13/06/2026
That will perfectly sum up today.
Ok, Marcelina was the only one who didn't hear that - today 😉
𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐞.
I found myself saying it recently and the more I thought about it, the more I realised how much of horsemanship seems to come back to those four words.
We have a habit in the horse world of thinking we always need to be doing something. If the horse isn’t quite right, do more. More leg. More hand. More contact. More correction.
I was taught the same as many riders. Keep the horse busy in the contact. Move the fingers. Seesaw the reins a little. Encourage the horse to accept the bit.
The funny thing is that the longer I spend around horses, the less I seem to do. Not because I’ve become lazy. Quite the opposite. I’ve started to realise how often we get in the horse’s way.
A horse cannot learn self carriage if we are carrying it. A horse cannot learn balance if we are constantly holding it together. A horse cannot figure out where to put its feet if we are micromanaging every stride before it has had a chance to think. Sometimes we become so focused on putting the horse’s head in the right place that we forget the rest of the horse exists.
The neck moves to help balance the body. The head moves to help balance the body. Horses naturally make thousands of tiny adjustments every second. Yet riders often spend entire lessons trying to stop those adjustments from happening.Then we wonder why the horse feels stiff.
❗️We ask for relaxation while hanging onto tension.
❗️We ask for forward movement while blocking it with our hands.
❗️We ask for self carriage while carrying the horse from one end of the arena to the other.
The irony would be funny if it wasn’t so common. Riders riding with hands in their bloody laps 🫣
That doesn’t mean riders should throw away the reins and hope for the best. Good riding still requires communication. Horses still need guidance. They still need education. But there is a difference between helping a horse and constantly interfering with it.
Some of the nicest horses to ride are often the ones that have been trusted to do their job. The rider asks a question, the horse answers it, and everybody moves on with their day. No drama. No wrestling match. No constant negotiations through the reins. Just a horse being allowed to move.
The longer I spend with horses, the more I think good riding is often about knowing when to stop. Stop nagging. Stop correcting. Stop trying to manufacture every step. Let the horse be a horse.
✅Ask clearly.
✅Wait for the answer.
✅Then leave the horse alone.
It turns out horses are often far better at being horses than we are at helping them. Because if horses were writing the lesson plans, there’s a good chance this week’s topic would be Why Humans Are The Problem: Part 47. Judging by history, it wouldn’t be the last chapter either.🤣
