In my last article on May 13, I talked about what softness was and wasn’t, the
benefits of your horse being soft, and how I go about it. If this topic interests you,
you might want to go back and read it before you read this one. In this article, I’ll
give you a few suggestions on simple ways to increase softness and
responsiveness in your horse.
One thing that makes a horse softer and more responsive is being more
ambidextrous. Your horse will be better able to respond to your aides and will be
more supple doesn’t have one side stiffer or more hollow than the other. Imagine
how much more fluid and coordinated we’d be if we didn’t favor one side more
than the other. I’ve written several articles on this in the past, because I think it’s
so important for everything we do with our horses to be equally flexible and
balanced on both sides.
First, it’s important to understand that about 80% of horses are stiff to their left
and hollow to their right side. It’s easy to feel because when executing a
symmetric circle to their stiff side, they don’t want to tip their nose to the inside
as easily and they tend to collapse that circle by trying to lead with their shoulder.
The opposite is true to their hollow side. They’re too bendable bendable and tend
to drift to the outside of that circle. Also, it’s harder to move their shoulder in to
keep them on it. So, first try to walk a perfect circle both ways making it very
round and see if you can tell. Once you’ve figured that out, the next thing is to
make the stiff side more supple and the hollow side a bit stiffer until they’re as
balanced one way as they are the other.
Another way to tell is when you’re walking a circle to the right (if they’re more
hollow that way), you’ll feel their hip cocked to the inside. In other words, their
hind feet don’t follow in the tracks of their front feet.
Once you’ve determined which side is which, I’ll give you some ideas on how to
even them up. I’d love some guidance from all of you regarding what problems
you encounter and areas that you could use some suggestions for also.