It doesn’t make me defensive. But it is a really odd thing to say in a dressage forum. You hit the nail on the head when you said you aren’t an educated dressage rider. First, the contact is never “unwavering.” The arms and hands should be elastic and move with the horse. Second, contact is NOT, repeat, NOT pulling on the reins, which I’ve found is what most non-dressage riders think. Contact is established by sending the horse forward to the contact, not the other way around. If you don’t have control (with seat and leg) of the horse’s motor - the hind legs - then you cannot have correct contact. That’s as elementary as I can state it. There is much more, but contact is not a thing to be concerned about. Properly trained horses will seek the contact all the way to the ground if you let them. They understand that it is through contact that they are better able to carry the rider. The upper level horses are in self-carriage by then, and the rider’s hand does very little.
As I said try it with a metal gate and WITHOUT a horse.
At a certain point the gate is narrower than a horse. It can get caught under the stifle and the horse forges forward. The gate then closes onto the horse. That is when you are in trouble and can do nothing about it.
Always open a gate fully before a horse goes through. Close it after the horse is all the way through. Never leave a gate unlatched. Either latch it closed or tie it open, do not leave it for the wind or livestock to change it’s position.
Unwavering doesn’t mean a fixed arm. Unwavering means that the horse never gets a respite from the contact. The contact is “always there” - perhaps more strongly at times, perhaps less. I don’t think @mvp meant pulling and I certainly didn’t either.
I do understand the concept of driving the horse forward into the contact - but there IS weight in the reins at all times to have correct contact, no? Especially at the lower levels.
Exactly.
I don’t mean pulling… though if you look at a horse in Rollkur, you have to wonder or, perhaps to be clearer, get a more nuanced interpretation of “pulling.” I can imagine that someone good enough to use that didn’t pull the horse into that frame in the sense that if the horse was standing still, they took back hard enough on the reins to muscle that horse’s chin to his chest. But would you think that the horse’s head and neck was put into such an unnatural position via the kind of contact that allowed him the respite of uncurling at will?
An unrelenting kind of contact does, I think, have a part in creating the invention of Rollkur as a technique. (And for the sake of the argument, let’s grant that the very best, most effective, most humane, very brief version of it is what we’ll mean here by that term.) The whole purpose of Rollkur is to get access to the base of the neck and thoracic sling. It seems to me that you end up with the front half of the neck so curled because you got the horse to stay curled up there without raising his back. And that, my friends, is the risk of a riding style that places great emphasis on consistent contact in the hand.
What I think is better, is riding for the feel of the horse using his thoracic sling. And I promise you, there are many roads to this Rome. That uphill posture can be created and maintained via the dressage system and philosophy of what a bit does and how the horse will participate in his work. But it can also be created via the use of a signal bit (or hackamore) and a somewhat different understanding of how the work seems to the horse. I will say that I believe that all riders at the top of any discipline are looking to train their horses such that the horse knows he can find a more comfortable version of his rider’s body on his if he keeps trying to please his rider.
Thank you for being perhaps elementary enough for me. But I have to ask: What’s in it for the horse if in exchange for that very energetic pushing into the contact he never gets a break from it? And let’s assume the most feeling and elastic hands, arms and shoulders God ever put on a rider.
And there are other versions of dressage, notably the French system, that does not drive the horse into a contact so much has establishes the horse’s balance first and then adds in as much movement as the horse can do while maintaining his balance. For these folks, the lightness comes from teaching a horse how to find and hold his balance and that uphill posture such that he never has a reason to brace anywhere in his body, but especially in his head and neck. FWIW, I’d say this is might be closer to what the Vaquero guys are doing, though they wouldn’t use quite the same vocabulary. In either case, the bit doesn’t function as something that the horse should find a way to push into or rest upon.
So it doesn’t mean that you never let go of the reins, you are clearly going to do hacking and other things that don’t have contact. What it imeans is If you’re schooling with contact and you keep giving and taking and giving and taking the horse gets frustrated with the lack of consistency.
Except… well, very few dressage riders I know ever ride outside an arena. “My horse is too valuable…” I can’t tell you how many times I have heard that.
Well, that’s interesting because it’s the opposite of the way my horse reacts. If you take and just keep on taking he gets pretty cranky and decides that he isn’t going to work for you anymore, which can cause rearing and depositing people on the ground. I truly don’t blame him.
The idea behind most aids is that you give the aid and then release it when the horse does as you’ve asked so that the horse knows they did the right thing. We know that about leg.
Why is contact different? This seems illogical.
When I’m riding collected or starting extensions from collection I do ride with clear contact but the horse needs to have the impulsion to carry into that. And we don’t ride like that for an hour.
Obviously not, that would be exhausting.
But would you hold your leg on for more than a second if the horse was doing what you’d asked? I think not, that’s what makes a horse dull to the leg.
I’m just exploring the differences here - not throwing a baton at dressage btw. It’s interesting to me.
Contact is that coiled telephone cord we all associate with landline phone handsets and bases. When you pick it up, the handset I mean, there’s a sense of contact with the base. There’s some more if I take up the slack, and there’s less, but it’s there. When I feed the reins to my horse when we’re between harder work/there’s less slack type of work, we’re both happily letting there be a drape in that cord and relaxing …we’re still talking, but the conversation has mellowed and were both shaking it off and going long and low for a while before we come.back into more complicated conversations.
Contact is a lot like groundwork. What you see in a picture is not necessarily a perfect representation of what everyone does in that cultural, with every horse, in every situation, 100% of the time. Nor is everything you see at the upper levels of competition “good”.
I understand the analogy but from a signal theory standpoint, constant contact would be like you (the human) are talking the whole time and the horse doesn’t have a chance to respond.
From a signal perspective, I teach the horse to respond to one rein softly, then two. After the horse responds, I immediately release. Gradually, I can build up to longer two rein touches but always with the goal of softening. And yes, before I do this the horse must be moving forward freely and relaxed. This is to teach the responses of signal.
The idea then is to use exercises to help the horse balance and collect himself. Ideally it comes from my body, and the rein is just a backup, kind of like the flag.
I do not have to physically capture the energy with my hands (as I’ve heard it described) and it really doesn’t matter where the horse’s head is, though it will come into the correct posture as the thoracic lifts when the hind end comes under and the horse begins to step underneath his center of gravity.
We are always in constant dialogue with our horses, but I do think it’s a very different philosophy of how to get there.
You (meaning you ;)) would have to accept that what we’re after in dressage is going to require the horse learning to trust and seek the contact (not the signal bit stuff).
We’re not trying to make a western bridle horse.
The goals aren’t synonyms.
Just as the French system isn’t the Germanic.
They are after different things. Neither is wrong. You’re right that yes, it is different
I do understand that as well. But I’m trying to map it and struggling to do so. Acknowledging that you’re seeking that contact doesn’t explain why that is valuable.
So perhaps I will ask again, why is the constant application of the hand correct, but the constant application of the leg seen as dulling them?
I understand that the horse may seek the hand if they have learned to rely on it for confidence and balance, just as my horse touches the back of my hand on the ground if he is unsure.
And please understand, again, I’m not throwing stones. I’ve heard all of the analogies about contact, been around it for a very long time. There’s something that I can’t connect intellectually. That’s what I’m looking for.
The hot horse must accept a draping leg. They don’t get dull to it, they learn to accept it. The hot horse wants to take your legs off. Too bad buttercup. The dull horse wants to make you work for it and pedal them. Too bad buttercup, I shall cave thine slats in and wake thine carcass up. Then the draping leg can drape, not pedal.
Better minds than me shall have to explain contact more. I’m fading from a day of advocating for bodily autonomy 
All good, and thank you for that.
So when I’m on a horse that’s tuned up enough to ride on clear contact (my own horse on a good day) virtually all my change of direction and a good deal of my downward transition comes off my seat and thighs. The reins when we are properly working are about balancing, including lateral bends and vertical flexion. So there isn’t confusion. But you cant ride like this until the horse is educated enough.
So there are some pretty brutal beginner dressage lessons where you get told to lean on the horses face to achieve what looks like a semblance of contact, but is nothing like it
This sounds like the same (or almost the same) desired outcome at the end.
How does the horse get there if he is reliant on the hand for a period of time?
I have heard when the back end comes down/carries then the horse gets light. But that means that they are reliant on you for balance for an awfully long time, no?
No you aren’t holding them up. You are signalling them. They follow the bit to get the balance. There’s stuff like this in Western riding too.
It sounds like you had bad crank and spur dressage lessons, understandably walked away from that, but it’s hard to explain the nuance between bad dressage and correct dressage if your not doing it.
