No matter how much equestrians may pride themselves on being able to ride a horse over all sorts of brightly colored obstacles and through intricate patterns, whether lunging forward at the gallop or collected into the floating yet powerful piaffe (demonstrated by the worldwide champion above), if a horse doesn’t want to be ridden, he will throw you off. Or he will run away from you if he sees you coming for him in the field. Or he will refuse to do what you want him to do and amuse himself by giving you a tour of every corner of the ring you didn’t intend to be in. Put simply, sometimes they would rather just eat grass all day. Nevertheless, horses have grown to become dependent on humans, and riding provides them with the exercise they need and relish. And due to both their psychology and physiology, horses are the ideal mounts.
While a horse’s skeleton isn’t actually designed to carry extra weight, the ligaments along a horse’s spine work like a suspension bridge, spreading the weight of the rider across the muscles in the horse’s neck, abdomen, and hindquarters. The collective power from this “ring of muscles” all meets in the horse’s loins, which push the horse forward. This is why one of the main jobs of a rider is to encourage the horse to ride with his back lifted and supple. And, of course, the saddle’s extra surface area helps distribute the rider’s weight even more.
So horses can carry riders, but there are lots of other animals that are big enough for people to ride—camels, elephants, even ostriches! The biggest thing that makes horses perfect for riding is their spirit. Horses, both in the wild and in the field, live in carefully structured social hierarchies. Just a few minutes of watching horses in a field can reveal pretty quickly who’s the boss mare, who’s allowed to bother who, and who can be pushed around. The horses at the top of the pecking order may appear to be mean to the other horses, but those ranked lower in the herd trust the alphas and depend on them to decide when to eat, when to sleep, and when to move to the other side of the field. Translating this into the ring, horses recognize their riders as a similar sort of alpha, and will naturally want to cooperate with the rider’s requests. Horses are trusting, and the most important job as a rider is to maintain that trust. As prey animals, they are also highly observant and can sense their riders’ moods, even without physical contact. If the rider comes to the horse with overwhelming fear or a need for control, the horse will sense it and will react with fear or rebellion. But if the rider has a true desire to work together with the horse and just have fun, the horse will willingly comply.
This sensing ability is also what allows equestrians to communicate with horses in the first place. While a rider may seem to be simply sitting on the horse’s back as the horse trots along, the horse and rider are really holding an intimate conversation. To tell a horse to do something, the rider applies gentle pressure to the horse’s sides with her legs or to the horse’s mouth with the bridle. Horses, being extremely sensitive, move away from that pressure in the direction that their rider wants. And, to reward the horse for complying, the rider releases the pressure instantly. Then the horse, encouraged by the reward, eagerly awaits the rider’s next idea and may propose a few ideas of his own. And yes, sometimes that entails taking a tour around every corner of the ring you didn’t intend to be in.
Sources:
Bennet, Deb. “The Ring of Muscles Revisited,” Equine Studies Institute, 2008, www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjepu3IxdXzAhVPq3IEHUbWCUsQFnoECAUQAw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.equinestudies.org%2Fring_revisited_2008%2Fring_of_muscles_2008_pdf.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3cJOtYxflY7OExUPYNQqeF. Accessed 18 October 2021.
“Do Horses Like Being Ridden?” Best Horse Rider, 2018, www.besthorserider.com/do-horses-enjoy-being-ridden/. Accessed 18 October 2021.
Hill, Cherry. How to Think Like a Horse: The Essential Handbook for Understanding Why Horses Do What They Do, Storey Publishing, 2006.
Image sources:
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