Connecting to the Feet, Part 3: Intention, Attention, and Calibrating the Feel

by Mary Gallagher

Why: To expand on the previous concepts and exercises in Part 1 and Part 2, helping you and your horse develop a language of feel and connection. Continuing a series of articles on Connecting to the Feet, in advance of Mary Gallagher's clinic of the same name (at Freedom Farm this August, 2019).

Horses have an uncanny ability to feel inside of you—they can tell if you have a plan or you are winging it. As you stand with the lead rope, or sit with the rein in your hands… have you thought about a task for their feet? or are you caught up in emotion, pushing an agenda, driving for an end result?

The answer matters more than we think.

When we bring our intention into the present moment by directing the feet to a specific place, we get our horse’s attention. This is different than correcting mistakes. There can be no mistake when you synchronize your mind and then your aids with the horse’s feet, you can feel the horse’s feet, and the horse can feel that you feel his feet.

Connecting to the Feet, Part 2: Feeling the Feet, Placing the Feet

By Mary Gallagher

Why: To become aware of your horse’s foot placement, feeling it through your body, enhancing your ability to support your horse with well-timed aids.  Part two of a series of articles on Connecting to the Feet, in advance of Mary Gallagher's clinic of the same name (at Freedom Farm this August, 2019). (Read Part 1 here.)

The exercises in this article series are aimed at helping you connect with your horse ever more deeply, through greater awareness of what he’s doing with his feet at any given time. In part one, we got you synchronizing with your horse’s front feet, stepping together over cavalettis on the ground, feeling those same steps from the saddle. Now lets go to the hind feet to complete the picture.

Stop! Don’t get on that horse! (Yet.) Part 1 of 2

by Jessica Crouch

Spring is finally here and many of you are eager to get riding again.  Maybe a friend has invited you for a trail ride and offered you a horse you don’t know well.  Maybe you are anxious to get your green horse going again and see if you can develop him a bit more this year.  YOU are anxious to get riding, but before swinging into the saddle, there are some basic things you should do to check if your HORSE is ready.

Lesson Notes: An Exercise in Influence

 by Mary Gallagher

 Further thoughts on influence as leadership, which I wrote about here in March. - MG

One of the core ideas I convey to my students is that, 'I don't want you to make your horse do things, or control your horse, I want you to influence your horse.' When you influence your horse, you take control and force out of the equation, and communication is what you have left.

Lesson Notes: The Precise Placement of the Feet

By Mary Gallagher

A huge part of our success with the horse is through placing the foot in an exact place over and over again. We need to develop knowledge of where the feet are in any given moment--on the trail, in the ring, in a meadow--regardless. When you know where the feet are going to land, you can influence the flight of a particular foot, thus producing a new outcome, whether it is speed, direction, tempo or balance. Yet we are forever settling for 'close enough' or 'I'm not sure where those feet are going!'.