for about half an hour with the words “Don’t break the thread! Don’t break the thread” repeating over and over in my head.  I wasn’t riding with threads, but I was trying to keep my contact so light that if I were I wouldn’t break them.  Dusty responded SO well! He LOVED it.  He was light and airy and soooo easy! His right canter transition which is usually our buggaboo was amazing! He never threw up his head in the transition, always got the correct lead and was up and moving through his back!  It taught me to use my legs and seat MUCH more than I have been to affect his way of going - instead of using heavy pressure on the reins to get him to soften when he threw his head up I’d use my inside leg to move his barrel into the right “shape” or bend along with light light half halts and his head would come down and his back would go up and he’d bend beautifully! He was truly in self carriage! I still had light contact but it was really and truly LIGHT!

Trying this on Sparky didn’t go nearly as well - apparently he’s very attached to me lugging his big ol’ head around for him! I have a lesson tomorrow on him and hopefully we’ll be able to figure out how to get him to be in self carriage instead of leaning on my hands….. My goal? To eventually be able to successfully ride him in contact, walk trot canter with thread reins….