Q: My daughter has been taking riding lessons for some time now and at each lesson I hear the trainer remind her about her position – heels down, thumbs up, shoulders back, etc. When I asked my daughter the reasons for such attention to a rider’s position, she really couldn’t tell me more than “that’s just the way you do it.” Can you help this horsey mom understand?

A rider can communicate confidence with her eyes and, of course, can pilot her horse much more effectively when she uses her eyes correctly. The eyes plan the destination and often the next stride of the horse.

If difficulties in the training process aren’t dealt with in the right way, they can cause incorrectness and frustration to become the normal attitude of both horse and handler. It is often then that the horse gets labeled as a problem. In reality, the only problem was that the real issue was not diagnosed properly. It is common to work on the obvious — how the horse is expressing himself — when faced with something he may or may not understand.

When watching gymnastic competitions, we look for athletes competing in gymnastics to “stick the landing” before the eagle-eyed judges who will discount marks for even the slightest waiver in form. While this phrase is rather commonplace in our understanding of these athletic events, it is not so in our equine world… at least not until you have read this article.