Ya I carry a whip along the shoulder and they pay attention. I can tap for a hey you—pay attention and crack for a pay the f— attention. And I can really whack for a hell no we are not going sideways at 20 mph. But all hell would break loose if I so much as thought about a rap on their rear.
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I have wondered about this; I am anthropomorphizing or are horses really that smart? In my mind, I equate a shoulder-pop with “sharpen up”, and a whack behind the saddle with punishment – do horses think the same? Are they intelligent enough to understand the difference?
I have had mostly TBs, so maybe that is my fault or poor training on my behalf, but these are horses that come installed with a fear of the bat. Waving a whip around is the one time I can say my TBs have been genuinely ‘reactive’. I have never owned a horse that has taken a physical punishment like being hit on the rump in stride (no pun intended), but I have also never desensitized them to the whip by regular use.
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I think they are that smart. My horses’ eyes will bug out just seeing a rider with a refusal who does a quick three whacks on the rump. Everyone else is yawning and my horse is like, holy shit, and I’m like, “okay! let’s go see what’s going on over on the other side of the property!”
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Yes they are. My TB can handle a dressage whip used behind the leg, but if you have to take your hand off the reins to use it (or even just wave it around) he is LEAVING TOWN.
He’s still pretty snorty when you walk towards him holding a lunge whip or stick. Zero pressure body language or not, he’s watching you like a hawk.
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My TB is okay if I hold a jump bat (which I only ever do on XC as it’s not needed otherwise). He’s ditchy so this year I’ve tried holding it out to the side (reins in one hand, arm with crop ready but not near his side) on approach to ditches for encouragement, and no problem.
I can approach with a lunge whip or crop, rub it all over, no issues. I hardly ever lunge but no lunge whip needed then or he gets anxious and just runs.
But…I can’t carry a dressage whip. He can see it out of the side of his eye and it makes him nervous. I certainly can’t use it. Every winter I think “maybe I should get him accustomed to the dressage whip” and then I don’t, because he doesn’t really need it. Even if I were to get him used to me carrying it, as soon as I actually had to use it he would be a nervous wreck again.
I was auditing a Lucinda Green clinic a few years ago, and one of the riders didn’t carry a crop on XC. Lucinda asked and the rider said he couldn’t tolerate one, and since the horse was going well, they left it. I spoke with the rider after and it turns out our horses are related through Mr. Prospector. The rider retrains and sells OTTBs into second careers, and told me ALL the Mr Ps she’s had are like this - they are offended by the crop and don’t believe they deserve it. 
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I think they are that smart too, but I’ve been told before I anthromorphize too much. I think horses are more emotional – and intelligent – than we give them credit for sometimes.
My current gelding also gets bug-eyed witnessing crop use in other horses. He does not take a pop on the shoulder personally, but he would become unglued if I ever popped him behind the saddle. Popping the bat against my knee is often just as effective, without the upset of being hit.
I’m glad Lucinda left that alone, I know she can be a stickler about bats! Some horses really don’t tolerate being hit well.
Whip aversion may be one of those bona fide race horse things. They don’t forget their race track days, and most certainly know a whip from that era. I’ve owned several (kind) TBs where all charity flew out the window the moment they had a whip raised against them. I think they do take it personally.
But it makes sense to me - if someone hit me, I’d be even less inclined to do what they asked. I try hard not have to use it. There have only been a few instances XC where I’ve ever popped behind the saddle under clinician or instructor command, and I hate to admit it, but it did neither party any good. At best, it made the horse more upset, and at worse, I think it showed them that they would be hit if they didn’t comply. While there are certain things I think do genuinely deserve punishment – like a rude or bargey horse that presents danger to his handler – I think something small like a horse being afraid of a ditch, is not so kind to introduce fear of pain to that already existing fear of the jump/ditch/whatever.
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WELL, not ALL.
My Connemara x TB is a great-grand-daughter of Mr. P. She is quite forward, so she doesn’t often need a crop, but she CAN be a bit ditchy, and she responds very well to a sharp crack behind the leg about 5 strides out.
Sorry, I meant full TBs with Mr. P. Mine is also a grandson of Mr. P so closer up - maybe it’s getting diluted 
It’s funny because I’m the one who brought up that it almost seemed my horse was offended if I had to use the crop (which wasn’t very often) and she said oh yes - they truly don’t understand because they don’t think they did anything wrong. I will say my horse is very kind and does try hard, so if he’s stopping (like the ditches) he is actually scared, not being naughty for the sake of it. Smacking him with a crop would NOT help. It might work that one time, but the next time he just wouldn’t go near it at all, so there’s no point in trying to scare him over it.
He’s jumped all of our (baby) ditches in competition this year. Twice I’ve held the crop out just in case, but I’ve also discovered that once he’s rolling on XC, he doesn’t hesitate. Schooling it when you’re starting and stopping is harder for him.
He also developed an aversion to walking by a paddock with cows in it - but I needed to do that to get to our back fields and trails. I carried a crop but literally had to gently set it against his side, behind my leg, with no pressure at all, and he’d go forward It wouldn’t even count as a tap.
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Yes. When mine stops (at a ditch, coffin, or Trakehner) she clearly thinks she is protecting both of us from something dangerous.
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I think it is harder to find a TB without Mr. P in their pedigree these days!
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It’s true! I think mine is trying to keep us from falling into a bottomless pit, especially when he can just go around it easily so why would he go OVER it?!? He’s getting better but I think if I pointed him at a “real” ditch (like a Training-level ditch) he’d still stop at least once. We’ve been schooling over shallower ones and it’s starting to click, but he’s probably not going to move up at this point so we should be good at the level we’re playing at. Our last show (last weekend) he went right over their optional ditch with no hesitation. It was a very friendly one, but he’d also never jumped it so I count it as a win!
I guess it might depend on where you are geographically (ie. close to where he stood since it’s only live cover for JC) but they’re spreading out everywhere lol! Probably easier to find him further back, but not so many left with Mr. P close up, which I think is what the person at the clinic was talking about with the whip offended-ness.
Here in Ontario, it’s nearly impossible to see any TB without Northern Dancer at least once, and usually twice, if they’re Ontario-bred.
A lot of people here talking about ditches. Big tip drag standards and poles out there to school.
Make the set-up be a jump to a ditch and get the horse thinking jump jump. Lower level do cross poles. I start this way and avoid the problem in the first place. Maybe even another simple fence after the ditch for eye focus. The ditch is just on the way. And rider, don’t look down!
Where are all those good schooling threads we used to have.?
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This is such a good exercise. I had a ditchy horse years ago and Denny Emerson worked me through it with something very similar. He had a ditch adjacent to his riding ring. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a friendly ditch, but he made the exercise ditch-to-jump and then we would curve into the ring for a simple X-rail. It made my horse think very forwardly, and he was not forward thinking in general. It was a great exercise!
I keep my horses at home now and introduce them to ditches by using ground poles in the ring. As soon as they are able to do trot poles confidently, they can do ditches - so you can do it quite young. I start with one pole on the ground, trot over it. Put another pole right next to it, trot over it. I gradually widen the pole spacing, so that it’s still clearly a “double pole” and not a trot pole. Once they do that confidently, I usually fold up a brown tarp and place it under the poles. This visually looks very similar to BN-N level ditches and my horses have all learned to take it in stride, literally.
I also think, while most riders tend to think trotting a ditch is better for a green horse, I think it’s easier for them to conceptualize it as just part of their stride (versus a whole jump) if you are cantering.
Also, doing lots of trail rides where the terrain is varied and there’s lots of fallen trees to pop over really helps -AKA very ungroomed footing. My current gelding has never been phased by ditches, which is a blessing for me because I had a lot of residual anxiety about ditches due to my last horse. But my current gelding got a lot more exposure to natural ditches and revetted walls on trail rides before I ever pointed him to an XC fence.
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They are smart enough to be trained by us to give the right response to an aid. Just like they learn all the other aids. Probably the very first time you did it it made them alert because they didn’t know what you wanted and that’s actually what you wanted so you rewarded that (actively or passively by not repeating the aid). It would be anthropomorphic to think they “just know”. We have trained them.
I could be wrong but I feel like jockeys also use tapping on the shoulder for attention and straightness so it is reinforcing training they have had.
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Re: ditches Some years ago I was interested to hear John Williams say in a clinic that one of his top horses - Sloopy, maybe? - was ditchy to the extent that he just didn’t school them on that horse. In competition, momentum and competition fire (I paraphrase from ancient memory) kept them going.
I don’t know what level they got to when John realized schooling them wasn’t helpful.
That would be a fascinating discussion - what counterintuitive truth/experience have you bumped into and maybe made you revised how you rode or trained? I that’s another thread!
Re: whip on shoulder.
I was indoctrinated in “whip behind leg to reinforce leg, and make it firm enough that it’s clear going forward from light leg is a better decision,” and I still lean that way.
But, between running a lesson program with horses and ponies who definitely are schooled, and (generally?) know more than their riders, and teaching some generally beginnerish riders who between a combination of not doing other physical tasks and having lots of sympathy for their mounts, were pretty ineffective at getting a good wrist flick which made it clear that forward was the answer, I started experimenting w having riders tap on the shoulder when forward aids didn’t seem to be going through.
It has been magical, or close to it. I think of it as an attention getting or message clarifying aid. Rather than some variation on squeeze, bump w leg, wack, I have mostly my weekly riders do light leg, light leg, shoulder tap for more forward. Seems like the herd gets it - if they aren’t sure if a leg touch was signal rather than noise, they can wait a stride or two and see if signal repeats. If it does, but they’re not sure it’s really a signal, the shoulder tap clarifies the intent.
Yes, of course I’m always working on stable leg and light aids, but the shoulder tap has helped the horses understand along the way.
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Re:TBs and whips. I could only ever hit my boots with my crop, my TB was so sensitive.
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