I am in the process of reading Micheal Schaffer's new book "Riding in the Moment". It is my first ebook, and although I do like real books and paper, it is kind of neat to have a video in the middle of the book to further explain processes and expected results!

I like to read horse training and riding books, as sometimes hearing something in a new way, or put forth from a different angle can be illuminating. In one of Schaffer's chapters, he refers to two types of horse commands; mechanical and cognitive. Mechanical aids are basically those that are obvious to the horse, and exert some form of force that will cause the desired outcome. An example of this is pulling the left rein back and out to get the horse to turn its head to the left.

Mechanical aids are what most riders learn to ride with at first, and are what most horse's learn to be ridden with at first.

He then talks about Cognitive aids; these are the aids that we teach the horse how to respond to. An example of a cognitive aid would be halting with seat and leg, and a softened arm. There is nothing really intuitive about this aid, it is something the horse (and rider) must be taught.

Reading these two types of aids broken down and defined like this was illuminating, despite being somewhat obvious once I thought about it.

Let's go back in time to yesterday. I was showing an owner some ground work moves they could do with their horse. We started with a basic; getting the horse to walk beside their shoulder. This is a simple cognitive aid. The mechanical version would be leading the horse behind us. In order to teach the horse to walk beside the shoulder, the handler had to be ready to send the horse forward with a flick of the dressage whip so that the horse had a clear understanding of expectation.

The owner next did some simple figures leading in this manner, and some stops. Horse picked up on the exercises quickly, as the owner was consistent and observant.

Next we moved on to teaching the horse to do a turn on the forehand from the ground. This involves 3 steps; tip horse's nose left, stand at shoulder to block shoulder, and tap hock to engage horse behind. Horse has no reason to know off the bat that these three cues = turn on the forehand, so horse at first walked forward. No big deal. Tell horse to stop, and try again. Once horse attempted the exercises at all correctly, she got a lot of praise and a short break. This is how we teach cognitive aids, with then blend together to form patterns from which we can do complicated things!

But it was the next thing that happened that interested me; horse started to do a turn on the forehand when I did only steps one and two. She no longer waited until step three. Owner was right in her assessment that horse was smart and getting ahead of herself, and I think we often let our horses do this; they recognize a pattern, and start to get ahead of our actually asking. The problem is, this can lead to a lot of confusion and frustration down the road.

So in my example, if horse assumed that tip nose left, and blocked shoulder means turn on the forehand, how on earth will we teach her how to do a shoulder in? She is going to feel the ask for inside bend, the inside leg go on...and then throw her bum out, as that is what she was allowed, and therefore taught to do!

Rather, we have to make sure the horse waits for all the applicable steps; not by punishing, but by stopping horse, and trying again, and only praising when all the correct aids are given.

Karen