On Thu, Dec 06, 2007 at 07:15:46AM -0500, Karen Thomas wrote: > Anyway, her quote above makes me think of something. A lot of us have heard > the old warnings that we shouldn't use our legs on our Icelandic's. I've > heard some Icelandic's described as "well-trained" but buyers were warned > never to use legs on them. Isn't that a conflict in terms? Ok, how can a > horse be "well-trained" in any sense if you can't put your legs on him > without risking him/her taking off like a rocket?
let's consider what "training" means. it means "association of an action by a rider with a desired response by the horse", yes? so for any given rider, their range of actions is what's available to the horse. i suspect that people familiar with horses such as you describe wuold no more miscue them with their legs than i would set off a racetrack bell near an ottb. that doesn't mean they're not "well-trained"; it may mean they are "unsuitable for janice" (who doesn't seem the ottb type to me either). stjarni seems to tune himself somewhat to different riders. i go to a lot of effort to help my students build a quiet, stable leg, but more to help them avoid the "wobbly" feelings janice has complained about than to keep stjarni from taking off lightning-like (he won't do that in the ring anyway, but besides that, his training is such that his cue for that is a half-seat, a cluck, and a release with the reins -- no leg at all). he *might* let j get away with a jiggy foot; i don't know. he lets some of my students get away with their legs sliding back halfway to his croup, for instance. but a jiggy foot from me -- that gets lateral movement away from my foot. a foot moved back -- even an eighth of the way croupwards -- from me means "this cue is just for your hindquarters". is that "bad training"? i don't think so; i taught him that on purpose and am glad he's gotten good at it, though i now have to work even harder on my own stability of leg so as not to cue him inadvertently. (or perhaps he is training me, which i feel is within his job description as a school horse.) i guess my summary point here is, a connection between rider action and horse reaction is not inherently "bad training". indeed, a reliable relationship between the two is *good* training. after that the only rough bit is matching up horse and rider and getting them to understand one another, which i think is best done at the one-to-one level (as with janice and tivar), so that the two partners know what to expect and how to get along. --vicka
