Soft Hands - Soft Mouth

There was an interesting question posed on the Equine Mind Meld. The rider was wondering if his hands were too soft. He figured he rode without bit contact about 97% of the time. I really couldn't come up with anything better than, "It depends on if you're getting the job done."

The thing is, how often the bit comes in contact with the horse's mouth has nothing to do with how soft the horse or rider is. Under the previous definition, a dude horse who will do his trail route with his reins hanging and some screaming little kid on his back, would be considered soft mouthed, and the kid, who's doing head stands and riding backwards, but never picks up his reins, would have soft hands.Until he tries to take the dude horse off the trail. Then, when the horse's head goes down, he starts to eat, and no amount of hard handed yanking by the kid will get his head up, he's hard mouthed, because he'd rather let that rough handed kid rip his mouth bloody than miss out on another bite of grass.

This kind of logic would also imply that riding disciplines which rely on contact are harder handed than those that don't. Which is nonsense.

One of my riding gods, Ray Hunt, spent a lot of time teaching riders to get their horse to respond off the softest cue. He encouraged his students to find the softest, lightest, gentlest touch they could to work their horse. The reasoning was perfect. A horse can feel and respond to the tickle of a fly on his flank, so why would we kick them in the belly when we cinched them, or yank their heads around to turn them, or kick them fifty times to trot when a shift of our seat could do the same?

This seemed to set off a mindset of,  how soft can I go? Which is great, but only if there is an actual understanding of what makes a horse soft-mouthed and a rider soft-handed.

If anybody ever went to a Ray Hunt clinic they probably saw what would happen to one of his well broke horses if they quit listening. Ray got their attention, fast and hard. Whip, spur, bit, whatever it took to clarify his position, he was using it. His misbehaving horse would go scurrying back to soft obedience as fast as it could. Because Ray made the wrong thing very, very difficult if his horse knew better.

Horses don't become soft if they don't understand there's a consequence for not being that way.

They need to understand the gentle touch of the rein or leg will be followed with a much firmer reminder of what's needed.

My approach to my horses runs this way.
1. I ask with a whisper (actually, it's a touch, I'm not much on whispering). Once.
2. I say what's required with a firm explanation (using legs and hands). Once.
3. I make it happen. No matter what it takes, I make it happen.
   Then I take a breath and go back to step one.

My horses have a choice. They can work off step 1, 2, or 3. It's amazing how willing they are to go from step 3 to step 2. Then, they go to step 1 and usually work pretty hard to stay there. But once in a while, they all test. Just in case you aren't capable of making them do their job that day.

My responsibility to my horse is to know how much to ask.
It can be just the flick of an ear from a range a colt or a mustang.
It can be a clean round in the cutting pen from my seasoned show horse.
Thousands and thousands of questions asked and answered take my horse from range colt to show horse.

So, if I want my horse to ride with only 3% contact, then I have to make sure he understands everything I expect of him during the other 97%. He has to know if he doesn't respond to my question, I'll explain it once, then make him comply. There would be contact during the compliance, because I would want him to desire my whisper. I would want it to be very important to my horse that he doesn't need contact from me. He needs to know his safe place is when he's listening and I'm not touching the reins.

A horse ridden with contact, say a snaffle bitter, will be asked the exact same questions. The difference is only in the communication. My snaffle bitter will be every bit as soft to handle, within the limits of his education, as my bridle horse will be.

The soft mouth is not created by soft hands. Every horse is born with a soft mouth. It hurts them when we pull. All of them. From the flighty three-year-old to the been-there-done-that dude horse, it still hurts to get yanked on.
Timing and communication is what creates a soft mouth. Feel. The ability to tell when the pressure being exerted has accomplished it's goal and to quit.

Desensitization is what creates a hard mouth. Yeppers, the very self same learning tool embraced by round penners everywhere, teaches Old Ironsides to tune out your spurs, ignore the big wonkin' long shanked bit you've got hanging from his face and do whatever his goal is, not yours.

When there is no purpose to the yank, the pull, the whip or spur, then a horse is going to tune it out. He can't make any sense of it, except that it hurts and it happens on a regular basis, so he learns to ignore the pain. He doesn't try, because trying doesn't do any good. He doesn't think about it, because that hasn't helped much either. He just shuts things out and gets on life as best he can.

I have always felt that most hard mouthed horses are pretty darn good natured. Mainly because they tune their riders out instead of trying to kill them, which they probably deserve. The choice was pretty much this -- become dull or become a murderer--and these sweeties chose dull.

Here's a couple of very simplified version of how hard mouthed happens:

Scenario #1: Horse and rider go down trail. Horse wants to trot, rider pulls on mouth. Horse speeds up feet and tosses head, rider doesn't understand. Rider hangs on mouth. horse tosses head. Rider hangs harder. Horse veers into brush. Rider hangs harder. Horse spooks. Rider hangs. It hasn't occurred to the horse he should slow down because the rider has explained nothing, only hung on his head. He doesn't want to slow down, he wants to go home, to his stall, where nobody pulls. Rider obviously doesn't get it. Nothing the horse does works. So....horse goes home. The only way he can think of to get the rider off his mouth.

Scenario#2: Rider pulls as a cue to the horse. Pulls to turn, pulls to stop, pulls to guide. The horse leans on the bit to brace against the pull. The neck and shoulders go into blocking conversation instead of working with the rider. Rider uses increasingly harder cues or stronger equipment. Horse tunes out rider with equal strength.

Scenario#3: The rider gives up. Cues once, cues twice, still doesn't have a response, and releases while thinking up another approach. Comes in with more firepower, but all the horse remembers is the release. If he waits, the pulling will stop. So he waits.

Desensitizing is essentially teaching the horse to tune out stimulus that distracts them from us. If you look at that horrific video of the Big Lick trainer beating the crap out of a horse to teach it not to react to pain you see desensitizing  taken to a terrifying extreme.

The thing to remember is, you can dull a horse to anything through repetition, if the stimulus is without communication or reward.

I know there is no such thing as a "hard mouth." One of the benefits of being a mid-level horse trainer was I got to ride lots of schlock in order to keep my business afloat. I found I could teach the most closed down, hard headed, 20-year school horse veteran to respond to the lightest touch. It was hard getting through sometimes. I had to ask very little, tiny questions. I had to accept minimal responses. But by God, when the light when on, those horses welcomed my communication with everything they had. Because horses are the coolest, most forgiving animal on the planet. "It's about time!" they seemed to shout.

So, back to the original question. Can a rider have too soft of hands?

Depends on if you're getting the job done.