“What is a Feel?”
Hard to define, and can be expressed properly in a zillion ways.
Do you jump?
Let’s say you have a nice hunter, that you can ride off your seat, and you are cantering along and you see a spot.
Your horse KNOWS you saw a spot, you sort of take back (or lengthen a bit) with your body rhythm changing a tiny bit, you leave the loop in your reins, and your horse takes the spot YOU saw.
Or maybe you trail ride, and you’re out where there’s no clear cut path and there’s a tree, or a sagebrush in your way. You think ‘left’, (your body responds with a really subtle signal that changes your body balance to go around to the left), and your horse goes left.
Or you have a cutting horse, and you identify the black whiteface steer to move out of the herd. Your horse knows you picked THAT steer out, (you may be looking at it rather intensely, your body is making subtle signals to follow THAT steer) so that when you have six or eight cows, he lets them fall back and keeps his focus on the black whiteface.
Or you have a cowhorse, and you are going to do a big stop. (Or a dressage horse, into a halt.) You find the place where your horse is balanced and listening, and stop your seat (you don’t follow the gait anymore), and the horse stops/halts without you picking up the reins.
If you are in a roundpen, or the horse is loose… You can indicate with your body, how much energy (go faster, perhaps) in a subtle way, and your horse follows that ‘hint’ into a trot, so you don’t crack a whip or spank the ground or anything.
A feel is the horse picking up on your idea, your intention, and following it.
It can also go the other way: the horse wants to move left, to graze or sniff noses with another horse. You (or maybe me, I spend a lllooooonnnnggg time not defending a space around my body) move your foot, because you see that the horse is planning to move HIS foot over, and you don’t want to get stepped on.
Or, you get home late and your friend forgot to feed the dog. Your dog greets you, then looks at his food dish- a subtle hint, unless you have a Lab who jumps up and down, picks up his food bowl, drops it at your feet and barks!
So, you can pick up on your horse’s subtle intentions, as well, and that would also be a feel.
if you are, for example, sitting still, what is the proper way to ask your horse to move forward? And if he doesn’t respond to your (feel? polite signal?), what do you do next?
There may not be just one ‘proper way to ask’ in terms of the actual signal you give to your horse to move forward- if you’re riding sidesaddle, it will involve different muscles.
Anyway, I would first make sure I have my horse’s attention, then pick my body up as though to follow a walk. Or, I might waggle my toes very subtly away from the horse’s side, indicating I want his life/energy to come up. That’s the polite ‘ask’.
Assuming my horse KNOWS that I want him to bring up his life, to go forward, etc…
If he ignores the polite, I will do enough to get my horse definitely forward, perhaps past walk and into trot. I’d thump him with my stirrups, probably. But how hard I kick, will depend on the horse. A really sensitive one, not much. A really dulled-to-the-leg, tolerant, blow-you-off horse, BIG kick. But always enough to get it done, in one fell swoop, so to speak.
I hope that was helpful.
Mvp, I’m not entirely sure I know the right answer to your question.
But I do know, you will NOT be expected to ever be riding your horse THAT bent anywhere else, except in the short-serpentine exercise.
My thoughts are, that horses cheat, in a lot of different ways, when asked to move their hindquarters. You want the horse coming forward with his front feet, but only a tiny bit. The horse’s front end should be ‘stopped’ from walking off, but his feet should not be pivoting on the ground- they have to maintain the walk rhythm. Sort of like a horse’s hindquarters in a canter pirouette- he’s still cantering, but his haunches aren’t ‘going’ anywhere.
Anyway, you also must have the horse taking his weight off the inside of his body, and a lot of horses can lean inwards, and still move their hindquarters properly (inside hind crossing in front of outside hind). That means there’s a brace in there.
So I think probably by bending the horse that sharply, the horse pretty much has to release the braces in his body.
Now, done wrong, when the person is first PULLING the horse’s nose around sideways, you are creating another brace…not good. You should not be pulling on the mouth at all, you should be picking up the rein and the horse follows his nose over 90 degrees to the side, and stepping over where your leg indicates.
Most people start by heaving the nose sideways (the horse often responds by tilting his head sideways, ears unlevel) and thumping his hindquarters across.
Done right, you ask lightly first, then take a hold of the rein to pull the nose sideways, and then release it when the horse gives sideways to the bit. (And moves his HQ across, you ask by putting your leg back, if the horse ignores you then you’ll have to thump him.) But you usually have to start small, asking his nose to follow your feel/rein sideways, he ignores, you take a hold of his mouth (NO JERKING THE REIN), and you release when you get a change involving the horse giving to the rein pressure.
Sort of like teaching the horse to lower his head with a halter and lead rope? You start by seeing if the horse will follow your hand on the halter downwards, he maybe has no clue. So you pull down on the halter rope. Then the horse really doesn’t know what to do, he picks his head up a foot farther…so you just wait until the horse tries and moves his head down a quarter inch, and release. Next pressure, your horse might put his head down an inch. Keep asking, and releasing when your horse tries, and pretty soon you can put his nose on the ground.
But no, we don’t want a horse bent that deeply anywhere but a few specific exercises.
