Two Inches of Horsemanship

What has helped me with my horses in the past few years was reminding myself that progress in myself and my horses was an incremental process, sometimes just inches at a time. I call this "two inches of horsemanship".

I really don't remember saying this out loud at least to people, but my horses hear me say it quite a bit, until a few months back when I was helping a client learn to ask her horse to move his feet using the lead rope and she said "Oh I see, just a slight difference".

She was referring to the slight difference in the angle of the lead rope which presents a different feel to the horse. We were asking the horse to moving an inside front leg over to the side and follow that with his outside front foot. When she vocalized her understanding, I said "Yep, just two inches of horsemanship right there."


That two inches can be six inches or can even be time like 10 seconds. It represents a slight change from the horse or handler that makes a difference. It can mean an extra moment of patience - ever heard the term "waiting on the horse?"

That two inches can be taken literally such as what a slight change in my foot placement within the stirrup meant to me when I had a horse who had trouble with lateral movement with forward momentum. He was good at responding when I asked him for lateral movement at the walk or trot to the right, but when asking for lateral movement to the left I was challenged at getting an understanding from him. Until someone way handier than me told me to 'try exaggerating the placement of my outside foot and as the horse gains the understanding, refine your foot-leg clue to a more subtle movement.' So putting my outside leg about two inches further forward gave the horse a better understanding if what I was asking.

Two inches of horsemanship also means just getting a try from your horse and building on that. I can't think of anything that demonstrates that better when teaching a horse to back. In the beginning when we ask the horse to back, when the horse even just shifts his body weight back, we give a release. Then we ask for a step or maybe even just picking a foot up in preparation for placing it backwards. As he responds we ask for more and before you know it he is backing. <br><br>

And yes I do talk to my horses.  They are good listeners.  My wife sometimes hears me talking to them and asks "who am I talking to?".  I always say "just one of my horses".  The horses will talk back to you, you just got to be a good listener too.