8th August, 2008 No Limits?

During my lesson on Petra yesterday (which was more like, look what my lovely horse does for me now!), we were discussing what works and what doesn't. Amanda feels that a horse needs to know that there are no limits, so it needs to know that you are sure and resolute about what you are doing and that you will keep going and do what it takes to get the message across and the work done. This doesn't mean that she immediately goes from 0 to 60 in terms of pressure; indeed she has a great many excellent strategies for developing softness in the horse and empasises that we need to make sure that we are offering softness ourselves. I have always felt that it was important that horses did know there was a limit, so that the horses we work with would know that they would never be hit. It's a promise I say out loud to the most damaged ones "you're fine, we don't do hitting here". Perhaps you can say both providing you have enough options available to you to make sure you never have to go there except in an absolute emergency.