This afternoon it was off to meet Calypso and a new client. Having done a bit of natural horsemanship with him, she was familiar with the big concepts of pressure and release, predator and prey and into-pressure, so that left me to work with little bits of technique where I could make a difference to their relationship. My biggest worry about leading with the the horse behind the handler is that it encourages the horse to have his ears back as this would be their delegated area of responsibility in a herd; this can then lead to dominant body language or behaviour (or to a horse that falls asleep and then jumps on you if he is startled). I prefer to have a horse right by my side where I can see him using my peripheral vision and communicate with him all the time. The photograph shows Calypso with his ears back and during the session they gradually started to come forward a lot more.
