BY SHIVANK PANDEY
You clipped on the lead rope. You’re already thinking about the lesson… the diagonal you want to fix, the distance you’ve been missing. Your horse pins his ears, just barely, for just a second. You’re halfway to the arena before you even register it.
That moment happens a hundred times a day in your barn. And you have probably been trained, without realizing it, to move straight past it.
Think about the education you received as a rider. You learned to give clear, consistent aids. You learned to be an effective communicator. What you were almost certainly not taught was how to receive. How to listen. How to notice that the conversation was already happening and that you were the one not paying attention.
You may think your horse is incredibly quiet. In reality, he is talking to you nonstop. Through the set of his jaw when you reach for the girth. Through the flick of his ear when you ask him to depart. Through the hesitation at the mounting block that you have defined as a habit. These are not random behaviors. They are signals, and they arrive in the most ordinary moments of your day together.
Here is the honest part: performance culture teaches you to move through those signals, not pause at them. When a ribbon or a trainer’s approval is your primary frame of reference, your horse’s signals get filtered through a different question: not what is he telling me, but how do I get this done. That is not cruelty, and you often are pressuring your horse, but pressure often is a substitute for attentiveness.
Once your horse realizes that the signals he sends are ineffective in creating a different outcome, he won’t send them anymore. What you see as your horse obeying you is often a result of sad resignation to the outcome. The difference between a willing horse and a resigned one may not be apparent in a show ring. But as a rider, you can feel it, and so can most riders.
The good news is that it works both ways.
You don’t need a different method or a new program. You need to make a decision. The decision is made each day to see interactions with your horse as part of the process. When you reach for the girth, and your horse turns his head, you stop and ask why. When you ask for a transition, and your horse is slow to respond, you wait one beat before asking again as your leg aids come on. It’s the little things. They cost you almost nothing. What they ask of you is presence.
You can even leave the stall door open to give you a little time to watch your horse in the stall. Take slow notes on his body language to see how engaged he is with you. Watch him in the crossties, observing his facial expressions during saddling. It is easy to tell if a horse feels managed or is willing to move. You can tell the difference on the ground, now see if you can be aware of it under saddle.
You may have an understanding that signals are not so easy to see, but you could not have been more wrong. Horses often train for something that has yet to be revealed. Your horse who braces at the mounting block has been telling you something for months. Your mare who rushes on the left rein has been helping you as well. Noticing does not mean you stop everything and defer to him. Sometimes you make changes and call the vet, but do not hand over the control. The point is to acknowledge that someone else is in this conversation with you.
When you acknowledge the signals, the horse starts talking to you. It changes you and it changes your horse.
Horses will be more expressive after their owners learn to see the signals. A horse’s body will start to loosen, and the horse will become more attentive, wanting to check in with you. The quiet performances you have been looking for will help you connect your horse to the bigger and louder performances.
You were never taught to hear this conversation. But you can start today.
Shivank Pandey rides English in the hunter/jumper style, focusing on flatwork and jumping, and has taken his training to local schooling shows and clinics. He writes about the intersections of horsemanship, ethics, and the quieter conversations that happen between riders and their horses.
