It makes sense that a horse moves away from pressure. It makes sense my poor balance impairs my mare’s balance and my good balance assists her. Things like this make sense. But why the horse would seek contact baffles me. Anyone actually know the answer to this mystery?
Horses, like most mammals, are not perfectly straight. They usually have more ‘stuffing’ on one side than the other. They are banana shaped.
When you put more stuffing on the short side, you trigger a reflex that ALLOWS them to reach forward.
You could think also that once the load is balanced, they are more able to go (stretch) forward.
You can create this “reach forward” with just your seat, and no rein effects. Though to get the maximum reach forward, you need to “put the cap on the end of the toothpaste tube.” And encourage the horse to be stuffed all the way up to the bit.
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This is an outstanding question! Why has no one asked it before? 
The horse seeks the contact because the contact assists him in finding and keeping his balance. Being unbalanced is scary, or at least unsettling. Balance is safe and secure. Therefore contact is like a security blanket. It feels good. This is also why balanced horses are light in the hand and unbalanced horses are heavy, and it is the reason that if you want your horse to be lighter in the hand you don’t get a new bit, you teach it to balance itself. At least, if you are doing it right. 
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I did search extensively for “why” and found a lot of “how” articles and references so I apologize if this has been discussed and I simply failed to find them. I asked this because I was hoping to understand more of what makes them naturally want to do this. So with your answer, with my green horse and my novice rider self, could part of the problem be that I don’t know how to consistently create the secure feeling for her so she is not even aware it’s there? We are not a total loss and are making slow, steady progress, but I thought I could do her better if I actually understood what was happening, rather than just doing the “how.”
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I was always taught, (and my anecdotal evidence has led me to believe) that horses seek contact for the same reason that we do - to close the circle of energy we’ve created, so there is balance. It is the natural result of a horse that has forward momentum, and without any tension, the horse’s energy is all moving forward. Once that energy gets to the front, (their face, and the bit,) it must go somewhere. If we, as the rider, provide them with soft, steady, light, elastic contact, you start to form a version of balancing together, like two people on a teeter totter, or two people dancing closely. The horse will be compelled to seek that balancing loop of energy for similar reasons we are - it comes instinctively naturally to want to feel balanced, it is athletically easier than expending energy being unbalanced.
I’m not sure I’m doing a good job explaining it, sorry!
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Mmmmm…light versus heavy connection is not the defining characteristic between a balanced and an unbalanced horse. Heavier style horses like the old style WBs might take a heavier connection than hotter, lighter horses; this does not mean one is more connected than the other.
With a green horse, focus waaaay more on the other points of contact than rein contact…read this, as it gives a great overview.
http://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/2010/07/jo-hinnemann-on-contact/
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Great question!
I also think a great answer will be anatomical and biomechanical, not metaphorical.
Here’s my shot at it:
The horse’s architecture means that his heavy head way out on the end of his stalk of a neck acts as a counterweight to his heavy, but powerful hind quarters. This is most obvious at the gallop— watch the horse allow his head to lower as he rotates his weight over his front two legs, letting the nuchal ligament stretch a bit (to store kinetic energy which will later be released). As his head lowers, it helps raise those big heavy hind quarters so as to lift and draw them up to reach for the next stride.
This isn’t the only adaptive reason the horse’s body looks at is does, of course, but it gets a job done with less muscular effort than it would have required otherwise. Appreciating that the head and neck represent weight and moment arm, means a couple of important things for the purposes of this discussion.
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The head and neck have a strong influence on the horse’s balance. To a large degree, that’s why someone controlling the position of the horse’s head controls the rest of him as well. We exploit his architecture and asking a horse to put his head in the right position is part of the basis for influencing what we really care about-- how he carries his ribcage in a uphill or flat/downhill posture.
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So, if a horse is trained and ridden well, he can lean on the contact a bit—heavily or softly. Or, in other cases like the Vaquero bridle horse where there is no contact involved, he receives signals from the bit that tells him where the rider would like him to hold his head and neck and (really, and because he has been conditioned and trained), how to lift the front end of his ribcage.
The bottom line is that the horse is taught a relationship and “feel” with the bit that also dictates the position of his head and neck, and, in turn causes him to adopt the balance and posture his rider wishes. If you have a horse who does not have a clear and peaceful understanding of the bit, you have way less access to his body from the shoulders back. If you do this badly enough, long enough, he’ll figure out a way to hold his head and neck that is pretty divorced from how he carries his ribcage. To the horse this posture seems “easier” than meeting a harsh or unpredictable contact, lifting his ribcage (like weight-lifting for a horse) and putting the momentum of his whole carcass and neck into that bad contact. It will spare him pain and effort in the short run. Witness the schoolmaster who tucks his chin and has his neck rising pretty close to the vertical out of his shoulder… but leaves his ribcage low in front. This is a real PITA to unwind in terms of teaching the horse a new way to use his hole body in response to bit pressure and re-building the top line required.
And my own $0.02. I think that “consistent contact” so discussed and valued in dressage can be over-done, particularly in horses that were trained to have “consistent contact” all the time, no matter what. The horse quickly figures out that it’s less work and protects his mouth to say behind the leg while lets his neck draped down from the withers and just leans on the bit. After all, the “money shot” kind of “pressing into the bit” you want does require that a horse is pushing from behind and using lots of postural muscle to hold his ribcage in an uphill orientation. A horse no more wants to do that than do we want to stand at attention if just standing in a slouch will get us by.
I think, too, that “consistent contact” is the product of a particular bit and training system. After all, well-trained Western horses aren’t required to “push into the contact” with the bit… in fact, they are ridden so that in a snaffle, bosal or spade bit, they should be seeking a moment of release from the equipment on his head. And the better trained he is, the less contact he feels! Lots of English folks think western horses ridden in snaffles are “behind the bit.” But really, those horses can be slowly trained to be as uphill as any dressage horse.
So it’s categorically not true that “seeking the contact” is the only way to make a horse who has the easily maintained uphill posture in his rib cage that we want. Just choose the relationship you want the horse to have with the bit; control his head and neck position always with an eye to what he’s doing from the shoulders back; make him strong enough to do as you ask; do not let him get behind your leg, and you have the basic recipe for making a very well-trained horse.
ETA: So the short, biomechanics-based answer to your question is that if you teach a horse to make it his responsibility to put his nose as far out and up or down as possible, given the length of rein you have offered, you have taught him to seek a position that risks his balance. In other words, with the heavy head way out (and level with?) his center of gravity (about where the rider’s knee is if the horse were standing still) he’s put into the position of having to lift his rib cage so that he doesn’t fall over. And in still a third set of words: It’s hard to use reins that can only pull (really) in order to actually “push” or “tease forward and out” the nose and that heavy head. Yet, you need a horse to put his head out there where the moment arm of his head and neck have the greatest mechanical affect on his balance… And then you ride the rest of his body in a way that he will lift his ribcage in order to keep from falling over. You put him out of balance with his head so that he has to use postural strength to put himself back in balance.
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Personally, and possibly pessimistically, I think it is to “control” the bit in their mouth. If you think of having a bit in your mouth and a person running behind you without consistent contact, there is a lot more movement – some unexpected and some uncomfortable.
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I suspect that the scenario goes more like this.
A bit is put in the young horse’s mouth.
He learns to tolerate the bit.
During training he learns to yield to the bit as a matter of comfort, while on the longe, at least one would hope while on the longe.
In time he finds he gets more relief by quietly seeking the contact which we hope it a correct contact from an educated hand.
As time goes by, and he gets physicall fitter and begons to learn to engage and collect he continues to give to that contact.
Horse ridden with out a bit seldom have the neck arch, and head position of a bridled horse.
We have all met the horse who is defensive about contact, evasive about contact, etc.
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Seeking contact and accepting contact are two different things.
I ride a high headed stock type horse that wants to be light on the bit. She might be very happy as a Vaquero bridle horse
I ride in a subset of dressage training that requires you to teach the horse to actively seek and maintain contact. Clear contact, but not heavy contact or leaning on the bit. And you are meant to never pull back or wrestle with the head.
And boy is it a hard job on my particular mare! I see my coach accomplishing cooperative seeking contact on lots of other horses but she has always said mine is a particular challenge :).
Maresy was broke but green when I started riding her, and she was my first full time ride as I moved through lessons and Ieases as a re-rider. She has come a long way since then.
But even now, maresy will stretch to the bit when you ask, then pop up a milimeter that is hardly visible from the ground, but that you feel as loss of contact.
She will accept contact if you take it. She will collect at walk and trot. She can use her torso correctly now as we work on medium trot.
What is still a challenge is getting her to seek contact in a working or stretchy trot. After my hands became steadier we could sustain that contact for longer and longer, but for the first couple of years it often felt like we were yo-yoing up and down.
So I would say getting a green horse that doesn’t completely accept contact to learn to seek contact from a beginning rider is very difficult because once the horse takes contact you have to not betray it by losing balance or feel yourself.
And as to why she now seeks clear but light contact and maintains it for minutes rathet than seconds, it’s learned behavior. Maresy needs to learn that’s the place of stillness and rest and balance going forward.
I should add that by this point, most of our change of direction and speed comes from seat or thigh or leg cues, except in cases of insubordination so rein aids are more about balancing the horse.
Now all this might be different if you had a horse that preferred to move out with a long low neck. In that case stretching to the bit would allow the horse to move in his preferred fashion.
With horse like mine that prefers to move with her head up so she can see everything going on around her, you have to teach her to stretch to the bit and move in a posture that is not her preferred choice. And you have to do that before you start asking for collection and a flexed poll, because otherwise she will just be rushing around upside down.
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The horses learn too accept contact. They need to have confidence in the bit.
It is us communicating with them. Go quiet with your hands and you stop the communication. This does not mean see sawing or moving hands it is much more subtle than that.
The horse will seek contact because that’s what its rider is asking and wants.
The reason why the rider wants that contact is because it’s a good way to communicate with the horse without disrupting the energy created.
Horse will want to seek the contact because it trusts its rider and is looking for directives.
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As La Gueriniere said the horse schooled with real finesse, may be directed with the “reins attracted by the concept of gravity”. When you ride a horse like the one in alibi"s last sentence he takes the contact and is ready and willing for you to direct him. There is no feeling like it.
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This has been a really interesting thread! Great visualizations for me to use
One of the things that’s stuck with me over the years was a BNT’s (can’t remember who) assertion that horses move naturally INTO most tactile pressure. You have to train them to move away from or yield to it.
Think about a baby pulling on a halter - their instinct is to move INTO the pressure the halter exerts. Otherwise a steady pull on the halter would have them trotting eagerly wherever you please to escape the pressure on the crown of their head. Or when you try to pick up a horse’s leg and he leans his weight more heavily on that foot, or onto you. He’s unconsciously trying to maintain control. It’s a low-key fight response.
Horses seek contact instinctively to maintain control. We mold that into communication by convincing them, by degrees, to stop fighting and accept pressure as direction. And the ultimate goal is self-carriage, where contact can be “thrown away” and the horse carries on as desired based on other aids.
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Monte Roberts was the first one I ever heard talk about “into pressure” and the need to teach the horse to move away from it.
THey seek contact with the bit because we train them to. Other disciplines teach them to stay behind the contact. Bad riding teaches them to lean/brace on contact.
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Yes. It’s otherwise known as “operant conditioning.”
OP, you actually might have better luck looking back at some old texts of horseman like de la Gueriniere, though it is sometimes hard to find accurately translated works.
This was interesting for me because I recently saw a social media post of someone I know who attended a clinic of a BNT and her caption to the video included a statement along the lines of “man, do my arms hurt”.
To which I SMH because if you are feeling that much weight, what the BNT in the video kept calling “contact”…you’re doing it wrong. And yet that is what so many dressage riders believe is good contact.
So, my short answer: horses actually DON’T naturally move away from pressure, they push into pressure. In all other training scenarios (when it comes to riding) WE teach them to give to pressure. When done correctly, we eventually teach this same idea to the horse as it relates to the bit.
My longer answer to this question: my experience has been that dressage splits into two factions when it comes to “contact” - those that teach and/or ride with the belief that consistent contact, i.e. feeling some level of actual weight in your hands, is necessary and a positive indication that the horse is “seeking the contact”, and those that teach or ride with the understanding that you can feel a horse’s mouth/tongue - and therefore still have plenty of “contact” - without actually having weight in your reins.
The former group of riders/trainers never get their horses past the phase of pushing into pressure, regardless of what “level” they are riding at or how “correct” it looks. The latter group of riders/trainers generally work pretty quickly to teach the horse as early on as they can that just as with the leg, the horse is not to lean on the bit, and that he can find release from bit pressure by assuming a certain posture.
This is supported biomechanically if you look at which muscles are activated to lift the base of the neck + withers and create the rounded neck versus which are activated when there is pressure on the bit between the rider’s hand and the horse’s mouth.
Some other form of pressure gets added if they aren’t seeking the contact as the rider would like. So if the horse is curled behind the bit, the rider might briefly increase rein pressure, followed quickly by increasing leg pressure to encourage te horse to fill the space as the rider would like. When the horse does, this other increased pressure goes away.
(Before someone natters at me “why would you increase rein pressure on curled up horse at all,” it’s because you want to create a situation where the nose will move forward, so you can reward the nose moving forward. so, if the horse wants to be at -2, if you bring him back to -3 and then let go, he will move his nose back to -2. Add the leg cue when he is just at -2.9 like it was your idea and voila, rewardable moment linked in the hores mind to a leg aid.)
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